Building A Photography Blog: It’s More Than Just Pictures

Why Landing Pages Are Important For Your Potential Customers

I was on a deal of the day site today, seeing what the current offer was. I check out a bunch of them every week, and have found some really good deals.

Anyway, on one of the sites was a deal from a photographer. He was advertising a Trash The Dress session at a reduced rate – almost 70 percent off his normal session fee. Great deal – and with the coming wedding season, I would have assumed he would have had a number of takers. Yet when I entered the site, not one person had taken him up on his offer.

landing pages for photographers
image source

So I continued to read. And realized that he made one fatal error that potentially caused him a ton of sessions.

He doesn’t understand the importance of landing pages.
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Filed Under: Blog, Online Marketing Tagged With: landing pages for photographers

10 Publishing/Printing Solutions For Your Photographs

by Virtual Photography Leave a Comment

How do you present your photographs to your clients? Do you hand them a CD – or do you present their images in an album or photo book? Digital technology has made album and book options available in a variety of formats. Take a look at these 10 publishing and printing solutions, and give your clients more options than ever.

Walter’s Publishing
From yearbooks, to prom books, to sports books and posters, to wedding books, you’ll have a full array of options through Walter’s Publishing to help you reach out to your clients.

Mpix
Mpix gives you a variety of options, from online album and sales, to photo books and greeting cards. Mpix is an online division of Miller’s Professional Imaging, and has the resources to help you with all your printing needs.

Black River Imaging
Black River Imaging offers a variety of album options. Check out their Mosaic albums, with color options to match any ideas you or your clients may have.

Black River Imaging

Renaissance Albums
Take a look at Renaissance’s new SOHO albums. Designed to offer panoramic spreads throughout the entire album, they are perfect choices for your coffee table albums.
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Filed Under: Blog, Online Resources Tagged With: 10 Publishing/Printing Solutions For Your Photographs, album companies, professional albums for photographers, publishing options for photographers

10 Ways To Get Ready For The 2011 Senior Photography Market

by Virtual Photography 2 Comments

Spring is finally here. As April turns into May, high schools around the country will be holding their graduation ceremonies. Which means today’s juniors will be starting the annual trek towards graduating themselves.

10. If you’re just starting out in the senior market, now is the best time to get started. This spring, many of the local high schools begin by holding a senior fair –an expo that puts juniors on the track to success for their upcoming senior year. This is the best time to make contact with juniors, and begin filling up your summer with senior portrait sessions.
marketing your high school senior photography business
9. Call up your local high schools and ask for the school newspaper staff. Many of the high school newspapers will allow you to purchase ads in the May edition. These papers are often sent home to families, emailed to parents, and make the rounds at school as well. Always put an image of a senior from the current school for recognition (if possible).

8. Work with the school groups. Every high school has a ton of clubs and groups to get involved in. From the spring play, to the marching band, to booster clubs for sporting events, everyone is looking out for more dollars to put towards their activities. Why not sponsor an event? With most schools, a little goes a long way. And with budget cuts at their highest level, most clubs will be happy to work with you and provide you with some exposure.
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Filed Under: Blog, Portrait Photography Tagged With: marketing to seniors, photographing seniors, senior photography

Create A Photo App for Your Studio

by Virtual Photography 1 Comment

In today’s world, its not enough to have the standard, boring marketing materials. You have to be on top of it all, find something new, and find a way to make your customers say WOW!

How about with your own Photo App?

ProPhotoApps will help you build your own custom branded app for iPhones and smartphone technology, and will help you be recognized as a leader within your current market.

Right now ProPhotoApps is offering to build your own custom iPhone app for an introductory price of $249. Your app will feature:

MyDailyPic technology that allows you to share one new image every day with your app users
Your studio news
Let your app users book sessions right from their iPhone
An automatic integration with Facebook and Twitter

And all of it will be custom branded for your studio – your name, your logo, your colors.

Filed Under: Blog, Online Marketing Tagged With: Create A Photo App for Your Studio, iPhone app for photographers, smartphone apps for photographers

5 Ways To Get Them To Say Yes

by Virtual Photography Leave a Comment

After you’ve spent an hour with a potential client showing them your work and talking straight from the heart, watching them walk out the door knowing they will never book can be very difficult.

Being good at photography isn’t enough. You also have to be great at selling.

1. Be confident.
The more comfortable you are with your products and services, the easier it is to sell. Set your packages up for your own goals and needs. Understand exactly why things are placed together, why timing is important, and why you’ve selected the materials you have. Then stick to your guns. Don’t allow changes and switches unless you know exactly how they impact your profit margin. Always have them go to your ala carte pricing – which should be more expensive than your packages – if they want to make changes.

how to sell your photography services

2. Don’t react.
The most common way to react to a customers questions and comments at the end of your sales presentation is to give in to their doubts, and start making counteroffers. Yet this is the worst thing you can do. Let them talk it through, especially if there are two or more in your studio. Repeat your sales points, and stick up for your pricing. Don’t make adjustments – adjustments before they book with you mean you’ll be willing to change things throughout the process.
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Filed Under: Blog, Six Figure Photographer Tagged With: becoming better at selling, selling your photography

12 Ideas To Make Money With Your Photographs

by Virtual Photography 6 Comments

Instead of sitting on the images you took this past weekend, why not sell them instead?

