Pricing… you can’t run a business as a professional photographer for very long without becoming ensnared in the topic of how to price your work (well, you might, I suppose, but you would find it hard to make any money). Then there is the question of, not only what fees to charge, but also how to make your clients aware of your price list without them running away or thinking you are attempting to pressure-sell them. 

In the time that I have been working as a professional photographer, I have personally tried different ways of communicating my price lists to customers and potential customers, with varying amounts of success. These include the following…

• Printed price menus
• Combined price list and brochure
• Website price page
• By emailing price lists by email

However, the problem I found with these methods was that sales just were not where I wanted them to be. I would give out price lists to prospects who asked for them, count the hits to my price list website page, or email my price list to anyone who requested it – yet the prospects vanished as quickly as they appeared, like spirits.

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Sales & Marketing photography business, photography pricing, professional photographer, professional photography

General photography business, photography marketing, professional photographer, professional photography

If you’ve been working to grow your photography business for a while now and things aren’t happening as fast as you want, then I’d like to help you create a MAJOR business BREAKTHROUGH…

The photography business can be difficult to navigate through - sometimes we need some external guidance to keep us on track...

Here’s the scoop…

I’ve heard from a lot of photographers who are having an especially difficult time getting their business to grow fast these days. After hearing about so many people’s struggles, I decided to do something about it…

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Photography Business Coaching photography business, professional photographer, professional photography

Word of mouth marketing is one of the most powerful and effective ways to spread the word about you and your photography business, yet it remains one of the least understood marketing solutions.

One of the major reasons that word of mouth is not as effective as it could be for many businesses, not just photographers, is that the business owner makes the incorrect assumption that it’s something that happens all by itself and that their customers will just talk about them in the natural course of things.

When I’m coaching photographers during my Business Breakthrough Sessions I ask them what their marketing strategy is. The answer I hear most of the time is “word of mouth“, which is great as long as it’s working!

Unfortunately, most of the time, it really isn’t…

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Sales & Marketing marketing solutions, photography business, photography marketing, professional photographer, word of mouth

Many of today’s professional photographers began their working lives in other careers, only finding their way into photography later on, often as a sideline or a second job. This arrangement presents its own challenges and difficulties, as the photographer is forced to juggle two worlds, in the hope of eventually making photography their full-time business.

As there are a lot of photographers out there in this position, I thought it would be a great idea to let a photographer currently living this scenario to share their thoughts and ideas on juggling a full-time job with the task of building a photography business.

Meet Bonnie Velazco from Springfield, Virginia. To say she has a busy life is probably an understatement! As a photographer, she loves to work with maternity, newborns, children, seniors and weddings. When she isn’t following her photographic passions, she works full-time as a CFO…

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Photography Business Interviews photographer interview, photography business, professional photographer

Making money as a professional photographer is vastly different from being a talented hobbyist with good equipment and technical skills. To make the transition from enthusiastic amateur to professional means a lot more than simply charging for your photography.

Unfortunately, a lot of amateur photographers jump straight in at the deep end, under the mistaken impression that they can make a good living from their cameras. The sad truth is that a lot of real talent is lost from the industry every year when photographers like this go out of business after quickly discovering the harsh reality of running a business in a strongly competitive market.

It’s a shame because these photographers would have been a great asset to the professional photography industry if only they had learned how to run their businesses more effectively…

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Photography Business Ideas marketing, photography business, professional photographer, selling

Open Letter To Newcomers To The Photography Industry

My goal as a photography business coach is a simple one:

To help all photographers, irrespective of their experience, photographic niche, age, or length of time in the business find peace of mind in their business.

While most of the posts I write, the interviews I record, or the books and articles I produce are aimed at helping people of all levels, this is not one of them…

This particular post is aimed mostly at someone wanting to become a professional photographer, and I’m hoping that some of the other seasoned professionals who are reading this will also weigh in with their opinions and advice – so please do leave a comment at the end, and take a moment to share this article in any way you can.

What Makes Me Qualified To Get Paid?

The spark that started this specific post came from a question posed on one of the many LinkedIn groups to which I belong.

