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Successful Photographer Marketing, Art and Business Photography Information. Learn Money Making Ideas For Your Business!!Welcome to Successful Photographer. Download the inaugural issue of the newsletter to check get a taste of what Successful Photographer is all about. You will find this information inspiring and essential for making your photography business profitable. As photographers we have learned how to market and do sales from other photographers who learned from other photographers before them. This has led to less than innovative thinking as the ideas get watered down through the generations. There are some cutting edge marketing and business photographers who have begun to reach outside the industry to make our marketing business and sales more effective. Successful Photographer will be tapping into these photographers and others with a proven track record to supply you with new ideas to make you more money. In addition, I'll be poking around in other industries to find ideas that can be adapted to your photography business. There are people in the hairstyling arena that have great ideas on outstanding customer service, carpet cleaners who have great marketing ideas and direct mail marketing gurus who have ideas on follow-up campaigns to keep up with your past clients and generate income easier than trying to find new business. We'll also be producing audio interviews with business, marketing and artistic experts so you can turn your - "Stuck in Traffic Time" into "Car College Time" so you can learn while you commute. Download the inaugral PDF and check below for a taste of this month's and previous month's offerings. From: Bill Hurter <bhurter@rfpublishing.com> This is a great little newsletter. b bill hurter | editor | 310.451.8506 x319 | fax: 310.395.9058 | bhurter@rfpublishing.com Rangefinder Publishing Co. You can subscribe by clicking here. There's no obligation to give Successful Photographer Newsletter a try. You'll be glad you did! Successful Photographer - June 2008Page 1Making Price Irrelevant By John DiJulius We know customers are not always right; however, it is critical to train employees to never blame them. Sadly, Page 3It’s All About Sales By Doug Box Having photographic skills is not the only answer! Yes, you have to be able to put an image on paper, but how good the image is isn’t directly proportional to your profitability. We all know mediocre photographers that are successful and great photographers that are poor. Marketing is important, so are business skills. But it’s sales ability that accounts for the success of profitable studios. I am studying a book and tape series called...... Page 4Publicity Corner - Mistakes You Can't Afford To Make When You Write A Press Release. By Paul Hartunian It's a real shame. If you open most any newspaper in the country you'll find at least one story you know really Page 5Extraction Using Contrast in Channels - Photoshop Tutorial By Bob Coates Here is a tutorial that always gets oohs and aahhhs when I show this at Photoshop seminars. It makes it much easier to extract a figure from the background for placing subjects on different backgrounds. If you are extracting people for a commercial event basis you'll want to go to green screen. But for the occasional - say up to 10-20 extractions a week you can save some real time doing it this way...... Page 7Book Nook For this months book review we’ll go back to a book written in 1992 and re-released in 2002. I like books with staying power. Many times as we get further into our businesses we start to loose the reason that we decided to become photographers in the first place. So I’m going to go outside the industry to the book The Artist’s Way – A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (Tenth Anniversary Edition) by Julia Cameron. Photographers are not the only ones who get stuck...... Page 8In Shape Mentally and Physically By Bob Coates Running a business can be taxing mentally and physically. We tend to take on too much at any one time, trying Successful Photographer - May 2008Page 1Marketing Process By Doug box Why marketing your company is a process, not an afterthought, creating a total experience for customers that you must implement continuously. This total experience "wows" the customer and guarantees much repeat and referral business. The statement found in the above headline is very profound and, when fully understood, describes the..... Page 2Is an investment in customer service really worth it? By john DiJulius In an article titled Customer Satisfaction and Stock Prices: High Returns, Low Risk, author Claes Fornell uses the result of extensive research and studies to prove that an increase or decrease in customer satisfaction not only greatly impacts each individual organization, but also has a significant impact on the future health of the economy. Fornell is the director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, a leading indicator of consumer behavior measuring...... Page 4Publicity Corner - The Value of a good press release. By Bob Coates People often don’t understand the value of a press release being printed. It is marketing exposure for which you just can’t pay. It appears as if an article has been written about your business and people give much more Page 5You Can’t Win Them All By Bob Coates A little while back I swapped emails with this mother of the groom after they had been to visit and chat about the couple’s wedding photography plans. While I didn’t convert this person I thought that the exchange was pertinent to sales and selling. It’s a great reminder that not everyone is your client and you shouldn’t be afraid to say so. Enjoy the exchange… After I was done being upset about it, I did. “Hi Bob, I must admit when you told me how much you charge for shock. I find this entire business...... Page 6Great Tips for Photoshop Users by Bob Coates 1. Upgrade to Photoshop CS3. There are a great number of improvements that make it an extremely worthwhile Page 7Book Nook I’ve become a big fan of Dan Kennedy and his marketing and sales ideas. This month lets take a look at one of Page 8In The Sales Room Empathy VS. Sympathy By Cheryl Ridgeway The old saying in our industry is “If they cry they buy.” Well, sometimes customer that “Cried, But Did Not Buy”. The client was shown a slideshow and literally cried at how beautiful the images were. Absolutely loved them, but said she just could not afford the photographs at.....
