It's the Fall of 2026 -- if you're a creative professional, do you still need a web site?
That's a question I get a lot lately -- so that's one of the issues I debated on Episode 560 of the Marketing Mentor Podcast, with my guest, Alex Vita of ForegroundWeb, a designer specializing in web sites for photographers.
Boy, did we cover a lot of ground in our conversation – from whether creative pros need a web site, to the state of the photography industry in 2026, to what I really wanted to talk about: how Alex gets himself on podcasts (and where podcast guesting fits into Alex’s marketing strategy.)
We even put his pitch email to me under a microscope so he could hear from the market, as it were.
BTW, I don’t often respond to guest pitches for the Marketing Mentor Podcast. Not because I have anything against people pitching themselves – far from it. (And that would be weird for a marketer, right?)
It’s just that I have no trouble finding guests. So in essence, I’m not “in the market.”
Plus most people who pitch me haven’t done their homework and it shows.
However, I do make an exception from time to time and I did for Alex because he is the perfect guest for the Marketing Mentor Podcast – someone who is practicing what I preach – without even knowing it.
Yup! He’s doing The Simplest Marketing Plan – that is, using content marketing, outreach and networking – to grow his business – and, according to Alex himself, it’s working.I’m sure you’ll enjoy Alex…so listen here and below (and scroll down for the transcript)
If you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
And If you want my help figuring all of this out, take advantage of my free mentoring session.
Read the full transcript here:
ilise: Hi there. This is ilise Benun, your marketing mentor, and this is the podcast for you if — and only if — you're ready to leave the feast-or-famine syndrome behind. And I mean for good.
ilise: I don't often respond to guest pitches for this podcast — not because I have anything against people pitching themselves, far from it, that would be weird. It's just that I have no trouble finding guests, so I'm not really in the market. Plus, most people who pitch me haven't done their homework, and it shows. However, I do make an exception from time to time, and I'm really glad I did this time, because in today's episode I'm talking to web designer Alex Vita.
ilise: We covered a lot of ground in this conversation — from the state of the photography industry in 2026, to whether creative pros still need a website, to what I really wanted to talk about: how Alex gets himself on podcasts, and where podcast guesting fits into his marketing strategy. We even put his pitch to me under a microscope so he could hear from the market, as it were.
ilise: I made an exception because Alex is the perfect guest for the Marketing Mentor podcast. He's someone who's practicing what I preach without even knowing it — he's doing the Simplest Marketing Plan, using content marketing, outreach, and networking to grow his business, and according to Alex, it's working. I'm sure you'll enjoy him. So listen and learn.
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ilise: Alright, Alex, welcome to the podcast.
Alex Vita: Hi, ilise, I'm honored and happy to talk to you.
ilise: Thank you, me too. As usual, I'll ask you to begin by introducing yourself.
Alex Vita: I'm Alex Vita. I'm first and foremost a father, and kind of a young entrepreneur — my career is working with photographers worldwide, and I've been doing that for almost two decades.
ilise: And when you say young, how young are you?
Alex Vita: I'm 40.
ilise: Okay, good — congratulations.
Alex Vita: Thank you.
ilise: And when you say working with photographers, what do you mean exactly?
Alex Vita: Good question. I started out by building a website for myself, because right out of college I didn't want a comfy office job in computer science, which is what I studied. I wanted to be a photographer. I struggled to do that for a few years — had my own home studio, tried travel and street photography, shot a few weddings. My work got noticed by another photographer, out of the blue, from New Caledonia of all places, and that led to referrals, and it snowballed from there. Ever since, I've been building websites for photographers, along with a few related services around their online presence and marketing.
ilise: So when you say your work got noticed by this photographer in New Caledonia — not your photography work, but your website?
Alex Vita: Yes. I think my website got noticed because I put a year into making it, out of procrastination — you know how it is when you work on your own stuff. I don't know exactly through what channel, since I wasn't active on social media, but it got noticed, and they needed a website. I'd say it was mostly luck.
ilise: Was there anything special about the website you'd spent that year procrastinating on?