Paraphrased, the question was from someone quite new to the business:

“I have a passion for photography, and have worked on some projects without compensation. What would make me qualified in this industry to be paid?“

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General photography business, professional photographer, soccer mom, talented amateur

Little did I know, when I started writing the Photography Business and Marketing blog at the end of 2008, that it would become so popular.

I’m both amazed and humbled by the number of people who read and share the articles on this blog!

Originally, I began writing as a means of self-therapy for my own photography business, to help me sort through the variety of challenges that I, like everyone else, had to solve in order to stay in business.

However, I soon discovered that others also found the blog useful, so I kept it going and it’s now one of the most enjoyable parts of my business life.

But I never fully imagined that the blog would evolve in the way it has, and that there would be such a variety of content on the site – from articles to audio interviews and teleseminars.

For the future, I’m looking at conducting video interviews, workshops, online courses and expanding on the ever-growing library of content. Who knows what else lies in store for us further on down the road?

Introducing Zenologue Insiders

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General business success, membership site, professional photographer, professional photography

You don’t need me to tell you that almost anyone can become a “professional” photographer these days, especially when it seems like there’s one on almost every street corner. The ubiquity of the digital SLR, together with the incredible ease of entry into the business, has spawned a mass of photographers, all eager to turn their photos into cash.

If this sounds a little cynical, it’s not meant to; I do believe that we all have the right to follow our passions and dreams to achieve in life whatever we desire. If someone has a love of photography, and wants to turn that love into a career as a wedding photographer, then I’m right behind them all the way.

But, We Have A Responsibility

Just because we don’t have to spend years at college, or there are no exams to pass, doesn’t absolve us from the responsibility of maintaining the “professional” status of the job we’re aspiring too.

We all have a duty to uphold the standards of the industry, and to realize that being a professional photographer means a lot more than earning some money with a camera.

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Photography Business Ideas photography business, photography education, professional photographer

When we jump in the car to head out somewhere, it’s a fair bet that we have a clear idea of where we want to go, even if the exact route may be a little sketchy. Rarely do we drive away with absolutely no idea of our destination, or how we’re going to get there.

Being in business is no different, yet too many of us start a photography business with little or no clue of the direction the business should take them. Why do we do this? How can we reasonably expect to be successful running a business that, to all intents and purposes, has no direction or destination?

Where Do You Want To Go?

Your adventure in business is a journey; you start with nothing more than an idea, which manifests itself as a physical business, gaining momentum as you attract more clients, finally arriving at a state you consider to be successful and self-sustaining. That’s the point at which you can take a deep breath and say, “I’ve arrived!”

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How To Be A Professional Photographer motivation, photography business, professional photographer

Do you have a job description for your role as a professional photographer? Do you think you need one? If you did, what tasks and responsibilities would it include? Are there some tasks on the list that are more important than others? What actual use is a job description anyway? Can a job description hinder your goals?

I Know What I Have To Do

Or do you? Really. I sat down this morning to write a post for the blog, trying to come up with a good idea, and an interesting thought crossed my mind:

When I worked in a corporate environment as a project manager I was given a job description to follow that was pretty well defined. There was little room in it for moral judgment or creativity in the way I did my work. But what about now? What might my job description look like now that I run my own business? How do I know if I’m doing my job properly?

So, I set out to compile a list of my duties and responsibilities just to see what it is that I actually do on a day-to-day basis and how it impacts the most important person in my business – the client.

Here’s a list of what I came up with (in no particular order for now)…

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Photography Business Ideas job description, morality of work, photography business, professional photographer

The other day a photographer said, “I just knew before they came that the client I saw yesterday wasn’t going to buy anything more than a simple 8 x 10…” How so? I began to wonder if the photographer had some way of telling the future.

“She told me over and over again; on the phone, at the consultation and during the photography session that all she wanted was an 8 x 10 and two 5 x 7 prints.”

I asked how they handled this issue during the projection appointment.

“Well, I didn’t see the point in trying to convince her otherwise, she seemed quite adamant about what she wanted, and I didn’t want to pressurize her.”

And, just like that, the photographer became the one being sold to.

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Sales & Marketing photography sales, professional photographer