In the 4th part of my series on how to become a professional photographer we’re going to discuss investing in yourself. If you’re embarking on running your own business, especially if you’ve not done anything like this before, you’re going to benefit from educating yourself in the art, the craft and the business.
To be successful as a pro photographer you need more than the ability to make good pictures. You’ll need to acquire business skills, marketing skills, selling skills. You’ll also need to be able to make great pictures that people want to buy but that goes without saying.
You might be the best photographer in the country but if you can’t market your services you’re not going to get any clients.
You might be the best photographer in the country but…
- …if you can’t market your services you’re not going to get many clients
- …if you don’t price your work correctly you’re never going to make any money
- …if you don’t know and track your numbers you’re destined to fail
Marketing for Photographers
When you’re first starting out this is arguably the most important skill you need to develop. You absolutely must understand your client and your proposition. If you don’t know yourself, how can your clients be expected to understand? A confused mind never buys. You absolutely must understand what you do and for whom and if it includes the words ‘any’, ‘anyone’, or ‘everyone’ you’re not there yet!
In the last few months no less than 3 High Street portrait studios have gone bust locally. These were successful businesses making a lot of money. What happened? I don’t know as I don’t have visibility of their accounts but they all followed a simple pattern.
They all provided high end wall portraits, large framed prints, canvases etc. They all started cutting their prices, then all started shooting passport photos, then all started free shoots, then all shut up shop.
Let’s look at who they were competing with: the school photographer selling prints for £8 complete with a card mount or a hi-res JPG on CD for £20; the passport machine selling 45mm x 35mm prints for £4. They may be great at building a list of potential clients (prospects) but I’m not convinced the passport client will want to part with £1,000+ for a canvas.
Marketing is about using the right bait to attract the client you want.
When your hungry, fishing in a lake without any edible fish isn’t going to solve your problem
Marketing is about knowing enough about what your client wants and enough about who you client is to be able to use the right bait to attract them.
I don’t know what went wrong with the three studios I mentioned above. I suspect it was a failing, in part, to adapt their marketing to a shifting market place to attract their ideal client.
Photography Marketing – Invest in Yourself
Marketing is a key skill.
Stop thinking of yourself as a photographer. Think instead as a Marketer of Photographers. Educate yourself. Read. Listen to podcasts. Scour YouTube. Learn from the best of the best. It’ll take time but it’ll be worth it!
Photography Pricing Strategy
This topic is huge and will be the subject of a future article so I’m only going to touch on it lightly here.
To be able to price effectively you must believe in the value of what you do. You’re not selling a piece of paper, you’re selling a piece of art. The paper is just the medium. If you price according to the cost of the paper you’ll never truly appreciate the value of what you do; you’ll be stuck valuing the piece of paper.
You need to know how much everything costs and that includes the paper, matte, frame, packaging, delivery etc. It also includes your time too. What about your cost of sales? Your overheads?
Let me give you an example…
A few days ago I was asked to do a baby passport photo. This actually caused me a problem because it’s so far outside my core business I didn’t know how to price it up. The client was an A* client so ‘no’ isn’t an option. He puts all his photography through me so there was no way I was going to turn this down.
The costs worked out as follows…
| Item | Price (£) |
| £1.50 | |
| Express Delivery | £10.00 |
| Travel | £18.00 |
| Total cost | £29.50 |
The cost to me was £29.50. Quite a bit different from the £4 price a passport photo machine would have charged him.
The big question is how to price the job? If I price it according to my costs I’m not going to make enough money to make it worthwhile. Also, look at the the actual cost of the deliverable item, just £1.50. Small beer compared to the whopping delivery charge by the lab imposed and the cost of me to drive to his home to do it.
What about the time? This small job was just over 2 hours work by the time I’d driven to his house, built the studio, photographed the baby, packed everything up, driven home, prepared the proof images, verified the sizes were correct, placed the order and raised his invoice.
This is where your pricing strategy comes in. Pricing should not be based on your costs it should be derived from the value of the service that you as a photographer provide.
Let’s now look at this same shoot from the client’s perspective. He’s a very busy businessman and runs his own company. He’s just booked a holiday abroad in 7 week’s time and it takes 5.5 weeks to get a new passport produced. For him, the convenience of having me come and make a passport photo in his home far outweighs the time he would need to go to a machine to do it.
Now do you see where the value is? The value is that the time he took out of his business was literally no more than a few minutes. His baby was happier, his wife was happier and he didn’t have to fight his way through the wind and rain with a crying baby to look for a broken machine. It’s a balance between price and simplicity.
My price for this job: £99 Why? Because that’s what my pricing strategy said I should charge.
Exercise to the reader…
Given the costs I’ve outlined above and the convenience I’ve provided for my client, what would you charge and why? Leave a comment below and let me know.
This nicely leads me on to the next section…
You absolutely MUST know your numbers
If you want to run a successful photography business you absolutely must know this. It’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned. I’m sure it has something to do with the three studios I mentioned earlier having to close but can’t be sure as I don’t have visibility of their books.
If you don’t know your numbers you’re just playing at running a business
What do I mean by numbers? That’s simple: you need to know your target earnings, your overheads, your cost of sales and the average value of a client to your business.
This will help with your pricing and your confidence at asking for that price. It’ll also help you to realise when something isn’t viable. E.g. For almost any other client I would have turned down the baby passport. It’s not core business for me and I can’t compete with the machines or key cutting outlets in town. If fact I don’t even want to compete. It’s a low cost, high volume market and that’s not the service I want to provide.
Knowing your numbers has absolutely nothing to do with photography. It’s business. If you want to be a professional photographer running your own business you need to know them. For me it was difficult and I found every excuse possible not to crunch the numbers but my business advisor kept on nagging so in the end I went through the process for an easier life. It didn’t take long and it has changed my business. More importantly it’s given me the confidence to ask for and stand by my pricing strategy when others are working for free. I don’t work for free. I can’t compete with free. A client who wants me to work for free isn’t my client.