Alex Vita: I guess good design — I felt I had a good design sense back then — and good content structure. I know that sounds nerdy, but laying out my services neatly and organized, highlighting the benefits, doing solid copywriting — that's what I put the time into. I'd also spend a lot of time looking at other websites for inspiration, trying to see what I could come up with.
ilise: So you dropped photography and started designing websites for photographers. We call that "listening to the market" in the Simplest Marketing Plan world — when someone asks you for something and you say, sure, why not, and that becomes your business. That's what happened to me too, a long time ago. So listening to the market means putting food on the table.
Alex Vita: Indeed it does.
ilise: How long ago was this?
Alex Vita: Nineteen years ago.
ilise: Excellent. Let's talk about the current photography market first, because I work with photographers, copywriters, designers, other marketers — each of those markets is a little different, even though I lump them all under "creative professionals." What's your sense of the photography market? Who's getting work, who's having trouble getting work — can you tell?
Alex Vita: I do see some changes in the industry, but I'll preface this by saying I work mostly with B2C photographers — wedding photographers, family headshots, that sort of thing. I've had commercial photographers as clients too, but usually as a side specialty next to family work. That skews how I see the industry a bit, since most of my clients rely heavily on local demand and need visibility for local services.
Alex Vita: But to your question — two big trends I see are market saturation and AI, happening simultaneously and feeding into each other. Saturation is basically market commoditization: lower-level photographers are struggling both in the quality of their work and in how they present themselves online — the websites, the online presence. Many have the same portfolios, the same templates, the same shallow copywriting — you've seen it, "capturing your moments" as the hero-section headline, that sort of thing. They all look the same, clients can't tell them apart, so price becomes the only visible difference. They're struggling with that — Seth Godin's "race to the bottom" comes out of it. And now AI is eating into all this mediocre, interchangeable work, so they're not getting traffic or inquiries anymore.
Alex Vita: Photographers have this insatiable obsession with SEO, which sometimes drives me a little nuts — they'll send me screenshots from their Google Analytics reports, worried because the numbers are dropping, and I see that across the industry. But when I look at their actual website, I see immediate problems in image selection, copywriting, and positioning. SEO isn't really their problem, but it's this fixation on SEO — and now AI is hurting that too, so they're just not getting the traffic they used to. There's a lot of crying and shouting and desperation out there, honestly.
ilise: And just to be clear — it's not that AI is producing the photography itself and that's the problem. It's the AI search results, and the fact that Google, for example, isn't returning a list of photographers anymore when people type in "wedding photographer."
Alex Vita: It's both, actually. It's affecting content — photographers who used to rely on their blogs, with hundreds of posts covering things like wedding archives or educational content, "what to wear for your photoshoot" — that's been completely swallowed by AI now. But there are also photography niches that get affected by AI more directly, depending on what they do. Anything involving documenting an actual event — weddings, family photography, newborn photography — still needs a human photographer to hire, at least so far.
ilise: Correct.
Alex Vita: But there are specialties without that same safety net — product photography, even headshot photography. I've heard from several headshot photographers whose clients simply upload an iPhone selfie and get really good AI-generated results now — the glare and glimmer in the eye is right, not just the old six-finger mistakes. It's excellent now. They're struggling, they're worried — there's a real sense of doom for some photographers. There are solutions, ways out of it, but it's hard — they need to reposition, niche down, move up the value chain, and that's difficult when some of them have been doing the same thing for decades.
ilise: Yeah, and I think a lot of this applies to commercial photography, copywriting, design — all of the above. That's why I was curious about your take on the photography market specifically, but I think it generalizes.
Alex Vita: Probably, in the B2C space especially. It depends on the service — if you need to document a conference, you still need to be there in person. But for creative design, people now go to Claude Design to generate mockups instead.
ilise: That actually raises a question I get asked a lot — do we still need websites?
Alex Vita: Yes — it depends, but mostly yes, because you still need to exist somewhere online as a portfolio. Your reputation, your positioning, still needs to live somewhere. Social media works for credibility, but even your online business card needs to be in a place you actually own — an asset you control.
ilise: What's the alternative — an Instagram profile, LinkedIn?
