A lot of our students who have trained with us from scratch (most of which are career-changers) are going through the motions of choosing the right website design/style for their business for the right price. Some spend a couple of hundred, some several thousand but in my opinion it’s not the fancy branding and expensive website that will sell your work – it’s the quality of your images.
Take a brilliantly designed website and fill it with poor quality images and your effort will be wasted or nowhere near as effective as a simple and clean, clutter-free one filled with amazing images. I know which option I’d choose.
Why am I so convinced by this? Because I started my career with a very clean and simple website as I didn’t have the money to spend on an expensive one. Instead I focused on producing high-quality images as I knew these would make a huge difference in attracting brides and inspiring them so that they’d book me.
How did I know this would happen? Before becoming a professional MUA I looked hard and failed to find a suitable one for my own wedding ceremony in the UK. I ended up not booking anyone and doing my bridal makeup myself (even though neither had I trained as a professional MUA then nor did I know I’d become one). The images I saw on the MUA’s websites I looked at were such poor quality they didn’t make me want to look like the brides in their galleries.
Also, in case you needed further convincing – for nearly 10 years now the quality images that I post to my website and on Insta (OK, so not exactly 10 years on Insta since it’s not been around that long!) has kept those enquiries flowing in consistently, keeping mine and the K-Team‘s diaries filled with bookings at the prices that we want to maintain throughout the year. All without having to spend money on expensive advertising campaigns.
The moral of the story is – if you have the budget to invest in expensive website design it would be better to spend half of it on either learning photography skills or hiring a professional photographer to capture your work the way it deserves.
My next Portrait Photography Masterclass for professional MUAs is on Monday 1st Apr in Edinburgh where I’ll teach you exactly what you’d need to get that portfolio sparkling.
