Erin Ollila spent years comparing wedding photographers before her own wedding, and she still remembers ruling one out. Everyone in her area loved them. She looked at their website and thought she would probably get in trouble if she did not smile correctly.
In this episode, Ina sits down with conversion copywriter Erin Ollila to talk about pet photography website copy, and why beautiful images are not doing the selling most photographers assume they are. Erin writes websites for service-based businesses and pairs SEO with conversion, and her position is blunt: your site is not a portfolio, it is your marketing team, your sales team and your education team. They get into what is actually missing from most photography websites, whether to put your prices up, how to ask for a testimonial without feeling like a nuisance, and where AI genuinely helps your copy and where it makes you sound like everyone else.
What We Cover
- Why your website is not a portfolio, and the three jobs it should be doing instead
- The answer for anyone thinking "but my photos are better than a beginner's", and why that stops mattering the moment you are compared with another good photographer
- The most common copy mistake on photography websites, over-explaining what is included and under-explaining why you and what happens next
- What Erin found when she researched one local photography market: the site ranking far above the rest was the one with the most of the photographer in it
- Why the line items should be negligible, and what people are actually choosing between
- Confidence has four layers and only one of them is your camera skill
- The honest read on the word "luxury", and the rule if you are going to use it
- Why it is fine to be exclusive, and how repelling opens the door wider for the people you want
- Pain points do not work in photography. Desires do. Erin explains the difference using her own wedding
- The distinction worth the whole episode: you can repel someone without turning them off, and reminding a client their pet has an expiration date is turning them off
- Should you put pricing on your website: why Erin says no detailed menu but yes to pricing clues, and how to set a range that actually means something
- What happens to the client experience when someone books at a price they were not expecting, and why you start from below zero
- A more creative approach to case studies: the client spotlight, and how it does the selling and the SEO at once
- How to ask for testimonials when you feel like you are bothering people, and why the real problem is that clients do not know what to say
- Using AI for your copy without sounding like everyone else, and the work almost nobody wants to do first
- The third option between DIY and done for you that most people do not know exists
One thing to try this week
Look at your website like someone deciding between you and one other photographer whose work is just as good. Not a beginner. Someone genuinely good. If the only difference a reader could name is the number of images included, the words are not doing their job yet.
About Erin
Erin Ollila is a conversion copywriter and SEO specialist who writes websites for service-based businesses. She studied fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction before moving into content marketing in the early 2010s, writing for very large brands, then moved into website copy when she started her own business and found herself surrounded by skilled people who did not know how to write about what they did. She hosts the Talk Copy to Me podcast. Ina put a call out on Threads looking for a copywriter and Erin came recommended by Colie James.
Connect with Erin
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