Even if you didn’t have a client, and spent time with the family at one of the kid’s soccer games, chances are you took some great photographs. Why not find a way to turn them into some extra income? Take a look at these 12 ideas to make money with your photographs, and see how much you can get done this week.

1. Create a photo book. There is always opportunity – you just have to look for it. If you’ve attended your kid’s soccer games for several weeks, and helped coach the practices with your camera in tow, why not turn it into a fun photo book memory for the families? Or have a great idea for a vacation guide to your hometown? Check out Blurb for an easy way to make a photo book.

2. Network. Head over to MeetUp and find a few networking groups. You can work with the organizer, and offer headshots for use on social sites for a nominal fee. Give them quality images, and you exposure.

3. Design your own line of products. With companies like Zazzle and RedBubble, its easy to design your own line of products.

Ideas To Make Money With Your Photographs image source

4. Find a mom and pop café. Take a drive around town – you’re sure to find a few coffee shops that aren’t part of a national chain. Head in and chat – can you help decorate their walls?
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Filed Under: Blog, Make Money With Photography Tagged With: Ideas To Make Money With Your Photographs

Want To Succeed As A Photographer? Three Ways To Embrace Change

by Virtual Photography 1 Comment

If you’ve been a photographer for any length of time now, you’ve seen the world of photography change drastically. From film to digital. From paper proofs to digital files. From traditional marketing to social marketing. With so much change is so little time, how do you know what to do to make sure you are successful years into the future?

1. Accept new channels.
The world changes at an incredible pace these days. What worked today won’t work tomorrow. How you photographed 5 years ago is not how you photograph today.

I once heard a quote that said, “A person starting out on a 4 year technology degree today will begin working today with tools that will be obsolete by the time they graduate and try for their first job.”

Embracing change as a photographer

I speak with photographers all the time that complain about today’s situation. They’ve lost their clients, and don’t know how to continue building a successful business that can support them and their families. In many cases they are out finding and returning to a 9 to 5 corporate job. It really doesn’t have to be that way. You just have to adjust to a new way of doing business.

You can’t be afraid of turning your images over to the online world. Try Flickr and Facebook. Just because people can see your images doesn’t mean you can’t find a way to sell what you do – you may be getting paid in an entirely different way. If you don’t understand it, sign up for a class. I teach classes several times a year at my local community college on social networking and Twitter. Or sign up for a class online – there are dozens of ways of finding a way to learn more about new tools.
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Filed Under: Blog, Business Tagged With: embracing change as a photographer, success tips for a photographer

Selling Framed Photographs Increases Your Profit And Your Professionalism

by Virtual Photography 2 Comments

How do your photographs leave your studio?

Do you pile the paper prints in a box or envelope?

Do you frame your images?

Or do you do a combination of the two?

It may seem like framing will actually put you into an entirely different category of business – you’ll end up with a frame studio AND a portrait studio. But in reality, it will actually turn you into a better photographer, and make your photography more valuable, and thus more profitable for you.

And its not just your large images – this can apply to every image, from a 4×5 on up.

Here’s why.
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Filed Under: Blog, Production Tagged With: framing options for images, selling framed photographs

Building A Photography Blog: It’s More Than Just Pictures

by Virtual Photography 5 Comments

When someone mentions the word “photography blog” what do you think of?

Blogging has morphed over the past few years into an easy way to get content out to your prospects, and to have an easy way to connect up with people from anywhere in the world. But the one underlying problem I’m seeing with blogs is the lack of understanding. And usually it starts with the purpose. If you don’t understand its ultimate effect, it’s hard to use it properly.

1. Start with a purpose
Why are you online? Why are you even considering a photography blog? Hopefully you’ve said, “To market my business and bring in more clients”. If your goal is to reach out to new prospects and clients, you have to post in a way that attracts them. I was recently out on a site in which the owner blogged about many different things – but nothing directly related to attracting new business. If you’re a commercial photographer, you have to write about things of interest to your commercial clients. Same with weddings. Or portraits. You have to know why you are doing it, and carry it out every single day.

2. It’s not about you
Traditional marketing methods concentrate on selling what you do. Online marketing methods focus on giving a potential customer more information on what they are searching for, and put you as the expert to rely on based on that information. Marketing doesn’t work the same way it did even just a year ago. Times are changing, and so are the tools. A person doesn’t want to be sold to. Yet they love buying something they’ve fallen in love with. Customers are in control. They are educated, and they want the best value they can find. Value doesn’t equal cost – it equals getting what they desire. The key is using your blog to showcase the value, and making them fall in love with you over and over again until they take that step to use you as their photographer.

3. Share what you do with everyone
I worked with a photographer a while back who had a simple 4 page website, with very little on the site. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Online Marketing Tagged With: Building A Photography Blog