Saving the World One Pixel at a Time

On this Business Friday, I am honored to welcome Skip Cohen with today’s marketing advice:

It’s always tough to get back on track after a great weekend, but there are times when I wish I could get off track a little easier.

Guest Post by Jason Anderson, Canon Blogger

When starting a photography business, there is so much to consider that is completely unrelated to photography and actually taking pictures.  Topics range far and wide, including everything from financials to marketing, advertising, demographics, and of course, the legalities of the business.  If you don’t take measures to protect yourself and your business, things can get dangerous and fast!  It helps to have the help of an attorney for your legal needs.  It’s just like having a financial advisor, a web guru, or any one of a number of tasks that are just beyond the scope of your main craft.  However, we can’t always afford the big bucks of paid professionals, so how does one start?

The bare bones forms to have in your wheelhouse are:

1. The Model release (adult, child, and commercial)
2. The Event Contract
3. Standard Licensing Agreements

Today, let’s take a look at #1 – the Model Release

The model release is usually used in portrait sessions, and the model signs this form which allows the photographer to use their likeness in advertising, promoting and marketing their business.  Often times, the model release also includes the permission to re-sell the photographs elsewhere for commercial purposes.  These can be customized, but as always, customizing forms takes a bit of legal awareness to protect yourself and your business.

Variations on the model release include adult releases, child releases, and commercial use releases.  While the adult and child releases may be more self-explanatory, the commercial use release is a bit different.  Usually photographers who also write will have models sign the commercial variant because the images will be used to sell something else (books, magazines, eBooks, etc.).

If you are a portrait photographer, the commercial release is probably not as important to have around, but wouldn’t it help to have one in the event you do need it?  I maintain a few copies of each of these releases in my camera bag, and on my smart phone.  With advances in technology, you can even have models sign the release with their finger on your phone, and then email them a copy!  For a cool app that lets you do that, check out Easy Release for the iPhone, iPad and Android. For desktop versions, many kits are available to choose from depending on your needs and budget.

Visit Jason Anderson at his blog “Canon Blogger” for more tutorials, articles and photo nuggets!

F. Scott Fitzgerald once told Ernest Hemingway, “rich people are different from the rest of us.” “Yeah,” Hemingway replied, “they have more money.”

Making more money is the goal for most photo operations, and while some startups often know who their target market is, only a few know who their actual customers might be. What they often lack is the kind of depth of information about future clients to sustain their new enterprise, but finding new B2B clients can be easy; all it takes is some hard work. What surprises me is how many newly minted photographers are more interested in their golf game than beating the pavement to find new business. If you’re not afraid of some old-fashioned, roll-up-your-sleeves sales techniques, here are five steps for increasing your share of any market segment you choose.

Step One: Start is a geographic area that has a high concentration of potential clients and visit each business in the field you’ve targeted. Present your business card, and introduce yourself to the receptionist. Don’t be put off by any “NO SOLOCITING” signs that are there to scare of the faint of heart. Ask who’s responsible for buying photography products or services and present them with an informational package. (Oh yeah, you’ll need to develop one of these two but you can keep it simple—list of services, rate sheet, and business card.)

Step Two: Using database software or even old fashioned index cards, use information  from the cold call to prepare a list of potential client names. In addition to contact information, add impressions about your visit to a database that will form the nucleus of your target market mailing list. Send a letter or postcard to each contact informing them about your products and services. I have found that clients will hang onto postcards—especially those with photographs on them—for years.

Step Three: After a week’s gone by, call all of the people on the list. The potential client can say they’re not interested and never will be. If they say “NO,” delete that record. If they say “YES,” make the notes on their card. My experience is that 10% of the time; these calls result in appointments.

Step Four:After you make an appointment be brief and to the point. Clients usually don’t have a lot of time to spend with vendors. Tell them you’ll only take twenty minutes and when times up, prepare to leave. If they want you to stay longer, they’ll tell you. At this point, you may or may not make a sale. If not…

Step Five: After building a list of potential clients, keep in touch. Sooner or later, they’ll need your products and services. They are more likely to call someone whose name appears on their desk from time to time than “A. Nonymous.” Be sure to mail—not e-mail—reminders that you’re alive and well at least twice a year to everyone on your list. When there’s a staff change, make an appointment with the new person to get acquainted.

And yes all this takes time and is a lot of work. That’s why it’s important to remember that most important of Farace’s Rules of Business: Success is hard, failure is easy.

Joe is the author of the new book, “Studio Photography Anywhere”

I am honored to have Skip Cohen write today’s guest post. Having just returned from the WPPI show, as some of you may also have done, I think his post is especially relevant today.

