3. Know your market
What is the average value of photographers work in your area? Compare and
contrast and decide where your work can fit in. Don’t forget to evaluate your
service, quality of imagery, and professionalism.
Considering Multiple Brands
This depends on a number of factors. For example, if you’re a glamour, then it
might make more sense to go with a single brand and play off its well-
deserved reputation in seeking both assignments and stock sales. Most
shooters, however, don’t enjoy that kind of status, and for them it could
make more sense to build one brand based on assignments, while a separate
brand weddings.
How you answer the phone, what you wear when you meet with clients and
prospects, the design of your work, whether or not you are punctual and
meet deadlines and, of course, your photography all result in an overall
impression of you and your business. That is your “brand.”
4. Know your client
Some people would rather pay more
for a service if it means higher
quality. Some people cannot afford
anything but the basics. Determine
what clients you want to reach and
begin arranging your price structure
from here.
5. Evaluate your investment
How much time to you put into a
portrait shoot? A wedding? Evaluate
hours of
prep, driving, shooting, editing, deve
lopment, service, quality, and
interaction. When you have an idea
of your hours of investment per
shoot, divide your price by this
number. How much are you really
making by the hour? What is your
6. Determine your expenses
Every photographer has expenses above and beyond the time spent in a
shoot. This is where many photographers fall short of “making it” in the
business; they have not learned to identify the additional expenses of
running this business outside jobs.
Equipment costs.
Time spent.
Services.
Presentation and packaging.
Insurance.
Unless your jobs can cover this overhead, you will be hurting for a way to
increase your income. Add up this number to get a ball park figure of
additional coverage from your jobs.
7. Establish your jobs
Total your hourly rate, and your expenses. This is
the number you need to shoot for when pricing
your work. After you have totaled this number,
divide it by how many jobs you would like per
year. This final number is what you ought to
charge for your sessions and shoots. Of course,
you may need to adjust your pricing more or less,
or increase the number of jobs you aim for. At
this rate, you will be able to target the pricing of
your work to maximize your overall profitability.
8. Branding why is it important
1. LOGO: It’s hard to argue against the importance of a logo. In non-visual fields it’s often
what buyers first identify with in a brand. In the photo industry it plays second fiddle to
your images, but it’s still an important visual cue and tie-together for your clients. Also
watermarking your work is very important
(questions)
2. Build relationships! This is so important for photographers to understand. Building
lasting relationships with existing clients can lead to more clients (aka their friends and
family), which will save you money on Marketing! A happy client will come back to you
and want you to shoot their next portraits, birthdays, weddings, family photos, etc.
Building relationships will also help bring in new customers without spending a fortune on
marketing and trying to locate new customers. Be consistent by delivering value and the
experience to all your clients all the time. Be quick at replying to customers and getting
back with them. Make sure each client leaves the photo shoot thrilled and happy with
how it went.
9. Branding who is your client?
What is your ideal client. Many people say this,
but it’s because it works. What do they do for a
living? Where do they live? What are their
interests and hobbies? This may sound silly but
the more you define that person the more you
can figure out just where your target market is.
My first time around I had done this step but I
still had a huge disconnect between that person
and my brand, it was because I wasn’t targeting
my brand enough.
10. Create a Slogan
It’s best to do this after you have have a very
clear understanding of your target market and
your brand for your photography business. Then
it becomes a game of trying to convey your
message in as short of a slogan as possible, but it
needs to tell the prospective client exactly what
you want it to.
11. It’s definitely a brainstorm session,
the more time you take to write
down different ideas the more you
will fine tune it and come up with
something that fits.
Since doing these two things, finding
my target market and setting my
branding, I have seen so much more
interest in my photography business.
13. What is PancakeApp
Simple, Easy, Awesome Business Suite!
Pancake is your app for invoicing and billing
clients online.
Manage your projects from proposal to
payment.
What can Pancake do for you?
14. Online Invoicing
Invoice clients like it ain't nothing and get
back to doing something work! After all,
you just want to get paid right?
Send invoices with one click
Once you've created your invoice, it's super
easy to send a customized email to your
client with a link to their invoice. They can
then pay it immediately, no waiting, just
paid.
15. Project Management
Generally Project Management is probably the least
interesting part of your day, but Pancake does a great job
of making it quick and easy. You won't see any Gantt
charts in here, just simple milestones, tasks and time
tracking, which can be turned into invoices with one click!
Keep track of your tasks
Tame the beast! With simple to use project management,
keep track of what's important - getting tasks
accomplished. When those tasks are done you can mark
them as complete to show progress!
16. Time Tracking
You might tell yourself you'll remember how
much time you've spent, or you might have a
whole application specifically for time tracking, or
even use a dashboard widget. Stop all of that
and use Pancake's crazy-simple timer, built right
into your tasks!
Use the timer to track your time easily
Track time spent on a task with a start / stop
timer that is smart enough to deal with you going
offline for a bit.
17. Online Proposals
Win new business like a super hero! Pancake Proposals allows you
to create awesome, gorgeous proposals swiftly and without
hassle. Your client can view the proposal online and download a
PDF of the proposal, accept it on the spot and get on with it!
Send proposals to your client
Send links to the proposals to your client and see when they view
them. The client can then accept or reject the proposal, giving
you a chance to update things and send it again. You can keep
doing that dance until an agreement is reached, without having to
scramble around trying to find old emails.
Drag and drop proposal builder
Pancake hates complicated interfaces, so Proposals are ridiculously
easy to work with. Click around to insert text, WYSIYG content,
estimates and new sections or pages. You can drag and drop stuff
around to re-order it.
18. Client Access Area
Clients can be crazy and needy, we get that! Through a simple
interface you can interact with your clients, show progress and
hours logged on tasks, share files for approval, brainstorm ideas
as well as allow them to view all their invoices and proposals.
Pancake makes CRM easy!
Give your clients access to their own dashboard
Once a client is logged in they can see everything that is going on in
one place. They will stop pestering you for progress reports
because they can see exactly what is happening.
Your client and only your client
Having your client spy on your every move is handy, but allowing
others to see this however would be bad news. The Kitchen
(Client Access Area) is protected with a password so your
information can be kept secret.
19. File Delivery
Everyone can use some muscle! Why sit around waiting for your
client to pay, just so you can email them files. When they pay...
Pancake will deliver the files for you! It's like a nicer, friendlier file
hostage situation.
Attach files for delivery
When you create an invoice for a client you can attach files to that
invoice. As soon as the invoice is marked as paid Pancake will
provide your client with a download link so they can download
them.
Stop waiting for payment!
So this Friday night - rather than waiting for payment - send your
client their invoice and then go to that Justin Bieber concert you
were so excited about... or drink beer. Your choice. Whatever you
do, you don't have to wait on your client.
20. So, so much more.
There's just so much that Pancake can do, here's some more for you
to peruse.
Self Hosted
Pancake lives on your server, not ours and unlike a hosted service
there are no limits to what you can do with it. Pancake has a very
simple installer and takes just a few minutes to get up and
running.
Super Customizable
They designed Pancake to be really easy to customize. This means
you can make it look exactly like the rest of your brand. No more
having to use templates that look like everyone else out there,
customize the theme to fit your needs :D
(Questions before Video)
