I would not suggest a web site yet, more important things to do when you can have a free page on Facebook that will build followers a lot faster than a web site. But getting the domain is essential for your email account before even setting up your business license. I have 27 active domains with Godaddy.com. <br>
Do you have a specialty or target audience? If they are young, instagram is essential, if a wider age group of 20s up, Facebook is effective. If you are on Instagram you will reach a lot more people if you upload a new image/meme daily. The highest paid photographers in the world are not even photographers so consider creating a YouTube Channel about your specialty if you have an engaging personality.
There are a number of people with limited photographic skills who receive several million dollars a year in ad revenue directly from YT plus a lot directly from manufacturers to push a brand or put down another. Your ad revenue is based on views and how long people stay on the channel and the economic bracket of the viewers so products advertising that is directed to adults in upper middle class or higher brackets can earn a lot more per viewer than say a teen with a Try on Haul site that has 3 million views.<br>Every minute spent developing your on-line presence is more important to your income than every minute of your photography. Keep your costs down by avoiding expensive bodies and lenses, a Z6 is more than enough for any commercial work you are likely to get. A compatible back camera will be insurance. Your post processing skills or arrangememt with a like minded editor who is a master in PS could be a better use of your time if not very skilled in post processing when you start. <br>
Try to keep the domain name as short as possible, which is possible with one of the second tier top level domains, .com is assumed by users, while .biz or .photo. Start searching now, really, in the next 5 minutes. There are over 1500 top level domains and a number of them related specifically to photography, pictures or images so a lot of choices exist if nothing works in ,com for your prefered name. Do not allow a hosting company to control your domain, register it yourself, I use Godaddy.com and it is simple to manage your own domain. If you collect any user info or have any hackable data on your server, get a hosting account that includes free SSL certificate which saves you $50 a year or more. I have one VPS, Virtual Private Server on inmotionhosting.com where I have a number of web sites and have had very good luck with them after a number of serious problems with hosting companies that merged or went out of business and I lost lot of data.
A VPS is just like having your own server which you can add as many sites and email services or databases as you want. It is shared by 3 other counts, but each completely separated and their own operating system for each. I also have a my own server in a data center which is overkill. Renting rack space for your own server is not very cost effective. Once things get going you can think about a web site. The most popular way to have an updatable no-code site is using Wordpress that is the foundation of about 30% of all web sites. There thousands of templates available to make the site look professional without coding. Wordpress is a one button install on Inmotionhosting.com but other hosts have that function as well. I prefer to code my own because it can be a lot lighter in server load and so faster opening new pages which gives some advantage in Google ranking. Google in not as important as it was 15 years ago. Your sales can be entered there in your shopping cart application that is also free plugin for Wordpress, but your site is not going to generate many organic sales anymore. After seeing your work on instagram or FB, or chatting with you on Whatsapp, they will complete the booking on the web site. Buyer trends have been away from sales decisions on web sites have changed a lot over the last twenty years.<br>
<br>Before even thinking about your business you really need to think about your customers, who are they, how do they respond, what is their price range sensitivity, why they are not being served now, why you have an advantage that they are interested in....you can be better or have cooler services but that does not matter, only their perception of your advantages matter which is why social media is so effective for interacting with the target audience. Your only value is what your customers value your service for. And unless you have a known audience, where you know real clients and their needs or perceived needs. Who is the competition and what advantages and disadvantages do they have, What is the size of the current demand for the service, and how can you influence the scale of demand? How narrow of a niche can your focus on and still make a living. A generalist is usually very inefficient but a narrow range specialist can build a client base faster with less work.
Don't have too many options on your web site, specialize and if you have another specialty, create another web site so the site is targeting that specialty. For example if you do weddings, only promote wedding photo services but your business head shot business clients should have a web site devoted to that specialty. Your real estate work should be on its own web site.<br>Set a goal of becoming an expert in the customer preferences of the market you focus on, go talk to them,interview people to see what they really want instead of starting a business of a service hoping that you guessed right on the market. Don't just ask friends, ask strangers, which is effective with social media.
Do not mix a profile for your self and your business on social media because anything you post or your friends post can trigger someone in the hyper sensitive extreme division society you are in now. If over the last few years you have made just 4 statements of preference or lack of whatever, each one of those statements is likely to turn off 1/4 of the the population. If you posted you hate peanut butter, someone in your inner circle is going to reject you over it but when talking about a potential market in the millions turning off a few hundred thousand by such an innocuous post. <br>Good luck and start with the domain search and your market research now before even designing your business goals.