Once you get your photography business up and running, and a few clients start coming through your doors, the business side becomes easier. As you long as you provide great customer service, and market in the same way over and over again, the business seems to run itself.

While this is great and allows you to focus in on what you love – photographing – it can also be harmful to the future of your business. Business “happens” at that point instead of evolves based on what you love. And if you end up working with clients and project you don’t like, you can slowly see the fun drain from your life.

That’s one of the best reasons to own your own business. Instead of letting this happen, take a step back once in awhile and reevaluate your business. Every business needs a bit of maintenance and fine-tuning along the way to keep things running smoothly, and to keep the passion in what you do.

Here are 18 ways you can quickly fine-tune your business.

1. Raise your rates to match your experience. The more experience you have, the more you can charge. Don’t be afraid to raise your rates, especially your hourly and ala carte pricing.

2. Evaluate your packages. If you love or hate parts of your current packages, change them. Make sure your packages give you what you want in sales, and keep the customers happy by providing what they request the most.

3. Focus on a niche. If you’ve started out a generalist, what do you love the most? Find ways to bring in more clients doing what you love. If you focus on it, it will come a lot easier.

4. Look at your financial reports. Whether you choose to keep the books yourself with a program like Wave Accounting, or hire an accountant and bookkeeper, spend some time every few weeks looking at your financial reports. Look at your total sales, accounts receivables, and how much cash you have on hand. The only way to grow in the future is to know where you are coming from.

5. Find a mentor or two. One of our greatest assets when we first started our wedding business was finding several other wedding photographers to mentor with. We met monthly to talk about the business, marketing, strategies, and anything else that came up. We could never have done all we did without the mentorship and friendship that came from that community. [Read more…]