After each convention or workshop most of us tend to follow the same plan. We leave totally pumped up! We’ve got new ideas in our heads and often tons of notes. We’re excited and we’re ready to start implemented them the minute we’re home, but it rarely ever happens. We get home and realize we’ve underestimated jet-lag if we’ve traveled far. We’ve underestimated how tired we are from the trip, the convention and just hanging out with new and old friends. It’s justified procrastination, as we step back, all with good intentions, just to take a break for a day or two.

Monday morning rolls around and we’re ready to jump on some of those new ideas to help grow our business. NOT – email and phone messages come first. After all, we’ve been away a few days and we need to follow up on messages and issues that came into play while we were gone.  Then, what starts out as just an hour or two to check email, becomes half the day and we still haven’t starting working on the new directions we wanted to take our business!

“Tomorrow…I’ll get started tomorrow, if I can just use today to catch up on blogs, all my messages and email!”

Well gang, you’re only human and welcome to real time life! Life just gets in the way and like so many of us you’re never going to get to those new ideas. That excitement and momentum you came home with has been trumped by life, your family, your business and the routine you were in before you left!

If you’re in the same boat with me, then we’re going to explore a series of ideas to help you through the challenges of fighting off the outside world. Harry Chapin once talked about his definition of a good day. I’m paraphrasing, but a really good day was pretty much when he got to work on the things he loved to do most, as opposed to the things he had to do and putting out other people’s fires.

Let’s start building your arsenal of things you can do to stay focused and motivated:

• Isolation!  Okay, it’s normally a pretty negative word, but in this case you need to pick an hour every day when it’s absolutely YOUR time. Shut off the phone, your computer and just close the door to any room you can just be alone in. One hour of isolation with just your thoughts! Trust me on this one – it works!
• One step at a time! You can’t do it all at once, but you can make progress with everything you’ve learned. Start by taking one idea from each speaker you’d like to implement in your business.
• Low hanging fruit?  What are the new things you want to implement that are the easiest to do?
• Keeping Inspired! Blogs, podcasts, YouTube and webinars – there’s so much out there and it’s free. The only price you pay is your time.  Look for people writing about things you find inspiring.
• Join relevant forums to help you keep in touch with the new members of your network. For example, following Skip’s Summer School my good buddy, Brent Watkins,started a facebook page for the event.  In just a couple of days 60 people, all dealing with the same challenge of getting back into the routine, joined the new community.

Be sure to visit Skip’s Blog Marketing Essentials International for tips, advice and inspiration.

The real “secret” of any successful photography business—if there is any— is the establishment of practices and policies that protect your profitability and help your operation grow. Here are nine suggestions to help insure profitability no matter what kind of photography you do.

#1. Adopt a pricing/packaging policy that ensures that you’ll make money. This seems obvious, but too often new photographers will set their prices based on what their competitors charge without analysis their own overhead and out-of-pocket costs.

#2. People not only ask me how to establish shooting rates but when and how much to raise them. I always tell them to gradually raise your prices until you get some price resistance… then stop at least for a while. That’s when you’ve reached your market level. That’s why it’s important to maintain an up-to-date Rate Sheet and Schedule of Costs that you can show or even e-mail to potential clients.

#3. Most of your work will come to you over the telephone, that’s why being able to quote rates and prices quickly and easily is important. I think it’s a good idea to keep all your studio’s forms and product information in a binder (or maybe an iPad) so that anyone answering the phone can quote price and state studio policies to potential clients.

#4. Here’s one rule you should never forget, “every exception you make to your policies costs you money.” When someone tells you “give me a deal on this one shoot, and I’ll throw a lot of work to you in the future” don’t do it because it has been mu long, sad experience that that future day never comes. And if you do make an exception, know that this will cost you money.

#5. Don’t begin any assignment without a written agreement specifying what you’re going to do and what the client is going to do, including method and timeliness of their payment.

#6. Get advance payments for all your work involving on-location photography. Ask for a 50% advance on or before the day of the shoot. I think wedding photographers should collect 100% of the amount due before the big day. More often than not, once the loving couple returns home from their honeymoon, they’re broke.

#8. Don’t sign an agreement with anyone other than the party for whom the work is being done — unless you can bill that party directly. Some photographic consultants tell you it’s OK to wait 120 days to get paid but my banker disagrees. If you’re willing to live with that kind of payment schedule, so be it, but you should be charging a high enough rate to cover the time value of the money that you’re waiting for to finally arrive.

#9. Be original; don’t be like everybody else. When that happens it reduces your photographic services to the commodity level and commodity purchases are based on price alone. All photographers are different and it’s important that we express this difference to potential clients.

Joe is the author of the new book “Studio Lighting Anywhere”and “Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography.”