Alex Vita: Right, but you still don't control those. Social media platforms come and go, they go out of fashion, they start monetizing and adding ads — you can't control them, and you can't showcase your work exactly the way you want. A stellar online portfolio beats a LinkedIn profile. So I'd say you still need it. It depends how far you want to push it — a website can do more if it needs to be the vehicle for email marketing, or selling workshops, community access, or courses. You still need a website for that.
ilise: This is all great preamble, but the reason we're talking today is because you pitched me, right?
Alex Vita: Yeah, I did.
ilise: You pitched me to be on the podcast. For those listening — I don't respond to most pitches, because I know who I want to talk to, and I recognize it when I hear it, talking to people who basically practice what I preach. Someone told me I should pay attention to you, so I paid attention to the person who said that. We had a short conversation, and it was clear you were practicing what I preach — so that qualified you to be on the podcast. Thank you so much for being here.
Alex Vita: So I'm a good case study now — what saved me from your spam folder? Was it basically a bit of reputation from my friend's recommendation?
ilise: That definitely made me look closer. But before I answer, let me put a question back to you, just to know more about your marketing strategy — where pitching podcasts fits into that. Let's start with the bigger question: how do you market your services as a web designer for photographers?
Alex Vita: It's a mix — content marketing, email marketing, relationships, and outreach. I think I told you the story of how I started, and my business grew from referrals — my work got noticed among photographer friends, and it grew from there. Then it got noticed by a photography-website platform, and I became one of their certified consultants, so they sent me clients over time. Once I reached a certain stage, I started using content marketing and email marketing to keep my business steady, or growing.
ilise: Let me stop you there, because what you're describing — and the reason I say you practice what I preach — is the Simplest Marketing Plan, whether you know it or not: content marketing, email marketing, and networking, which is probably in there too, even if you don't recognize it as such.
Alex Vita: Correct. It's a newer avenue for me, though, for psychological or emotional reasons — it's harder for me because I'm more of an introvert. A conversation like this takes more energy out of me — however honored and appreciative I am to be having it, I do love it, but it drains me. It's easier for me to hide behind the keyboard and write.
ilise: But you're like most of my listeners — and here you are.
Alex Vita: Exactly. I need to push myself out of my comfort zone, and once this interview is over I'll be extremely happy I did it. Not for lead generation — that's not the goal here. It's for having an interesting conversation about the industry, not SEO tags and all that — which is networking, basically, what we're doing right now.
ilise: Yeah, I'd say so. And I've been on other podcasts over the years, and however much energy it costs me to reach out, it's worth it — it helps my reputation, helps me learn more about the industry, builds relationships — even before I get any photographers working with me out of it.
ilise: It sounds like you have a long-term view — building relationships, having productive conversations, sharing what you know, without going into every conversation asking "what am I going to get out of this, who's going to listen, when are they going to call me." Where did that attitude come from? It's rare.
Alex Vita: I guess salesy marketing always felt icky to me — I never wanted to be pushy or salesy, which is good in a sense, but it's also held me back. It depends what you're optimizing for — if you only optimize for income, you become aggressive and obnoxious and salesy, and I didn't want that. I wanted to optimize for comfort, my own lifestyle, what feels good to me. That's why social media isn't one of my preferred channels, given how it's shaping up — same with outreach. I'd say staying in my comfort zone has added years to my business timeline — I could probably have grown faster if I'd had the courage, and I underline "courage," to reach out more, have more conversations, do the harder work instead of hiding behind the keyboard. It's very psychological and emotional for me — it's my own journey, going to therapy for a few years and working through my own social anxieties, which unlocked this kind of outreach for me.
ilise: You're saying all the right things, Alex — we've never spoken before, but you're singing my song. And it sounds like it's working. Would you say it's working?
Alex Vita: I would, yeah — I think so. All the marketing channels I've chosen to spend time on are going well for me. They're a good fit. I don't have to do social media reels, because I hate it — I don't like the "Gary Vee approach" to life, so I won't do it. I like writing, I like conversations like this — however energy-draining they are — and one-on-one chats with photographers to give them clarity. So yeah, it's going well.
ilise: Nice. Let's get more granular about your marketing tools. You said you don't like social media — to be clear, does that mean you're not on it at all?