Successful Photographer - April 2008Page 1Systematizing Your Sales Processes - Cheryl Ridgeway Procedures for your type of sales allows Page 2Answers to the question “Can I have the files on disk??” Part 2 - By Bob Coates Editor’s Note: This is part two of the series continued from the March Edition of Successful Photographer Newsletter. Page 3Randy - By Bob Coates This is a bittersweet story about acting on your instincts, not being afraid to approach someone of character you would like to photograph. It started at a bar. I was having an afternoon cocktail and in walked a man who I felt had a tremendous amount of living etched in his face. I introduced myself and asked.... Page 5Publicity Corner 3 istakes you can’t afford to make when you writing press releases.- By Paul Hartunian You have the story of a lifetime. Editors are going to drop their jaws in amazement. You just can't wait to get the press release on their desk. You fire up the fax machine, hit the go button and then rush over to your phone to wait for the calls. And nothing happens. You check your confirmation sheet, 500 faxes sent out successfully, but still... Page 7Book Nook - Create A Volunteer Sales Force - By Jay Statland This month’s book shows techniques to create a volunteer Page 8You Can Make Excuses or You Can Make Money, but You Can’t Do Both - By Doug Box The choice is yours! You can make money or you can make excuses, but you can’t do both. While reading the book, Don’t Worry Make Money by Richard Carlson I came across this little saying. Saying, it should be a mantra for all photographers! I think about the instructors I’ve studied with and all the advice they recommended. Then I think of the excuses I used on MYSELF. Months, sometimes years later I would put the advice to use, after I ran out of excuses. “You need to raise your prices 10% per year. “ I was told by.....
Successful Photographer - March 2008Page1Keeping A Client For Life -By Deborah Lynn Ferro It is much easier to keep a current client than get a new one. It is important to retain your clients by keeping them happy so they will work for you by referring their friends and family. The reason most clients don’t continue doing business with you is not because they are unhappy with your services but..... Page 2Answers to the question “Can I have the files on disk?? Wedding Version - Part One - By Bob Coates This e-mail came in from Bronze member Tom Harrington....... Page 5Incredibly Dumb Things Smart Business Owners Do When They Try To Get Free Publicity - By Paul Hartunian So many people fail to get publicity because they do incredibly dumb things that make them look like amateurs. This article will describe them all and tell you how to avoid them. The Code - There’s an unwritten “code of ethics” out there that dictates the guidelines the media expects savvy publicists to follow. Certain do’s and don’ts that keep the amateurs out of the “club”. More than a few well-intentioned businessmen owners trying to.... Page 7Book Nook - By Bob Coates This month we’ll take a look at a book that I believe can have a massive change on your life. As the blurb on the cover from Harvey Mackay says, “If you could only read one book this year, you have it in your hands.” I agree one-hundred percent. I’ve been through some amazing changes since starting to implement concepts presented in the book. Oh, I guess I should give you the title. It’s The Success Principles ™ How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be - by Jack Canfield. You may recognize Canfield’s name as he is the cocreator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul ® series of books. In The Success Principles Canfield shares ideas that he has learned, studied and taught for over thirty years. I’ve been a huge fan of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill re-reading it many times over the years. I look at Jack’s book as Think and Grow Rich on steroids. Many success books downplay the idea.... Page 8Think Like a Business Person - Doug Box Quit thinking like a photographer, think like an entrepreneur! You are not just a photographer, your a marketer whose product is photography! Your Goal is not great photographs, but great profits. If you remember your goal is to make money, you will run your business differently. You will look at each job with it’s profit margin in mind. Sure you want beautiful photography, but without profit, you won’t be in business to provide beautiful photography! I see too many photographers who can....
