I must confess, I am a pretty cheap dude. If I am not spending money on food, travel, or mandatory bills, I am pretty unlikely to go out and buy something – even if it could potentially help me with my business.
But the prices these days are dirt cheap, and I was able to get this 14 megapixel / 720p Canon for about $250 when you include the 8GB memory card. I’ll probably spend another $20 on a nice case and a cheap tripod, but if the old saying is true this point and click is by far the quickest way to create something worth a thousand words!
Cheap or too cheap?
On the one hand, it is obviously a good thing to not waste money: Especially if you’re in a situation like I was – trying to transfer from full time work to self-employment without too much of a safety net behind me. For about two years, I managed to keep the budget close to a grand a month, and that really doesn’t leave any room for gadgets or computer upgrades.
On the other hand though, sometimes you need to spend money to make money! Somehow, I managed to get this far blogging without even owning a digital camera. Talk about an easy source of content and posts that I was missing out on…
Putting the camera to work on the blogs
Now, this site is more likely to run on screen shots than camera shots, but I do also have a food-related and personal blog that are currently experiencing some of the heaviest posting rates I’ve ever done. They don’t make money on their own due to a lack of ads, but they do transfer some links back to these sites that are profitable. Now I can actually explain what it is I am cooking, how it is prepared, and what it looks like when it is finished! Who wants to take cooking advice when they can’t see the finished product?!
For the personal blog, this is an incredibly easy way to make online content out of my day to day life. I’ve already started posting some shots from the garden, and the next time I go on a trip I’ll have plenty of pictures and stories to fill up a whole new category of posts.
There is one thing I’m interested in trying out here with the camera: video. There’s been a lot of talk over the last few years about how great video is for SEO, and while I’m not a huge fan of online video content unless I’m watching music videos, I am eager to find out exactly how this type of content plays out in the search results and whether or not it seems to display a higher weight than other types of content.
Still though, all you really need to get started blogging is an idea and hosting! But a digital camera with high definition video definitely seems to help. These days, the quality is so high and the prices are so low, that it is really hard to pass up such a deal.
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