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Happy Birthday To Me Sale!

FYI, Sale was extended one extra day through Thursday 10/25/12!

On Sunday I turned 31, AND the day before that we reached our 10,000th email subscriber, so I thought it was a fitting time for a celebration! WOOT WOOT!

Use the coupon code above when checking out on any of the following 3 products. Click on the image to learn more about each one, and enter the coupon in the cart to apply.

These products will help you with pricing, with client management and expectations, and with exactly how to respond to all sorts of difficult situations. Check them out now!

Happy shopping!

Free Pricing Gudie for Photographers from The Modern Tog

How I Rocked My First In-Person Portrait Sales Session

From the outside looking in, it would be easy to think that I have it all together. I’ve been honored to write an several guest posts, including one here on The Modern Tog, so people sometimes assume I’ve got everything figured out. Let me tell you, that can not be farther from the truth!

I’m just like you. I struggle with business decisions, second guess my work, design and redesign my website and then I head to my favorite photography group (Have you joined yet? Because it’s awesome!) to get reassurance from others that I’m not totally screwing things up.

Sound familiar?

I’ve been accepting paying clients for two years now. This week I had my first in-person sales appointment. And not only that, it was the first time I actually offered products to my portrait clients rather than just handing over a disc of images and calling it a day.

We all hear about in-person sales being the way to go so why didn’t I make the leap sooner? Simple. I was delusional. I really convinced myself that higher prices and in-person sales may work for some people, but not for me. I was sure that no one in my area would pay $500 for something that cost me only $100 to order for them. And you know what? I underestimated how much people value a quality product and excellent customer service – and I underestimated myself in the process. Does that sound familiar too?

Consider this your smack upside the head! You can do it! Everything I learned about how to do in-person sales was through The Modern Tog’s articles and advice from other photographers who were doing it right. So here’s how it went. [Click to read more]

Why You Should Start a Boudoir Photography Business and Exactly How To Do It!

For most photographers, there’s a “busy season” where you get the most of your business and a “slow season” when clients are few and far between.

As full-time wedding photographers in Wisconsin, we do almost all of our weddings between the months of May and October. We may occasionally get a wedding in the off months, but it’s very rare. So we not only have to be good at photography, we have to be good at budgeting our income so that we can still feed our kids and pay our bills during the 6 quiet months of the year.

Even if you have a studio and just do portraits, you’ll likely be busier during the nicest times of the year and before holidays, but there will still be slow times when you could be making more money if only you could get more clients.

Adding boudoir sessions to your photography business is one of the best ways to get extra income during the slow times, and it fits in well with both portrait and wedding photographers because it relates to both and it is easy to market all year long.

Boudoir is unique, however, and needs to be marketed differently than your existing business. So this post is going to give you a step-by-step blueprint for things you need to consider and do to start a profitable boudoir photography business and add boudoir sessions to your business to book yourself solid year-round. I’ll also discuss how to market boudoir in a very conservative area, and share exactly how to start a boudoir business step-by-step to make it as easy as possible for you. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy. [Click to read more]

7 Ways to Make Extra Money With Your Photography Business

Let’s face it: We’d all like more money.

So I thought I’d compile a list of 7 ways to make extra money besides just booking more typical sessions, because most people I talk to still don’t have as many clients as they’d like.

I’m just going to dive right in. Here are my 7 ways to make extra money with your photography business.

[Click to read more]

The Most Simple Way to Get More Photography Clients

It’s the scenario I dread as a mother because it always ends in tears and yelling.

My daughter wanted a toy that my son was playing with. She’s still young enough that when she wants something, she does anything she can to get it.

But this time, instead of ripping it out of his hands with brute force, she tried a different tactic.

Not only did she get the toy she wanted, but she did it without any fighting. He willingly handed it over. There was no arguing, screaming, and I didn’t have to stop working to dole out the consequences.

I was in shock (and thankful not to have to intervene!), but it reminded me that this is exactly the same thing we need to do to get more clients.

