Starting A Photography Business - 5 Key Areas to Focus On For Success!
I recorded this week's episode quite a while ago, before the pandemic hit the news in any kind of big way.
There's no question that these are strange times, so naturally I went back and forth a bit about whether it was a good time yet to share this!
But I decided to go ahead and publish it, because if you have been thinking of starting a photography business, then this could be an ideal time for you to lay the foundation.
There is literally SO MUCH you can be doing right now to build momentum in your business and ensure you're ready to hit the ground running when this current crisis passes (and yes, it will pass)
This post will give you 5 key areas you should focus on when you’re starting a photography business - the ones that will help make sure that you are a success.
Grab your Income & Expenses Tracker here!
Links mentioned in this episode & other useful resources!
► Am I ready to start a new photography business?
► How to Brand Your Photography Business:
► Free Income & Expenses Spreadsheet
► How to Create a Photography Business Website
► 8 Steps to Creating Your Photography Business Portfolio
► The Photography Biz Start Up Kit
Here’s a mini re-cap of the main takeaways from the video.
Key Area #1 Focus on your WHY
The very first thing you should focus on in your business if you want to set yourself up for success is to make sure you understand and articulate WHY your business exists. Now, I know your business probably exists to make money, but I mean why your business exists for your customers. Why should they buy from YOU?
Ask yourself the following questions:
What difference am I trying to make to people through my photography business?
What belief inspired me to create this business?
Why should this business even exist?
What you can also do (and I strongly recommend you do!) is you create what is known as an Ideal Customer Avatar (ICA)
Your ICA represents your one single PERFECT customer. This person is your customer that would love your services and your products, and you would love to work with!
So grab a sheet of paper and start thinking about your ICA. What age are they? Are they male or female? Where do the work? Hang out? Earn? Work as? Do they have children? Are they married? etc etc
It does take time to dive into the WHY and WHO for your business like this, but it is SO incredibly worth it, that I recommend everyone does this, regardless of how long they have been in business (in fact, this is an exercise that I repeat every single year!)
Key Area #2 Build A Relevant Portfolio
A portfolio is simply a group or collection of images that showcase your photography work and style. You don’t have to be in business to create a portfolio (many people do this just to showcase their best work) but if you ARE in business, it’s a must.
Prospective clients want to be able to see what they’ll get when they purchase a session from you. We all love different styles and types of photography, so a photographer that I love may be very different from what another person will love.
You can find out more about creating a photography portfolio here.
Your portfolio should showcase images that represent your style for your clients. Although you might take wonderful landscapes, if you are trying to build a family photography business, I wouldn’t include these. Similarly, if you take lifestyle / documentary images of your family, but your paid sessions will be all posed, portrait sessions, you don’t want to include your lifestyle images.
Start by pulling together some images for your portfolio and grouping them together, or if you already have a portfolio, can you update it to make it even better? (And if you are looking for somewhere to host and share it, check out SmugMug, that’s who I use and love!)
#3 Create a Photography Business Website with Clear Message
Your business needs a “homebase” - in other words, where you can direct people to find out more about your services, check out your portfolio to see if you are right for them, maybe see your prices, and just generally find out more about you.
Now, don’t get me wrong, your website doesn’t need to fancy, or have a lot of bells and whistles. But it does need to clearly tell people who you are and what you do.
Luckily, creating a good-looking website these days could not be simpler! You need four things to get this set up professionally - a domain name, a platform, a place to host your website, and a theme to make it pretty.
There are lots of options available to you, but if I were to do this again, I’d go with Bluehost for hosting (they also thrown in a domain name so you get both for the price of one!) and use Wordpress as my platform. If you want to keep it scrappy, you can use a free theme to get started - you can always upgrade to a paid theme later.
I’m not going to go into the nuts and bolts of creating a website in this post, but you can out more about how to create a photography business website here!
#4 Make sure your business is profitable!
Making sure you price your services and products correctly is key to making money in your photography business! So many people going into business charge ridiculously low and unsustainable prices when they first start out, for for many people, actually means you are paying your clients for letting you take their photos :-)
Always make sure you understand the true cost of doing business, and that you cover these costs in your sessions. You want to think about things like the cost of that wonderful website you just created, the editing software you use, camera deprecation, your time, your experience and the costs of any goods sold. When you start actually writing these costs down, you’ll begin to see how much you need to charge to make a profit.
If pricing is a struggle for you, then we include our Path to Profit workshop inside our Photo Biz Start Up Kit, which will walk you through how to know exactly how much to charge. (plus give you things like sample contracts, marketing ideas and more!)
#5 - Focus on Word of Mouth Advertising
When you first start out in business, you probably don’t have a lot of money to spend on advertising, which is why you might want to focus first on word-of-mouth advertising.
At it’s heart, this is a form of advertising where satisfied customers tell other people how much they loved a service or product. Although we can’t force our happy customers to go out and recommend us to the world, we can nudge them in the right direction.
Think about using things like:
Sharing sneak peeks on social media and tagging your client
Giving your clients images sized for social media ready for sharing
Giving them a coupon code to give to their friends
Rewarding existing customers for referrals (for example by providing them with extra prints or session credits)
Providing an online gallery for clients to view images and encouraging them to share the link with their family and friends
Over to you!
Now I want to hear from all of you! Which of these areas have you already focused on when starting your photography business, and what you are going to be focusing on next? Let me know in the comments below.
Also, don’t forget to download that free spreadsheet. Just go here to grab it.
Now I know it might have felt a little weird to be talking about starting a business in these crazy times, but if there's one thing I truly believe, it's that we should keep pushing onwards toward reaching our goals - and my hope is that this helps you do just that!