Successful Photographer - February 2008Page1Want to Make More Money - Work Less Hours By Bob Coates As small (or large) photography business owners we tend to take on all the jobs from photography, Photoshop retouching, designing marketing materials, taking out the trash to sales and more. This tends to eat up some serious time. But, because we love what we do we may not consider most of it work until serious burnout occurs. I didn’t realize how much I was... Page 3Making Price Irrelevant - Customers are not Always right; however, they are NEVER wrong! By John DiJulius We know customers are not always right; however, it is critical to train employees to never blame them. Sadly, many front-line employees love to make the customer wrong. I always get frustrated when, as a customer, I am told, “No, we can’t do that; nope, we never do that either; sorry, we don’t do that.” Instead of telling me what you can’t do, just tell me what you can do! At John Robert’s Spa, we have been guilty of...... Page 4Publicity Corner - 14 Publicity Tips You Can’t Live Without By Paul Hartunian How do you best promote yourself, your business or your cause using publicity? The list could easily be 100 items long. But 14 items stand out that can make yours a winning publicity campaign. 1. Establish a Consistent Look - A great way to get your release pulled and looked at first, is if the editor becomes familiar with....... Page 7Book Nook Reviews This month we’ll take a look at a couple of marketing books The first is Purple Cow by Seth Godin. According to Forbes.com, “Seth Goodin says that the key to success is to find a way to stand out - to be the Purple Cow in a field..... Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckworth goes back to 1997 but the ideas expounded upon are just as relevant today. The book is written so you can take small bites at a time with short case-histories and digest them. It’s great for the night stand to grab a story............. Page 8Sales Building Strategies By Doug box The Marketing Process
Successful Photographer - January 2008Page 1 Telephone Ettiquite By Bob Coates How you answer your phone determines what many people think about your business. Many of my friends give me grief about how I answer my phone. Page 3How to Design the Perfect Love Portrait! Creating Picture Perfect Engagement Session! Engagement sessions are not only financially lucrative, but a great way to strengthen the bond between the photographer and the client by working together prior to the big wedding day! The images the couple selects will tell the photographer the style they most connect with and help determine their most photographic angles and features. Depending on your style of coverage, it can be..... Page 4Are Your Press Releases Not Getting Response? You have the story of a lifetime. Editors are going to drop their jaws in amazement. You just can’t wait to get the press release on their desk. You fire up the fax machine, hit the go button and then rush over to your phone to wait for the calls. And nothing happens. You check your confirmation sheet, 500 faxes sent out successfully, but still nothing happens. Chances are you’ve made one of the 3 fatal mistakes people often make when...... Page 6Artist's Letter Symphonies, movies, plays, novels, songs--all tend to have a climax. Life and love have climaxes. Climax is one of the essential life experiences. Without climax, nothing seems to get anywhere. Climax represents the successful completion of the story, the denouement of the plot, the reason for all the effort, the snapshot at the height of the action. Page 6Seven Ways to Maximize Profits 1. Segment Customer Lists Page 7Book Nook Reviews The two books I want to talk about in this issue are actually very simple reads in that they don’t take a lot of time to read. I do think they stimulate lots of thought and supply you with many ideas to help you grow in your business and your personal life. The second book is from Roy H. Williams called The Wizard of Ads - Turning Words into Magic And Dreamers into Millionares. Because I can’t explain it better I’ll let you read the publisher’s message.... Page 8World Class Service - Or Lack Of It I had the pleasure of traveling with my wife and another couple to the new wine region of Temecula, CA. We stayed at what I would consider a world class resort. The rooms were set up as individual Casitas in the vineyards. The layout was superb with no adjoining walls, private patios with table and chairs, fabulous landscaping and beautiful decor. (the vineyard comes right to the buildings) Here now is the experience. Upon arriving.......
