It is some time since I decided, that I will create some kind of online �self promotion� photo/graphic portfolio website for myself� but I always delayed and delayed it, thinking that I will create it at some other time. But these days when I read here at MSG about self-promotion by personal website and things like that, it gave me some initial impulse to try it also myself.

So finally I started to play with it little bit. It is far from finished � I like to do web on the fly with some vision, but with will to change things, if some new ideas came to my mind through natural development / thinking process.

I created it keeping in mind these main aims / ideas of "promotional" personal website.

1. Common / typical aim why would one want to have a personal website. I think there is no need for explanation.

2. Possible promotion of my own photo/graphic portfolio to catch some buyers for my images. I.e. Boost of own sales. But because I am just an amateur / hobbist photographer (and I must say, I like it this way and do it for fun mostly!  ), I know that my photos will hardly attract many buyers / visitors.

3. But in case of unsuccessful attracting of buyers for my photos, there is still a chance to indirectly catch some (new) buyers through referral. I.e. they could not be willing to buy my own images, but when being attracted by keywords and stuff on my website, they still can end as a possible stock buyers.
And same concept applies for new possible contributors.

So for now I created these "promotional" sections of my website:
Catalogue listings:

Listing of my photos:
http://www.jareso.com/photo_catalogue.php?type=stockphotos&pg=5

Listing of my Stock Graphics:
http://www.jareso.com/graphic_catalogue.php?type=stockgraphics&pg=1

Also listing of my 3D Models if you want to take a look:
http://www.jareso.com/3dmodel_catalogue.php?type=lowpoly&pg=1

Not all of my stock photos / graphics are listed there for now. I placed there just some (80) to see how it will work. When I will have more time I will probably add more. It is really slow process of adding those photos (because there is need to use my own previews generated from my original files) + filling info / data manually to my db one by one. There is no easy way how to automate this process, filenames of my photos on my backup external HDD where I store my photos, don�t correspond to names on agencies, etc. ... also ID for referral link construction is needed for every image. There is no simple way how to do this in batch. Only to manually locate those images, one by one visualy by sight and filling what is needed ... and this is really, really slow.
But I am lucky that I have just few hundreds of photos online.
(I don�t want to imagine how it would be if I had thousands and thousands of photos, like some other people here.)

So caching data is slow� Maybe you ask yourself, whether it cannot be powered by some API, such as DT API for example, to simplify things ...
No, cannot (in most cases). Dreamtime API is great piece of thing that is no doubt, but legally it is just too restrictive, to be used on a personal website. Because websites powered by DT API need to be exclusively bound to promote only DT (with only just a few exceptions such as Pixmac) and thus that is something that would be just too restrictive on personal website. Logically, I on my personal website want to have a freedom to mention also other places and agencies where I sell my stuff, although DT is no doubt my favorite agency.
Also not all of my photos are accepted by DT� and also I don�t sell my graphics there...

So back to project, I created also bigger preview pages. Just for photos and graphics for now.
(For 3D models maybe later�)

Example of larger preview page in case of stock graphic
http://www.jareso.com/graphic.php?img_id=10

Example of larger preview page in case of stock photos
http://www.jareso.com/image.php?img_id=55

I decided that in case of stock photos I will link all possible buyers to the DT. With a few exceptions in the case of photos that were refused by DT, but were accepted somewhere else. DT is by all means my favorite agency as I said + they also have a great referral program so choice is easy here.

But I don�t sell my graphics at them, so in case of my stock graphics I will link to YAYMicro and maybe also to GraphicLeftovers.

So that�s what I wanted. Just to share ...
Any comments, whether negative or positive are welcome of course.

Great job Boris! Hope it is a big success for you

I've been thinking about my own web site but never did it for the same reason you mentioned: filling data manually is very slow. Maybe "exiftool" - run in batch mode from the command line - could extract iptc and automate some passages to fill the database, but it requires some programming: not difficult probably, but it takes a lot of time to start up and I never found the time to actually try.

Nah, you just have to find the right tool. Totally automatic included IPTC extraction, no dabase and SEO-optimized:
http://flemishdreams.com/portfolio/

I was wondering if you were going to come in and help out Flemish

I'm not much inclined to help folks in my ignore list, especially if they might become competitors. Of course, I had a look at the code already. No danger   For now, I'm just looking very hard at my shared dropbox.