First steps with Arcadina: a must-have guide for photographers

If you are not yet familiar with the business solutions for photographers that we offer at Arcadina or if you are taking your first steps with us, it is important that you have a clear idea of what the first steps with Arcadina are like. Thanks to this guide you will have a much clearer vision of how far you can take your digital photography business and all the tools you will have at your fingertips. And there are so many options that we offer you right now in Arcadina that we thought it would be very interesting to develop a guide for photographers where we detail the first steps with Arcadina so you can easily set up your own online photography business.

Because, in case you didn’t know, with us you will be able to: create a professional photography website, offer your clients a private area where they will be able to manage their images, sell digital and printed photographs in your online shop, offer your clients the possibility to book their sessions and pay for them from the web, use AI to search for images and many more options that will help you to boost and develop your digital photography business as far as you can imagine.

Setting up your digital photography business has never been so easy thanks to this guide with the first steps with Arcadina.

First steps with Arcadina: get to know all the business solutions available to you

For the first steps with Arcadina to be the right ones, the first thing you have to do is to be aware of all the business solutions that you have at your disposal, because if you don’t know us well and think that we can only offer you a website, we have fantastic news for you and that is that Arcadina is much more than that. We are an all-in-one solution designed especially to improve and boost the digital business of photographers and for this we offer you the possibility of creating your own website in a simple way:

• Professional website: fully customisable, adapted to photography businesses, with the option to choose from 7 designs, activate a photography blog, etc.
• Private customer galleries: where your customers will be able to: buy, select, view, download their images and many more options.
• Public galleries: where you will be able to offer the sale of prints and digital files at any time and place in the world.
• Booking of sessions (Booking): where your visitors will be able to book one of your reports and pay the deposit directly from the website.

We could say that these are the 4 fundamental pillars of Arcadina, but the truth is that we offer you many more options to personalise your photography business as much as you want, such as: the WhatsApp Business instant messaging service, the possibility of using Artificial Intelligence to speed up the search for images for your clients in their galleries, the possibility of contracting email accounts and domains in a simple way, etc.

Do you know Arcadina’s technical support?

Once you are clear about all the options, the next step is to customise every element of your photography business. And to help you in this process, in addition to creating this guide for photographers with the first steps with Arcadina, in our help section you will find all kinds of articles answering the most common questions. Here is the first article you can take a look at.

>> Arcadina Help – Where do I start?

You can also consult the video tutorials that we have left for you on our YouTube channel. Also, if at any time you need our advice, you can contact us. We are available every day of the year at any time.

And for those of you who are already our customers, through the Management Panel you will be able to make any kind of query to the technical support team that works 365 days a year (weekends and holidays included).

Below we are going to share with you a video explaining the first steps with Arcadina.

Learn how to get around the management panel before you start building your digital business

One of the first steps you have to take with Arcadina and the first thing you have to familiarise yourself with is the management panel of your website. The panel is going to be your centre of operations and the place from where you are going to be able to create all your digital business. Through this internal part of your digital business is where you will be able to shape the different parts of your site: uploading content to the web and blog, offering your clients a private space from which to interact with their images, creating an online photo sales system and setting up a calendar for booking photo shoots (among others).

In addition, from the panel you will also be able to customise each element of your website through the different entries that you will find in the side menu, for example:

• Shop and customer area.
• Booking.
• Sale.
• Web.
• Blog.
• General.
• Adjustments.
• Design.
• Account.

We will now take a closer look at the first 5, which are directly related to the different business solutions that we offer at Arcadina.

Shop and customer area

From here you will be able to manage all the tasks corresponding to the customer galleries, such as: generate private galleries so that your customers can act with their photos, manage their orders, personalise your price list and the formats that you will have available for your customers, etc.

>> Increase your sales through customer image delivery

And you will also be able to carry out a series of actions related to your online shop, such as: creating different public galleries, controlling orders, payment methods, enabling, for example, the sale of images in different sizes and formats, defining discount codes, etc.

>> Strategies to sell my photos online without paying third party commissions

Booking

This section of Booking is very interesting because from here you will be able to configure all the campaigns and photo shoots you want to put on sale on your website, set booking prices, check the bookings you have planned for each week and keep a detailed control of your agenda.

>> How to get the most out of the Arcadina Booking Calendar?

Sale

As in your Arcadina website you can sell products and services from different sections: customer area, online shop and booking calendar, in your Management Panel you will find a Sales section where you will find a compilation of everything related to the sales of your business, such as: a summary of the latest sales, sales statistics for recent periods, list of customers, discounts, payment methods and settings.

Web

Through your photography website is where you will be able to manage all the content of your website such as image and video galleries, text or landing pages (hidden in the menu) introducing yourself, explaining your services, showing your rates or the latest awards you have won.

>> Increase your visibility on the Internet: create a profitable photography website

Blog

In this section of the blog, as well as being able to customise it completely, you will also be able to upload the latest articles that will help you to improve your positioning on the Internet and you will also be able to create categories to differentiate your topics.

>> We are launching Arcadina’s new blog!

As we mentioned before, in your panel you will also find a series of sections such as General, Settings, Design and Account where you will be able to choose the designs of the website, blog, galleries or menu, select colours, fonts, covers, watermarks, choose the menu entries, configure a series of pages, such as contact, opinions, personalise forms, etc.

And these are just some of the most relevant options that you can manage in each section from your management panel, but the truth is that there are many more.

Create your digital photography business in just 5 easy steps

When defining your digital business you will be able to give shape to a series of sections that, on the one hand, will provide all the information potential clients need, and on the other, you will be able to do business through Booking’s booking calendar, the client area and the public galleries. Let’s take a look at some of the options available to you.