Alex Vita: No, I am on social media, but I do the minimum — I don't record video or do that influencer-reel type of stuff, I'd hate it. I write educational posts, and I save time by repurposing long-form content. I feel I write much better, more substantial instructional articles on my website, and then I repurpose them for my newsletter and social posts. More recently I use AI to help with that too — converting an article into a LinkedIn carousel, for instance, to make it more visual. I'm outsourcing a bit of that just to feed the social media hamster wheel, to exist there, because I think it helps somewhat — but that's it for social media.
ilise: And content marketing you mentioned too — to me, social media is just a medium for delivering content, I connect the two.
Alex Vita: Correct, I agree. By content marketing I mostly meant the articles on my website — I have 19 years of articles, some 10,000-word deep guides on various topics. And my biggest business asset, I'd say, is my email list. It's not social media, in that I own the list — I have those one-to-one relationships with the photographers on it, unlike social feeds, which are rented, not owned. I email once a week with website tips, going deep on a topic, showing examples of photography websites and what they're doing well or poorly. It's the closest thing I have to that relationship-building — meeting people and staying in touch — at scale. I can't scale one-to-one conversations with photographers, aside from doing consulting calls, but the newsletter still feels like a one-to-one conversation with each reader, and it's working well as a business driver. I've gotten many photography clients who, on the intake form, when asked how they heard about me, say "I've been on your newsletter for years, I know I can trust you" — they already arrive certain they'll work with me. That's the value in the list, however small it is — it's not a volume game.
ilise: I want to emphasize a few things there. You obviously don't know the Simplest Marketing Plan by name, but you know it in practice — I always say, if you do nothing else, do an email newsletter, for exactly the reason you're describing. It's not about quantity — you don't need thousands of people on your list. You need the best, most qualified people you can build a relationship with — whether they respond to you or not, you're building a relationship, and more importantly, building trust. And then you get what I call "newsletter magic" — when someone who's been on your list for years, someone you had no idea was even paying attention, responds to one of your messages and says, "alright, I'm ready."
Alex Vita: Exactly, it is magic — that's the right word. A few years ago I tried developing a written course on my website, and as I developed the lessons, I asked a subset of my list — the ones I'd segmented as true fans, readers of every edition — and almost all of them were willing to help check facts and arguments in the lessons, because they trusted me. We had that one-to-one connection.
ilise: Okay, let's get to podcast guesting, because to me that's also about content. What I say is that podcasting — whether it's your own podcast or someone else's — is the nexus of all three tools in the Simplest Marketing Plan. It's a networking opportunity, obviously. It's outreach, because you have to pitch yourself to someone, or if you host the podcast, you reach out and ask someone to be on your show — that's outreach. And it's content marketing, because the byproduct is actual content you can reuse in many ways. To me, it's the best possible marketing tool. So tell me about your podcast guesting strategy — how long have you been doing it, how many podcasts have you been on, how do you pitch? And maybe I'll even read the pitch you sent me — but tell us the strategy first.
Alex Vita: I think I started maybe five or ten years ago, shyly at first — just looking online for shows that covered topics close to my niche, photography websites. I don't recall exactly how I first reached out, whether social or email, but it worked — it was easier than I'd feared, given all the possible fears people have around PR and outreach. Podcast hosts need quality content — if it's the right fit, they're interested. It worked out fine. I think I've been on around 15 podcast appearances so far, two or three times on some of them. I don't think I've ever had an episode where I could immediately track results — like, "the week after, I got ten inquiries." It was never that clean. I learned that after a few tries — I wouldn't say I was disappointed, but I did wonder why my inbox was still empty after such an inspiring episode. Then, three years down the line, someone says, "hey, I heard you on this podcast, I liked how you talked" — I realized it builds authority, not immediate leads, and works as a discovery source long after it airs.
ilise: Absolutely. In fact, I got a message just yesterday from a woman who'd heard me on someone else's podcast more than five years ago. It brought her to my own podcast, and she became a fan — this has been going on for a while, and I had no idea until she emailed me yesterday and told me the whole story. The thing I try to emphasize is: you have no idea what's happening out there. You can't assume that because you're not hearing anything, nothing is happening.