Successful Photographer - December 2007We normally don't show you an entire artilce on the web site but this artcle from John Hartman is a great value and we don't want you to miss out on his limited time offer to readers of the Successful Photographer newsletter. Page 1Increasing Your Sales Using Premium Products There are three ways to raise the average sale at your studio. 1) Sell more photographs Selling more photographs can work up to a point, if suggestive selling techniques not been fully applied. If your clients are not buying all the traditional photographic images they need; wall portraits, gift images, wallets, etc., then you and your staff should be working on maximizing this part of your sales process. Projection selling, showing studio samples, speculation printing and good old fashioned face-to-face questioning and offering solutions for your clients' needs are effective ways to sell more photographs. Raising your prices is another way to increase average sales. Increasing the price of your photography needs to be done with a keen eye to the value of the products and services you are providing, along with an honest evaluation of the strength and size of the competition in your market area. If you are in a highly competitive market you may not be able to charge as much as someone who is in a less competitive area, everything else being equal. Raising prices without a commensurate increase value to the customer will most likely have an negative effect on your portrait volume. Since any session volume decrease will at least partially, and in some cases completely offset sales gains made from a price increase, this is generally not a recommended method for growing a business. If you feel your sales efforts have been maximized, and are comfortable with your pricing structure, a third method to increasing average and total sales is to provide your clients with new products and services that can be added to their existing order. These products should be considered add-ons and not replacements for existing products; you don't want to hear, "Oh, let's get this for grandma instead of the 11x14." If you can develop new products that are desirable and do not cannibalize your existing sale, you can raise your average order without resorting to high-pressure sales tactics or business-killing price increases. I've been conducting a four-year experiment at my studio to test this business idea. In that time, I have not had a price increase, but rather have sought to grow studio sales entirely through new products, pricing incentives and merchandising strategies that make it easier for my clients to buy more, and difficult (but not impossible) to buy just a little. The results have been dramatic. In that time, our average senior portrait sale has risen from $733 to $1121, or nearly 53%. This increase has not been accomplished at the expense of volume, as we are still as busy as we can be during our senior season. The vast majority of the sales increase can be attributed to the continual development of new add-on products and services that are merchandised in ways other than just including them in the price list. For example, they could be bundled with the higher-end products, or discounted on a sliding scale all the way to zero, depending on the size of the order. They could be offered as incentives for purchasing a wall portrait, or for buying one of the largest packages. The secret to the success of this selling strategy is to create products that are easy to make, inexpensive to produce, highly attractive and that do not compete with any existing product. Because they cannot be directly compared to anything on your price menu, you can place a relatively high retail value on them. Of course, you never sell them for that amount; the only way the customer gets them is when they are offered as a sweetener to buy what you want them to buy. And when they do get them, they must feel like they are getting a great value. It's a "Win/Win" situation on steroids. Remember; people do not stop buying from you because they run out of money—they stop buying because they run out of things to buy. (And whose fault is that?) Here's an example we developed a few years ago that continues to work year after year. We created a unique, four-image product that is made using QuickMats, our digital matting software. This 4x12 mat is prebuilt and customized for easy use. The four openings are square on purpose, first to take the vertical/horizontal decisions away from the client, the salespeople and the production staff, and second to distance the images from the original, full-crop color images. The images are black and white; for ease in production (no color balance fine-tuning, for example), and again, to keep Mom from substituting it for Grandma's wall portrait. The mat contains a text layer that we add the client's name for extra personalization. The image is mounted to artboard and framed in an inexpensive but handsome black metal frame from Framatic (www.framatic.com). The frame ships with glass, so we avoid the need to spray the print. It comes with a desk stand or can be wall mounted. Other incentive products you can offer include portrait albums, photo jewelry, art canvases, note cards, photo handbags, posters and single-image QuickMats products. You may not sell many of these products simply by including them on your price list - but you could see significant sales improvements by offering them either as either free or discounted bonuses when your customer buying criteria are met. You can get this 4x12 QuickMats template free by