Photography Sales Archives

How to Sell Albums Successfully

I have a love-hate relationship with albums.

I love the money I make selling them. My first album sale was over $6000 (they ordered a huge album plus 3 large parent albums) and that was back when I was only charging around $2400 for a wedding. The income potential blew my mind.

I love how well they protect my clients’ images. The fact that they are gorgeous and can sit in a closet for decades just waiting for their grandkids to find it is fantastic.

And I love how beautiful our images look printed on big pages, and how well it markets our work when our clients show their album to all their friends and family.

But the process of creating and actually selling albums to clients can be difficult.

You have to clearly communicate the value of an album to your clients.

Designing and making revisions to albums can be a huge time suck.

Getting clients to send you their feedback and finalize the album design can take far longer than you dreamed and can be a communication nightmare.

And pricing albums can be tricky.

So in this post, we’re going to talk about how to successfully sell albums without all the stress. Then I’ll give you some additional free tools and bonus materials at the end that you can use in your business to make your album sales successful. Let’s dive right in. [Click to read more]

How to Book More Clients Over the Phone (Even if You Fear the Phone)

This week’s post is a guest post by Lea Hartman.

Are you afraid of talking to prospective clients on the phone?

You’re not alone.

I’d guess that the majority of photographers prefer email to phone contact any day.

However, the phone is a great way to set yourself apart from the rest of your competition and get a great first impression of you in their minds before your competitors.

So today I’m going to talk about how to use the phone to your advantage so that YOU can get the booking!

[Click to read more]

How to Get Higher Sales & More Clients Using Gift Registries

How much money do you think wedding guests spend in total on the bride & groom? How about friends who buy gifts for a baby shower? Or how much is spent in gifts for a graduate?

People spend a LOT of money on gifts for other people for important milestones in life. And we often are hired to capture these milestones. People will be spending a lot of money on our clients as they go through these events.

A baby shower may have 20 guests, and if each guest spends $50 for their gift, that’s $1000 in gifts.

A graduate may receive gifts from 50 people, and if they each spend $50 that’s $2500 in gifts.

An engaged couple that sends out 200 wedding invitations may get $10,000 in gifts or more.

People are going to spend lots of money buying things for your clients, and they want to buy something they know your clients are going to love.

If you’re not offering a photography registry that allows them to spend some of this money on your products and services, you’re missing out big time.

Not only that, but your clients will be telling everyone they know about your photography business. More exposure means more new clients which means even more money for you. Gift Registries can be game changers for your business, so I’m going to tell you everything you need to know to get one started and stop losing out on all the money and clients you could be gaining now.

[Click to read more]

Why Your In-Person Sales Meetings Aren’t Working

In-Person Sales are one of the best ways to make more money with your photography business.

While a scary prospect for many, there is absolutely no denying it’s profitability. In fact, you can read about my first experience with In-Person Sales and how I made 5 times more than my average sale before doing in-person portrait sales.

While you may have gotten into photography because you love it and have a passion for it, passion doesn’t pay the bills. Profit is what running a legitimate business is all about.

However, some photographers claim that their clients simply won’t place an order during their in-person sales sessions and that many still need to “think about it.”

I hate to say it, but that’s not because of the type of clients you have. It’s because of how YOU are handling the session.

So how can you ensure that your In-Person Sales meetings will end with a sale? [Click to read more]

How a Pumpkin Spice Latte Can Get You More Photography Sales

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?

[Click to read more]

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]

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]

5 Consultation Secrets Every Photographer Should Know

Consultations are the main thing people use to decide what photographer to hire, so it’s absolutely vital to do things right!

Trust me. I had no idea what I was doing when I was just starting out and made lots of mistakes.

After trying all sorts of things to see what worked well and what didn’t (as well as learning a lot about sales and marketing in the process), I came up with 5 main things that I believe are key to effective consultations.

While I write this mostly from a wedding perspective, every single point can be applied to a portrait pre-sales consultation as well.

Here’s my 5 consultation secrets that every photographer should know:

[Click to read more]

5 Quick Tips for More Album Sales

Albums can be one of the most awesome products you offer your clients. They’re profitable, easy to design, have high sentimental value, and do a gosh darn amazing job of showing off your work! But many photographers have a tough time actually selling albums. Sure, they sound great and all, but what good are they if you can’t convince your clients to buy one?

Well, you’re in luck. Selling albums is actually not that difficult! There are some simple ways for you to ensure that your clients are actually *excited* to buy an album!
[Click to read more]

Increase Photography Product Sales by Offering Less

I love to eat. Give me something savory, like a juicy marinated tenderloin steak, grilled shrimp scampi, garlic mashed potatoes slathered in butter, and fresh green beans cooked just right with a crisp garden salad and a glass of wine and I am a seriously happy mama.

My mouth is watering already. Yours?

We don’t go to restaurants much (unfortunately) but when we do, my pet peeve is opening up to a menu that has about 300 different options.

Being the food lover that I am, I feel obligated to make sure that read through all of my options to make sure I get whatever sounds best on the menu. I don’t want bad food on one of the rare occasions that we go out to eat, so I sit there for far too long trying to decide what I want.

And I sit some more.

And we tell the waiter to come back again, and again, and again.

Finally, we give up and just make some decision. Hopefully it is good, but it is SUCH a frustrating experience.

I much prefer menus that are smaller, making my decision easier. I’m hungry when I get to a restaurant. I want to enjoy the company I’m with, not spend 20 minutes trying to read the menu and deciding what to order.

The same thing applies to the products you offer your clients. If you’ve ever had a client procrastinate on ordering or not place an order after seeing their images, you may want to consider how hard you’re making it for your clients. [Click to read more]

The Secret to Significantly Increasing Your Portrait Sales

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]