Alex Vita: Exactly. And in my world, photographers severely undervalue — or aren't even aware of — outreach and PR as a field at all. They don't even consider it sometimes, and I think that's a mistake.
ilise: Agreed. Alright, narrowing in on this topic — your pitch to me. I'd like to share it, if you don't mind, and I think you can correct me too, because the thing to realize, if a listener wants to pitch themselves as a podcast guest, is that we get so many pitches, I can't keep track of everything. But I think what happened was: you reached out to me on LinkedIn first — maybe you invited me to connect, maybe you added a note, I don't remember off the top of my head. I accept almost every connection request unless there's a reason not to, so I'm sure I said yes, though I probably didn't respond with a note, since I don't have time for that. Then you followed up with an email — here it is:
> "I'm Alex Vita from Foreground Web. Almost two decades doing websites and SEO exclusively for photographers, hundreds of projects, every working niche. Your recent 'Will AI Replace You' episode with Nancy hit a real nerve, but most of that conversation was about the work itself. The piece that's getting less airtime — and that's more practical for your listeners — is what AI is doing to the search side of a creative pro's website. AI overviews and ChatGPT-style answers are reshuffling how prospects find a designer, copywriter, or photographer in 2026. There are three or four concrete things a creative pro can change on their site this quarter that meaningfully change whether they're cited in those answers. I've been a guest on Photobiz X twice, This Week in Photo, Bryan Caporicci's show, B&H Photography, and a handful of others. Thanks for connecting on LinkedIn — bumping this back to the top while it's fresh. If the AI search angle isn't right for your audience right now, another fit that might resonate: why most creative pros' websites quietly underperform their pricing. Same audience, less topical, easy to slot into a slow week. If neither lands, no worries."
ilise: I don't know any of those shows, by the way — B&H I know as a store in New York. First reaction: it's not short, so I'd have to read or skim it — that's probably why you bolded certain parts about the actual substance, which matters more for my listeners than for me. You dropped some names, which is good practice, even though those names mean nothing to me personally — I'm sure they're credible, and it's still smart to drop names. It looks like this was a follow-up, since I apparently didn't respond the first time, though I don't remember that. And when you offer an alternative topic if I don't like the first one — did you follow up? I think you did.
Alex Vita: Yeah, I did.
ilise: Okay, good. And one other thing — obviously we're not talking about any of your suggested topics right now. I said yes to you because someone told me I should respond to you, said you're very generous when you're on podcasts, and I like generosity as a marketing trait. I wasn't really interested in your suggested topics at all — though we could debate SEO, I'd rather not — but I could tell you were practicing what I preach, and that came through in our short chat. Alright, I'm done — your turn, talk to me.
Alex Vita: Well, first — nice to see it under the magnifying glass. I did follow up because I didn't hear back the first time, and I thought of suggesting a different topic that might resonate more. I looked through podcasts that cover topics related to my work, and yours had a recent AI-related episode that fit, so I started there. I also sense — because my inbox is full of spam too, plus those one-line hook emails — that you don't know me, so why would you trust me? That's why I mentioned my experience, having been on other podcasts, just for a bit of credibility. However it sounded, it can probably be improved, but that was the whole idea.
ilise: Interesting. We probably need to wrap up soon, but maybe we'll do a part two, Alex, since you're clearly generous and fun to talk to. But I do want to know — what role did AI play, or does it play, in your podcast guesting strategy? Did AI help you write the pitch? Does it help you surface podcasts? Do you listen to podcasts before you pitch them? Whatever else you want to share.
Alex Vita: It helps me surface podcasts that would be a good fit, and single out one or two episodes on relevant topics, which I do listen to — just to get a sense of how the host and guests cover the topic, since I've seen the full range of takes, for or against websites, that kind of thing. And it helps with minor email corrections — fixing typos or awkward phrasing. Actually, hearing you read my pitch out loud, I'd probably switch some things back or make parts feel more friendly and human. That's pretty much it for how I use AI in outreach — I use it for other things in the business, but for this, that's it. It's mostly helping me find good-fit podcasts.
ilise: And if I hadn't responded to your follow-up, what would you have done? What's the rest of your strategy?
Alex Vita: I have a third email that's basically a breakup email — closing the loop, saying "I'm done, I won't bother you anymore, but if you're ever interested, I'm here, I'm open." Never more than that, because it starts to feel like too much.
ilise: How many of these podcast pitches do you send per month, and what percentage results in one of your 15 episodes?
