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.
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]
No, it’s not by buying some expensive marketing package or showy website.
Those artistic & vintage photoshop actions that you love? They won’t get you there either. In fact, you’ll probably ditch them in a year or two. Trust me. Just like that “amazing” shirt you picked up awhile back that was so cute then, but is so very wrong for you now.
The things you need to guarantee your business will be a success cannot be bought in any store. I promise that if you have all these things, you will most certainly “make it”.
Can you guess what these things are?
[Click to read more]
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.
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.
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.
When I started my wedding photography business a few years ago, I didn’t put much thought into selecting a name. I simply selected Jamie M Swanson Photography because it worked at the time and the domain was available.
However, last year my husband Brandon started shooting with me, and we found out that he’s ridiculously talented. He fell in love with it almost instantly. Soon we decided to become a husband and wife photography team. After one too many “Does he work for YOU?” jokes, we decided that a name change was in order.
Since it’s something we did recently, I thought I’d share some tips on things to consider when choosing a name for your business. [Click to read more]
