This post is a guest post by Tanya Hirschy.
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When I first timidly started my photography business a few years ago I would frequently hear, “I didn’t know you took pictures.”
“Me neither” my response would be, followed by nervous laughter. This showed my lack of confidence and slightly revealed how overwhelmed I was. Maybe you can relate.
Then all at once my young business unexpectedly exploded with clients. Here’s how I handled the overwhelm and uncertainty I felt about my success so early.
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You’d likely get a lot of really confused looks, some rude comments, and maybe a few kisses if you’re not too creepy.
However, built into each one of us is a sub-conscious desire to be consistent that is so strong that it could get strangers to kiss you and clients to book you that might have otherwise said no.
Don’t believe me? Watch this video and see if you can figure out how they did it. It’s worth a few minutes of your time.
Besides being ridiculously entertaining, this demonstrates the principle of consistency, which can be super powerful in converting people into clients. Let’s talk about what’s happening here and how you can use these same principles to get more clients, specifically by making sure you’re showing your pricing at the right time.
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Right now is a great time to pick up a few of these to take advantage of tax deductions for 2012 and reduce your tax bill. Then set aside some time after the holidays to learn from them and implement them to make as much as possible into your business for 2013.
Less taxes to pay in 2012 + more profit in 2013 = Pure Awesomeness!
So let’s dive in and look at the Top 10 Photography Business Resources of 2012!
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I’m guessing the answer is “yes”.
You are not alone. It’s incredibly difficult to find balance while running a business.
Most new photography businesses are started by people also working another job or who are stay-at-home parents who have a full-time job (plus some!) raising children. Once you do get to the point of going full-time, you still don’t have enough time to do everything you want to do to sustain and grow your photography business in the way you want it to grow.
Personally, I’ve justified all the extra work by believing that “one day” it’ll get to the point I want it to be at and I won’t have to work as much.
It’s a lie. The more you grow, the more time it takes to sustain, and you can’t ever really just ignore it without negative consequences.
Yet at the same time, you need to find balance. Your kids are only young once, and life is too short to work all the time. Not to mention the fact that you are utterly exhausted from late-night editing sessions so aren’t the person you want to be during the day.
So what do you do? Do you fold? Do you cut back? Do you get an extra job so that you don’t have to do photography for the income and just do it for fun?
Let’s dive in and talk about how to find balance long-term in your photography business.
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Blogging is one of the best ways to get new clients that haven’t heard of you before.
If you can show up when people search for a photographer in a search engine like Google, then you’ll have a better chance of finding new clients. In fact, we get the majority of our new clients this way.
While this can take a lot of time and be overwhelming, there’s three mistakes that I see almost all new photographers making that are easy to fix that will help you rank higher almost immediately. I’ll be showing you how to change these things quickly in WordPress, since it has all the tools you need in it to help you rank higher (so I think everyone should be using it!)
Are you making these three common SEO mistakes?
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Over the past few years I’ve done a lot of experimenting, wasted a lot of money, and come up with 6 places that I focus on every single year to keep our photography business getting the clients we need.
Let’s look at each of the 6 effective photography marketing areas and why they are important to focus on.
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For those of you outside the US, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving when places offer their best deals of the year. Cyber Monday is the Monday after, and usually has some fabulous deals as well.
Because I know your time is precious and we all love a good deal, I’ve spent literally HOURS scouring the web, emailing my most favorite vendors, and putting together this list of sales that is going on that you might want to get in on now in addition to sharing significant discounts on my own products. These are usually the lowest prices of the entire year on products, so it’s a great time to buy.
I’m also doing a very limited pre-release of a brand new e-book I just wrote called the “6-Week Photography Marketing Bootcamp” that will ONLY be on the market through Cyber Monday and then will be taken off until Spring of 2013 when it will be available as a bonus with my full marketing e-book that I’ll be releasing. More details on that below.
Finally, I’m giving away a free iPad mini! No purchase is necessary – all you have to do is enter below. Why would I do this? Because I’m ridiculously thankful for you, and it’s just one way I can give back.
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If you’re new around here, the “Best of the Rest” is a post where I sort through all the fluff out there on various photography business blogs and share my absolute favorite and most-helpful blog posts around, saving you time and effort sorting through them all. They are all worth a read.
And don’t forget to read to the end to make sure you hear about our big news for what you can expect next week. I’m ridiculously excited.
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So many places that tell you they can get you results, if only you spend the money to advertise with them or buy their cool marketing templates.
It’s hard to know what will work and what won’t. The last thing you want is to spend money and not see any return.
However, there’s one thing that is guaranteed to bring in new clients because it’s so very powerful, but so many people neglect this aspect of their marketing.
What is this secret photography marketing super power? [Click to read more]
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Confession: I tried my first ever Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks just a few weeks ago.
I’m not a huge Starbucks fan in general, much preferring the delicious Chai that I get from my local coffee shop, but with all the hype and people saying how much they loved one, I decided it was time to give one a try.
It was delicious, I admit. Much like drinking a slice of pumpkin pie with coffee. But not mind-blowing at all.
The most astounding thing to me is how much of a cult following it has. I mean, even the generic coffee creamers and cookies in the grocery store are coming out in “pumpkin spice” flavors, so you know there’s a large size following.
I’ve seen posts on Facebook about how excited my friends are that it’s back, and whenever it leaves for the season I always see people complain that it’s gone.
So why would Starbucks only offer one of their most popular drinks for a very limited time and not offer it all the time?
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The market is saturated with people charging hardly anything and doing things irresponsibly. If you know your numbers it can be hard to believe how much more you need to be charging to make what you need to be making. It doesn’t seem possible.
Yet you’re awesome because you are committed to being profitable and are ready to make the leap into the higher prices you deserve. No more pretending you’re making more than you really are, no more excuses. You’re ready to put on your big girl panties and making the leap into running a successful and profitable photography business.
So you raise your prices a lot. And suddenly you hear crickets. Nothing, not even an inquiry. You start to doubt yourself, your work, your ability to stay in business, and you are tempted to either drop your prices back to where they were or quit altogether.
Sound familiar? It doesn’t have to be this way.
So let’s talk this through, let’s do this the smart way, and let’s start making more money and avoiding some common pitfalls.
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