Need to advertise website & set prices! What and How much?

Actually I have seen examples of getting the work by NOT justifying the price. Its called "precieved value", people love it.

I agree. I spoke to a very experienced pro friend a while back since I am also about to start charging for the first time - he said that in his experience the photographer is more often afraid of the prices than the client is.

OTOH, I like that you want to price fairly - that is real professionalism and of course as you deliver more you can charge more. Remember however that tastes vary as do incomes and what seems like a lot of money to one person is not to another, similarly what seems like a lot in one context to one person may seem cheap in another context to the same person.

After all my thinking on pricing I am going to price myself around the average for the market in my location. I'm not sure "cheap" is a word I want associated with me.

I like the look of your website. I am thinking of finally building a website and have been doing a little bit of research on how and what to do to build a website. I want to avoid learning html. Your website is one that stands out and looks great. I like to look an feel and the ease of navigation. Do you mind sharing what tools you used to create your site. I have been looking at Dreamweaver, but am a bit intimidated. Any ideas? I just want to get a decent website, other than smugmug that I have been using. It lacks a professional look. Would appreciate some pointers.

I created the table in photoshop using slices, and I wrote the rest of the html and all of the css by hand. I do most things manually (including my camera, and oftentimes my 580EX).

I don't believe in WYSIWYG editors because WYSI NOT ALWAYS WYG, plus they sometimes throw plenty of extra superfluous code in there. If you don't want to learn coding, you can use a program like dreamweaver or get a premade template. Microsoft frontpage is BAD BAD BAD.

Thanks for the compliment, it took me a very long time and plenty of revisions to actually design something both user friendly and somewhat size-appropriate for modern times, while allowing me to fit everything in.

Hi, I am very knew to photography, and have no interest in ever going pro, I also no nothing about building a website or anything like that, but just wanted to say that of all the links ive clicked on at potn your website is one of the cleanest, and most informative. I hope your endeavors go well!

Thanks! Keep shooting and you'll eventually get the urge to make money doing it!

It comes with the territory: You get good enough at something, then someone puts it in your head that you can make money doing it, and then things start happening, and you buy even more equipment you never thought you'd need before, and you keep getting more and more, and pretty soon you've got a whole set of lights, backgrounds, triggers and everything else you could need.