So let’s dive in and break it down, step-by-step, so you can get more photography clients for your business as well. [Click to read more]

The Ultimate Photography Website Guide

A Photography Website is vital to all modern photography businesses as it’s often the first impression people have of our business. It’s one of the least-expensive and most effective tools we have in marketing our photography business and getting new clients.

Yet unless you’ve studied about what converts visitors into paying clients, it’s likely that your website is not nearly as effective as it could be, and you’re losing out on many potential clients.

So I thought I’d put this guide together with all sorts of resources for creating the best possible photography website out there.

It’ll talk about everything from setting up your site, how to get more traffic to your site, and then how to convert that traffic into paying customers.

Let’s jump right in. [Click to read more]

How to Get More Ideal Clients Using Your Website

Unless you own a studio, your website is your virtual storefront where people come to decide if they want to hire you as their photographer.

This is one of the most important aspects of your business, yet many of us simply put something together when we create our first website and don’t put a lot of time or thought into anything except what images we want to show and maybe the colors of our branding. Not only that, but it looks a lot like all the other photography websites out there.

While I think having beautiful images is a very important part of getting clients to hire you, it’s not even close to the most important part. Everyone shows photos. It’s REALLY hard to stand apart from your competition on image quality alone, especially considering most people don’t know a good photo from a great photo.

So how do you stand out and attract your ideal clients like crazy?

[Click to read more]

The Most Common Portrait Sales Mistake That Almost All Photographers Make

When I was first starting out in photography, I had no idea what I was doing.

I think I charged something insanely low like $50 for a session plus a disc of all the digital negatives. I put the images in an online gallery, but I didn’t really sell many prints. I got lots of compliments about how people loved that they got the disc and could do what they wanted with it.

I told myself this was simply a case of meeting my clients’ needs and giving them what they wanted, so it was a good business practice.

The problem was, my ideal clients, the ones who valued photography and really wanted to preserve their memories didn’t just want the disc. They wanted someone to walk them through the photos, help them decide which ones would look best on their walls, and suggest products that would truly help them preserve this time in their lives as best as possible. I just didn’t believe that.

Not only that, but sometimes life gets busy and sometimes people simply don’t do what they intend to do. Eventually I stopped just giving the disc away and started charging for it to help encourage print sales, but then I’d get clients who raved about their image but never actually bought anything. Life just got busy and they never got to it.

That made me a Sad Panda. See? [Click to read more]

Why I Switched to Flash Drives Instead of DVDs and Why You Should Too

It’s all Apple’s fault. No, really.

As a wedding photographer, I give all of my clients the digital images from their wedding day.

I used to deliver these in a beautifully packaged DVD that had a custom image of the couple printed right onto the DVD. It came in a modern metal case, and when wrapped up nicely with a bow it looked awesome. I loved every part of it.

But then Apple decided to release new MacBook Pros without a disc drive in them.

So that cute customized DVD? It’d be useless to any client that has one of the new MacBook Pros.

Just like Apple killed flash websites, they’ve now also made the DVD an outdated way to deliver images to your clients.

Sure, at the moment only a very small percentage of people out there would have this problem, but if you have high-end clients, they are more likely to have one than the general public. And the last thing I want is to come across as outdated or give them something that they can’t even use 2 years from now.

So, I accepted the fact that it is time to move on to a different way of delivering digital images to my clients and started researching. I decided that flash drives were the best way to deliver the images and am really happy with the switch. In fact, I’m so pleased with it that I wish I had done this a few years ago.

Here’s everything you’ll need to know about switching to flash drives for digital image delivery for your clients.

[Click to read more]

5 Super Simple Accounting Tips for Photographers

This week’s post is a guest post written by Allan Branch.

Professional photographers have the technique down and creative abilities to succeed at making money doing what you love. However, managing the business side, specifically your finances, is just as critical as making certain the bride looks even prettier in her wedding photos than she does in person. Here are five simple tips to help lessen the headache of accounting and get you back to creating lasting memories.
[Click to read more]

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