Your own site vs. online portfolio directories

[olivier_nyc]

Hi,

To generate traffic/visibility to your portfolio it seems like a good idea to, instead or in addition to your own site, register on an online directory site...
But there are literally hundreds. From free (or cheap) to thousands-of-dollars-per-year (workbook for example).

Anyone with experience on these ? Is it better to be on several lower priced ? One 'major' site ? Is this hype ? Do you get what you paid for (ie: more bookings).

Thanks !

Olivier

[juno444444]

Well, me I just have a blogger blog. That one links to two sites where people can buy my photos for a dollar or so - Lulu.com and bigstockphoto.com. But I'm not a professional and I haven't put much work into the sites. I just upload photos once in a while if I can have time.

[abortretryfail]

I've been wanting to have my own website for such a long time but have been way to busy to even start. Currently I'm using flickr.com so at least I have something up I can direct people to. It's fast and clean and all I have to do is just upload photos.

[bforrester]

We opened a Smugmug account this year and absolutely LOVE IT!.. If you're making any money off your work (or plan to) then you can't beat unlimited storage, great prints, and them handling the credit card transactions. We've just been really please. You can try them for a free trial. We didn't even have to give them credit card info until after our trial was up.

[And now for the shame-less plug] - If you'd like to open an account with them, you can use my 'forresterstudios@gmail.com' as a referral code and get $5 off your subscription