Today I was calling make-up artists for a photo shoot. And, of course, I didn’t start with a google search- I called a photographer I knew well and asked her who I should call. She gave me three names, and one of the artists told be about the forth. Good thing I called my friend, because none of the three she told me about had a website.

Each time, I asked, do you have a site that I can look at your work-  each of them gave me an excuse. None of them would would think of working without a phone, but all of them seem to think a site won’t help them. Only one of the three site-less ones had a digital file ready to e-mail, a nice little quicktime movie that showed some of his work. The other two- nothing.

Make-up artists are the ultimate cottage industry. You don’t hire a “Make-up artist company (at least not in the Midwest), they are all self-employed, sole proprietors, in a very visual business. Hence, a website would come in handy. Especially in the Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus Ohio market, where there is a small community of make-up artists- and quite a few photographers.
While the cost of producing a good looking website used to be thousands of dollars, it doesn’t have to be that way anymore thanks to WordPress and the Websitetology seminar. For $79 you get a full day of training, and we then offer a registration, hosting and WordPress installation package for a price of less than the cost of hosting alone from some hosting companies.

The fourth make-up artist had a site. It wasn’t amazing, but it did come up first in Google when I typed her name. It had samples of her work, a list of clients, and contact information. While the other three told me things like “a website won’t get me business, it’s all word of mouth”- the one with the site told me it gets her work all over the country, at much higher rates than what she can charge locally.

These days, it doesn’t matter how small you are, a website is critical for every business. We even did a site for a disabled, retired man who launches white birds at weddings and funerals- and he doesn’t have a computer or internet access, but he’s getting customers from it.

If you are reading this- because you needed a make-up artist in Dayton, Cincinnati or Columbus- I’m sorry. That’s one of the problems with Google searches. But if you give us a call- we’ll tell you who we ended up using.