Alex Vita: It's more like one a month — there aren't that many active podcasts.
ilise: That too, right?
Alex Vita: Right — and I know because my AI agent surfaced that a lot of good-fit podcasts have gone silent for two years. It's not a volume game — I want to find specific, good-fit shows. Otherwise there's no point.
ilise: Agreed — it's all about personalization. One thing I found interesting about yours is that usually when people personalize a pitch, it's just a reference to the episode title. Yours went a little deeper with the research, whether that was you, AI, or a combination.
Alex Vita: It is a combination. And yet — you still didn't reply to the first one, and the follow-up might not have worked either, if your friend hadn't told you it would be worth it. So I'd call this an almost-not-working strategy, but I'm definitely glad we're talking.
ilise: Well, as you said before — I want to emphasize for listeners — podcasters need really good guests, so there's a gap to fill there. I just happen to not need guest pitches, because I have plenty of people in my orbit with interesting things to say. Most podcasters, I think, do need that. By the way, off the top of my head, I'd say around half of my podcast appearances have been inbound — people reaching out because they'd seen my articles or heard me on a different podcast. It's not just me doing outreach.
Alex Vita: Right — content begets content.
ilise: That's a fact — there's often a snowball effect.
Alex Vita: Yeah, that's true. And with AI coming for every industry now, it basically helps with reputation — it's my name out there as a creative in my own niche. It helps my reputation, I'd say, that's it.
ilise: Well, and that's why this person told you to talk to him.
Alex Vita: Probably indirectly, yeah, that helps too, exactly.
ilise: So there's a lot we can't control, but a lot we can control if we have the courage. Actually, last question — you used the word "courage" earlier. I don't think you used the word "confidence" at all in this conversation, and that's the word so many people come to me with — "I don't have the confidence to do that." I always say it doesn't take confidence, it takes courage, believe me. So how do you think about those two words?
Alex Vita: Now that you point it out, I understand the nuance between them. Let's flip it — what's stopping people? Fear — fear of something, fear of success, fear of failure. I've seen that everywhere in my work, mostly with B2C photographers. What's stopping them isn't lack of information — that's abundant online — and it's not strategy, since they can get direction from me or from ChatGPT anytime. It's fear. It's about taking risks. Courage and confidence — I understand the nuance now, but it kind of feels like you need both. When I went through therapy and gained confidence in myself, it felt like a superpower — I could plow through tasks and projects that had been sitting in my list manager for years, things I'd avoided out of fear and procrastination. I got through a whole batch of them in a month. So confidence as a superpower is what I've experienced, and I think it's what many photographers are lacking.
ilise: So maybe the big lesson here is: therapy works.
Alex Vita: It does — I'd vouch for that too.
ilise: Alright, Alex, we do need to stop — I'm sure we'll do a part two — but tell people where they can find you online.
Alex Vita: My website is foregroundweb.com — F-O-R-E, Groundweb dot com. That's where I have all my content, services, and expertise for photographers. That's it.
ilise: And that's where they can also get on your newsletter list?
Alex Vita: I would love to be on your newsletter list too, if you can add me, please.
ilise: Okay, will do — I'm always looking for excellent examples of email newsletters, and I'm sure yours is one.
Alex Vita: I'd love any feedback once you've gotten one or two.
ilise: Happy to provide it. Alright, Alex, thank you so much for pitching to me.
Alex Vita: Happy to talk to you — it was a pleasure.
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ilise: The original idea was for Alex and me to debate AEO, GEO, and all those other new acronyms for what used to be SEO, but we never got around to it — and this was much more interesting, don't you think? I don't know if Alex would call himself a born marketer — he said many times he's an introvert — but he's clearly worked through his psychological obstacles, and now he's got the right attitude. He was quite literally singing my song, and we were very much in harmony — I think that was obvious.
ilise: I hope you learned a lot from this conversation. And if you want my help figuring all of this out, take advantage of my free mentoring session. You can find that, and lots more resources including the Simplest Marketing Plan, at marketing-mentor.com. Enjoy, and I'll see you next time.