downloading it here (WARNING: 17MB download; cable/DSL only). The download is a .zip file that contains a folder with the 4x12 mat template and a short QuickTime instructional movie on how to use the mat file with your client photos (click here to download the latest version of QuickTime for Mac and Windows). The folder also includes a custom action you can use to get an excellent black and white conversion from your color images. You do not need to have QuickMats3 to be able to use this template; however, you will not be able to change the color or texture in the mat. This exclusive Successful Photographer download also includes a special offer to get QuickMats3 plus QuickMats Album at a $70 savings now until January 5th. Click here to find out more about QuickMats3. And when you're ready to order, click here to access the special offer. Be sure to enter the discount code hartman123 on the order form and click the Update button to get your $70 savings. Success in photography requires constant refinement of all the major elements of the business; marketing, product development, merchandising and selling. Offering something your competitors don't can give you a marketing edge at the same time you build your market share and your sales. Check here for an article by Bob Coates about Hartman's QuickMats 3 written for Professional Photographer Magazine Page 4Publicity Corner -Hot Publicity Techniques That Are 100% Legitimate! As in any business, once you’ve been the publicity business for a while you start to discover those little insider secrets that make life so much easier. Those little tricks of the trade that typically give the old pros an unfair advantage. Page 5Web Site Opitmization - A primer on what the search engines are looking for and why. And, how it can help you. In the olden days of launching a web site (only seven to twelve years ago). You could build a web site and people would find you because there weren’t that many sites on the world wide web. When my first site was launched in 1996 there was immediate response. Within days I had a job from Norway. Never met the people just email contact and a certified check. Additionally an author saw my work and wanted to ad some of my images to books for photographers from Rotovision Publishing. No optimization, nothing special to help people find my site. This doesn’t happen the...... Page 7Book Nook Reviews This month I want to share a classic. Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. This is a book that I read and reread at least once a year. It was first published in 1937 but the lessons between the covers are timeless. Even if you haven’t read the book yet I’m sure you’ve heard..... No B.S. Wealth Attraction for Entrepreneurs - The Ultimate No Holds Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners Guide To Really Getting Rich by Dan Kennedy This book by Dan Kennedy can change the way you think about money. As artists we tend have a tendency to Next MonthTelephone Ettiquette is important to the life of your business. How you answer your phone determines what people think about your business. It seems like something basic that everyone should know but there are a number of businesses still answering their phones with a grumpy “HELLO?” This will be an artcle you'll want to read and share with anyone who answers your ofice phones!
Successful Photographer - November 2007Page 1Defending Your Prices Page 3Outside the Photographers Box Page 4Publicity Corner Most people ruin their chances of getting publicity by violating the unspoken rules of publicity. 1. Never Leave A Job Half Done. Don’t decide half way through the... Page 7Book Nook Reviews Four hour work week by Tim Ferris This is a book worth reading. Can you take Tim Ferris’ ideas and use them all right away? Probably not! And, I’ll wager all of them not in this lifetime because we tend to believe that we can’t get to a situation like his so of course we never will. Can you grab bits, pieces and nuggets, work with them and make your business life better? You bet you can. Page 8Staying in Business After showing these images to family and friends, I was getting requests for prints. Someone said,” I’ll buy some cards if you make them.” I did just that and a new business venture as well as a new marketing tool was born. Next MonthJohn Hartman shares some ideas in preperation of the next Photographers marketing Bootcamp at Harah’s in Las Vegas. I’ll be attending the Bootcamp and look forward to seeing you there. See Successful-Photographer.com for more details. The Internet can be a very strong place to market your work if you understand the way the search engines present their results. The first in a two part article on getting good search engine positioning.
Successful Photographer - October 2007Page 1The 80-20 Rule Page 3Outside the Photographers Box Page 4The Art of Narrative Albums Page 7Book Nook Reviews Page 8Staying in Business Next MonthLearning to say thank you to your clients in the proper fashion can help increase your referral business. Helene Glassman will share some ideas on how to accomplish that with no muss or fuss using your images to boot. The 4-Hour Work Week - How Timothy Ferris changed from letting his business run him to him barely needing to run his business. The art of abandoning being busy for being productive.
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NEWSLETTER || CONTRIBUTORS || CALENDAR || MEDIA || CONTACT || SHOPPING CART || HOME Successful-Photographer - Bob Coates Photography, Inc877-746-8646 |
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