The Modern Tog

Take Your Photography From Passion to Profit

Everything You Need to Grow a
Successful Photography Business

Welcome Inspire Me Baby Readers!

Inspire Me Baby

I just wanted to extend a warm welcome to the readers visiting from Inspire Me Baby where I guest blogged about my photobooth setup.

My name is Jamie, and I’m a Madison, WI wedding photographer who loves to share what I know to help you grow your business. Spend some time poking around the site to find all the goodies – trust me, it’s worth it. If you’re interested, you can get to know me a little bit here.

If you’re really observant, you can also find me juggling somewhere on this site as well. Yes, I juggle. Kind of. It’s amusing.

Here’s a few of the “golden nuggets” I think you may find useful (besides the juggling act):

If you find this site useful, sign up for our email newsletter. We send it out whenever we post here or have a quick business tip to share and include the behind-the-scenes exclusive news that I feel like sharing about our community. It’s awesome – sign up now:

P.S. If you want bonus points, leave a comment below introducing yourself and sharing your hidden super-hero talent. We’ve all got at least one – so spill it. Super-duper “you’re awesome forever” points to the people who create their own juggling video (or attempt at juggling) and post a link to it below. I’ll even send you a free copy of the pricing guide workbook if you post your juggling video before midnight EST on Wednesday May 18th.

Is Your Photography Business a Magnet for Difficult Clients?

"Punch Me In the Face" Fridge Magnets
Photo Credit

You know the type of client I’m talking about.

The discount-demanding, “Could you just…”, never happy clients who sap the joy from your soul and make your business life miserable.

How you run your business may be attracting these clients to you like a vulture to roadkill.

Here’s 3 sure-fire ways to significantly reduce the number of difficult clients you work with.

 [Click to read more]

Does Your Photography Website Have a Twin and Not Know It?

twins
Photo Credit

The question is: Does your website have a twin and not know it?

The answer is: More than likely.

We’ll be getting a little technical here, but the concept is simple and it’s important to get resolved early on. It has to do with the little “www” that either appears or doesn’t appear when you look at the address bar when visiting your photography website.  It’s OK to have one or the other, but it’s not OK to have both.

We want to establish a “Canonical” website address, which is just a fancy way of saying a default website address so that one takes precedence over the other.

 [Click to read more]

How to Juggle a Photography Business, a Full-Time Job and a Family Without Dropping the Ball

Juggling
Photo Credit

It’s the photography industry’s dirty little secret. Most professional photographers are not making their living entirely from photography.

This is how most people start out, including myself. We’ve had a lot of people ask us about how we do it. We have three young children (one of which was born since starting the business) and until June when I leave to finally do this full-time, I am still working a job in the corporate world that takes up about 50 hours a week.

It certainly isn’t easy, and it takes lots of hard work and determination. However, it is possible to accomplish and there’s much joy in the process.

Here’s how we’ve managed to build our photography business to the point of replacing our entire household income in only a few years while working full-time and not neglecting our family.

 [Click to read more]

The Secret to Significantly Increasing Your Portrait Sales

Madison Family Portrait Photographer

I used to be a shoot-and-burn portrait photographer, but wow was that a mistake. I don’t even want to think about how much money I lost by doing things that way.

It made logical sense to me. I am mainly a wedding photographer, and I didn’t promote my portraits much at all because I simply didn’t have time for them or for placing print orders. People got their disk of images, an occasional 8×10, and it was quick and easy.

If someone had told me that I’d effectively triple my average portrait sale by taking the extra time to do in-person ordering sessions, I could have shot fewer portraits and still made more money in the same amount of time.

I’m not going to claim to be super-experienced in this because I’m not. I just changed to this method of sales this year. But the results so far have been ridiculously amazing. I had heard from other people that this was the case, but it was hard to fathom that I could have sales as high as they were saying. But the results are amazing.

Here’s what I did to drastically increase my average portrait sale.  [Click to read more]

Top 10 Must-Read Blogs for Photographers

#blogs4togs

When I got the idea to start this blog, I started researching the various blogs for photographers that were out there. I wanted to make sure that The Modern Tog wasn’t simply doing the same thing that everyone else was already doing.

Along the way, I’ve collected a large number of blogs that I follow that have helped me to grow my own photography business. Here’s a list of the Top 10 Must-Read Blogs for Togs that will help your photography business (other than this one, of course!):
 [Click to read more]

6 Business Tips Learned From Running a Half-Marathon

Jamie Running Her Half Marathon
Yes, this is actually me running the half-marathon.

If you would have told me one year ago that I’d have run a half-marathon and be in training for my second one, I’d have bet everything I have against it.

But sometimes we do foolish things that we never think we will. Like start a business, for example.

I was in track in high school, but I was mostly a jumper and did sprints occasionally as well. I was an especially awesome triple jumper, and I really loved it. But I could never run long distances. My lungs just couldn’t handle it. I tried a few times and pretty much felt like I was going to die every time I did so.

Then I attended college, got married, had 3 kids within 4 years of each other, and didn’t run at all for about 10 of those years. Until last year.

I’m really not sure what got into me.

 [Click to read more]

Professional Camera Gear: What’s in My Bag (Canon Edition)

This guest post was written by Molly Michel of m three studio.

Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 5D Mark II

First and foremost, Jamie did a great job explaining how your gear matters, but not as much as your skills and own artistic input in creating great photos. If you missed that discussion, please click over and read that first. I agree with her whole-heartedly.

I’m not much of a gear head – you won’t find me eagerly anticipating the next new lens release. I find what works for me and then I am doggedly loyal to that. I also am a huge fan of efficiency and not being cluttered – so I pare things down to just what I need and don’t carry around a lot of extra gear.  [Click to read more]

Camera Gear We Can’t Live Without: What’s in Our Bags (Nikon Edition)

This is the dslr camera that we use for shooting weddings. It's amazing.
Nikon D700

By far the most common question we’re asked by people who are starting a photography business is what camera gear we use for shoots.

Let’s just get this out of the way. It’s not about our camera gear. It’s about our vision, our understanding of how to use our gear to get amazing shots, and it’s about light. You can buy yourself the most expensive camera you can find and you’re still not going to take amazing photos if you’re shooting in auto mode.

That being said,  [Click to read more]

How I Doubled my Website Traffic in One Month Using Facebook

One of the most difficult parts of growing your photography business is finding a way to get your work in front of new people. You can have the most gorgeous work, but if no one can find it, they won’t know to book you.

Awhile back I hit a traffic plateau on my website. I was getting about 2,000 pageviews a month, but I had been stuck there for about 6 months without seeing much change.

Then Austin Wedding Photographer Ben Godkin became my hero. He mentioned a WordPress Plugin called Facebook Comments for WordPress and how he used it to increase traffic to his site. I followed his lead, and I immediately jumped up over 5,000 pageviews a month literally the first month that it was installed, and I’ve been growing ever since. Want to see if it works for you too? Here’s what you need to do.  [Click to read more]

4 Ways to Stand Out From Your Competition

Mailboxes
Photo Credit

Today I’m bringing you right into our photography business and sharing some of the plans and thoughts I have for our own company. I run the risk of my competitors seeing it and implementing it as well, but if that happens then the clients win so I’m happy. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was recently challenged to list out all the client interactions that happen from the moment they hear about our work until our work with them is finished. My list started something like this:

 [Click to read more]