The Modern Tog

Take Your Photography From Passion to Profit

Everything You Need to Grow a
Successful Photography Business

Best of the Rest: Other Awesome Photography Resources

Best Links from around the web

I got such amazing feedback from people last time I did this, so I figured it was time for another round of amazing links from around the web.

1. 5 Things To Do Right Now if you Haven’t Already – Quick things you most definitely want to do!

2. 10 Lightroom Shortcuts and Clickables You Don’t Know About – I even learned a few shortcuts and I’m pretty Lightroom savvy. Good stuff.

3. Google+ What does it mean for your Small Business? – Excellent things to consider about how this may change things for us small business owners.

4. The 21st Century Neanderthal’s Guide to Social Media – I’m thought this was a helpful article about how to use all those social networks well.

5. How to Write a Fabulous Bio – Because I know you’re fabulous. So now, go learn how to write a good bio for your website that reflects how amazing you are.

6. One of my Favorite Business Purchases – This is not a link to another blog, but I thought I’d share one of the most practical and awesome things I have in my bag. And they’re cheap. They last longer than any others I’ve seen, and they hold their charge for months. It goes especially well with this little piece of equipment. Enjoy.

5 Travel Tips for Photographers

Kyle Hepp Beach Image Tilt Shifted
All photos in this post taken by the amazing Kyle Hepp

I travel a bit for work. And by a bit, I mean that in the past four months I’ve shot weddings in 

I will be finishing up this streak of destination (for me) weddings with one in Paris (France) and Lake Anna (Virginia, USA) in a week and a half.

At first when Jamie asked me to guest post for The Modern Tog I didn’t feel like I’d have much to offer. But then when she said it would be great if I posted traveling tips for weddings, I thought “Ah HA! Now THAT, I just might be qualified to write about!”

So here’s 5 Travel Tips for Photographers that I’ve learned along the way. [Click to read more]

Don’t Waste Your Money: 6 Regrettable Photography Business Purchases

Don't Waste Money

We all have them: things we bought that we regret buying and wasted our hard-earned money on.

There are so many things out there for photographers that it can be hard to know what is worth the money and what isn’t. I’ve already listed out several essential purchases for photography businesses, but here’s a list of 6 things to avoid buying no matter how tempted you may be to spend money on them.

 [Click to read more]

How To Have Happier Clients and Better Leads Using Photography Questionnaires

Gravity Forms

I think I’m in love.

My friend Andy recently told me about something called Gravity Forms that he uses for his client questionnaires and contracts.

I’ve been doing an informal questionnaire with my wedding clients before each wedding, but Andy and I photographed two weddings together this past month, and we used his questionnaire. It was so awesome to have all that information in one place and I loved how easy his form was to use. So I finally bit the bullet and purchased it this past weekend.

Oh. My. Word.

This little WordPress plugin rocks my world.

It’s the most easy to create form I’ve ever seen, and being able to use conditional logic (that’s a fancy way of saying that you only show certain questions based upon answers to other questions before it) is just rad.

Yeah, I just used the word “rad”. I like to pretend I’m cool. 😉

So after figuring it out and getting it all set up, I immediately decided that I had to tell you all about it and why I think you should buy it, too.

Not only that, but I created a free contact page for you to use on your photography site, just because I love you and want to save you some time.  [Click to read more]

The Best of the Rest: 5 Must-Read Posts From the Web

Best of the Rest

Confession: I read a LOT of blogs. While there’s some really great stuff out there, I also see a lot of fluff as well. I thought I’d save you a bunch of time by sharing my 5 favorite posts from the last few weeks.

Read them. They are fantastic.

5 Ways to Make $1000 – Ridiculously simple ways to add $1000 to your bottom line at the end of the year. It’s a must-read for sure.

Getting Your Clients to Buy More – Sarah Petty shares 4 awesome tips for selling more products.

A Surprisingly Easy Way to Handle Client Workflow – I do something similar to this, only using Excel. I should probably use their suggestion though as I don’t open the document often enough and so I fail to really use it how I should.

Red-Carpet Posing Tricks – Just a few quick tips for posing women to make them look their best.

The Ultimate Twitter Guide – Everything you want to know and more about Twitter. It’s seriously exhaustive, and something that I plan to read more in-depth so as to satisfy those of you who have been so kind as to follow me on Twitter.

Have a post that you’ve read lately that is super-helpful? Share a link to it in the comments so we can all learn from it as well! Bonus points of honor if you share your favorite link from The Modern Tog with your Facebook friends or Twitter followers.

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]

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]