1# Websites for professional photographers

Your photography website will be like your photographic studio but with the advantage that it will be open 24 hours a day. With Arcadina you will be able to have an elegant website with personality that will also be very easy to manage thanks to the content editor that is so easy to use and that will offer you all kinds of options.

Some of the first things you can do when creating your photography website are: choose the different designs, create galleries with the best images of your photo shoots, introduce yourself and offer your visitors all the information they need to know about your services, explain how you work and what really differentiates you from other photographers.

It is also very important that you personalise your contact page with all the information and with a form adapted to your services so that interested people can contact you.

In the following help article we detail these and other steps.

>> Arcadina Help: First steps to create your website

2# Private galleries for your customers’ convenience

The customer galleries, or what is the same, the private customer area, will be another of the pillars of your business, because we know that your customers increasingly demand an online service where they can place their orders at any time and from any corner of the planet. This possibility, along with many others, is offered by your private customer area.

Through your galleries you will be able to offer your customers the possibility to:

• View images of their reports.
• Select the photos you like the most to make a photo album.
• Download the selected photographs from the comfort of your own home.
• Buy extra photographs, enlargements, prints or even offer the possibility to buy a complete gallery with digital download.
• To be able to share the download link with your guests or, for example, with the participants of an event in a convenient and easy way.
• Etc.

See all the options in this help article.

>> Arcadina Help: First steps. Customer area

3# Public sales galleries to sell even more

Adding an online shop to your business strategy will bring you a series of passive income with little effort thanks to the sale of printed and digital photographs through your website. This way, when you cover a large event, for example, a sports race, and the participants or even the attendees want to have a photo as a souvenir, they will be able to buy it from your website without having to contact you. They will only have to choose the image, the format and pay. It’s as simple as that.

And now you will also be able to activate AI in any public or private gallery to make your customers’ image selection much faster.

>> Did you know that you can now search for images by selfie? Find out about this new AI feature

And if in addition to your photo shoots you take pictures for decoration, artistic or of the best corners of your city, more than one visitor will end up buying one of your images if you offer them for sale in your public galleries.

When it comes to setting up your online shop, you can follow this article of our help where we explain the first steps with it.

>> Arcadina Help: First steps. Online shop

4# Booking sessions directly from your website via a booking calendar

This is another service that, if you know how to make the most of it, can become one of the main pillars of your digital business. This is the Booking booking service where your clients and visitors to the website will be able to book the day and time of one of your photo shoots without having to come to your studio or talk to you on the phone.

As well as being able to keep track of your booking calendar thanks to the built-in calendar, you will also be able to manage the payments made by clients for each photo shoot, contact them from the panel and have much more time available thanks to the automatic sale of your photo shoots.

In our help you will find all the steps to set up this interesting business option.

>> Arcadina Help: First steps to activate Booking

5# Integrated photo blog for more visibility on the Internet

Another of the first steps with Arcadina that you can take and that you should not neglect is the creation of a photography blog. Thanks to this section is how you will really get a good visibility on the Internet if you dedicate a little time to write quality articles.

One of the features that our clients like most about this part of their business, in addition to the fact that its design is fully integrated with the rest of the website, is that they can include full-screen photographs and small image galleries. Undoubtedly, a great point in their favour when it comes to attracting new visitors to their websites through the blog.

In addition, if you have several styles of photography on the website, you will be able to create different categories also within the blog to sort all the articles much better. In the following help article we explain how to start shaping this section of your business.

>> Arcadina Help: First steps. Blog

Need more business solutions? Take a look at Arcadina’s integrations

In this guide for photographers, besides being able to know in depth all the tools that can become a pillar in your digital business, we also want to make space for the most important Arcadina integrations that make your photography website a rounded business.

Arcadina integrations

• Artificial Intelligence: your customers will be able to search for their images in the galleries of your business area much faster thanks to this option in which they will be able to search by text (for example, the bib number) or image where they can also choose the option to search for photos by comparing a selfie they can take at the moment or by uploading a file.

• WhatsApp Business: thanks to this integration your visitors will be able to contact you through this communication channel that works so well through the icon that will appear on all the pages of your website. And you, through the panel, will be able to send all kinds of WhatsApp messages to notify your customers of any important information.

>> How can you get the most out of WhatsApp Business?

• Connection with Lightroom: the vast majority of photographers run their photos through Lightroom, so you can connect your website to Lightroom through your web panel to export and manage the photos of each session.

• Instagram galleries: we know that the social network most used by photographers is Instagram and that is why we have added the option to create a gallery where all the photos you publish on this network are displayed.

These are just 4 of the integrations that you can use in Arcadina, but the truth is that there are many more: connection with Google Analytics, integration with social networks, SSL security, YouTube and Vimeo videos in your galleries, etc.

You can now take your first steps with Arcadina and make a living from what you really like

As you can see, taking the first steps with Arcadina is very easy, you just have to spend a few minutes reading some of the articles in our help, and for that, this guide for photographers can be a good start. The important thing is that you don’t leave for later the possibility of improving or creating your digital photography business because it is the future of your career as a professional photographer.

At Arcadina you can contract the business solution you are most interested in independently. In addition, we make life very easy for you and therefore, if you have already contracted a website with another provider, with us you will be able to manage your private and public galleries or the other way around.

This time we are going to share with you the testimony of a great photographer and friend who has been with us for years. She is Maru Serra.

>> “The best option for photographers who want to move forward”, Maru Serra

And to finish this guide for photographers, let’s ask a question: What do you find most difficult to configure on your Arcadina website? We’ll read you in the comments.

Arcadina goes with you

Fulfil your dreams and develop your career with us. We offer you to try our web service free for 14 days. And with no commitment of permanence.

Arcadina is much more than a website, it is business solutions for photographers.

If you have any queries, our Customer Service Team is always ready to help you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We listen to you.