Hey, who’s the dweeb with the camera?

Give a copy to a friend This report if free. Do not pay for it. Impress your friends, colleagues and customers by giving them a copy. This report must NOT be sold. Every effort was made to find and eliminate all obvious errors in this report. However, I am human. I make mistakes. If you spot any, please let me know so that they can be corrected. The strategies and techniques contained in this report can be used to generate an enormous number of photography customers to your photography business. Of course, what you do with these strategies is up to you. Because we don’t know each other, I don’t know your skills and don’t know how persistent and commit-ted you’ll be. I cannot make any guarantees. My lawyer made me tell you this. Kalem Aquil - CEO

Table of Contents

• Strategy Tip #1 – Shoot quality photography.

• Strategy Tip #2 – Focus on the needs of your customer.

• Strategy Tip #3 – Understand marketing.

• Strategy Tip #4 – Show your work.

• Strategy Tip #5 – Understand pricing.

• Strategy Tip #6 – Do the research.

• Strategy Tip #7 – Overdeliver.

• Strategy Tip #8 – Leave behinds.

• Strategy Tip #9 – Self-promotion.

• Strategy Tip #10 – Use ebooks.

• Strategy Tip #11 – Greeting cards and calendars.

• Strategy Tip #12 – Get into the stock photography market.

• Strategy Tip #13 – Working with local businesses.

• Strategy Tip #14 – Start and operate an online photo service.

Hi, I’m Kalem Aquil, CEO of Marketing-for-Photographers-and-Photography.com. This is the information that I wish I had when I first tried to be successful in a photography business - the first time. I cannot and do not claim to be an expert. Neither do I believe that ‘experience is the best teacher.’ It isn’t, necessarily. It’s just often, the most ‘expensive’ teacher. Some of the lessons I have learned are contained in this report. I do not make a six figure income with my photography business. I do, however, make money with my photography. And I still have fun shooting photography. Years ago I became a ‘professional’ photographer after years as an amateur photographer that had taken many photography courses, seminars and workshops. I knew photography very well. I didn’t know very much about business, however. My ignorance cost me a great deal of money and I eventually lost my love of photography as well as my photography business. Taking photos for the love of photography is one thing. Taking photos because I had bills to pay was something else entirely. I know now what I should have known then. This report contains some of the lessons learned that are applicable in today’s photography market. I’m hoping this report will inspire and encourage you to try strategies that may be outside of tech-niques you are used to doing. If increasing awareness of your photography, of you as a photogra-pher, and of your availability, is important to you, this report is for you. When it comes to marketing photography, many photographers have a tendency to stay in a com-fortable rut. We continue doing what we have always done – while often expecting different results! Some of us photographers, who consider ourselves to be amateurs, eventually venture into the busi-ness of photography. All too often, we think that all we have to do is have some business cards printed, pass them out, and wait for the telephone to ring. Unknowingly, we set ourselves up for fail-ure and a major letdown! This report outlines some of the steps I took to dramatically increase my presence as a photographer and to successfully make money with my photography. The steps mentioned in this report work for me, for my lifestyle and produce the most results for the least amount of time and money (if neces-sary) investment. Let me be clear: I put a great deal of time into being successful at marketing my photography. However, my time is spent doing marketing activities that provide me the most profit-able return on (time and money) invested. The photography niches that are my favorites and my most profitable are portrait photography and stock photography. I have established a very good reputation and good income from these photogra-phy niches. This report offers strategies that I successfully use to market my photography and in-crease my exposure for my photography (and photography business). You may not use every strategy listed in this report. Heck, you may not like any of the strategies in this report! However, the strategies listed are successful strategies that work for me and my lifestyle.

All the techniques I describe here involve work – of course, that’s a good thing. Your competi-tion will be too lazy to do the work involved. They think that people/customers will automati-cally want them because their photography work is so ‘great!’ When you do the work, your photography business successes leap ahead of theirs. The majority of the strategies in this report are free and easy to accomplish. Most of them re-quire time, not money. Some require resources such as web sites, photo managing software, and books. This report also lists such resources – most of them are FREE! About 75% of this report describes strong, solid, verifiable and easily doable techniques which build a solid, long-term business. About 15% deals with dealing with people that you don’t know (you meet them in public places – I have ok people skills, but, I don’t always like to use them). And about 10% describes gimmicks. Don’t ignore the gimmicks. They often work bril-liantly. In operating my photography business, I attempt to automate as much of the business as possi-ble. This works for me in the photography niches that I prefer. However, my type of automation would not necessarily work for a successful wedding photography business, for example. I also make extensive use of technology to keep my photography work and contact info in front of people. For example, in addition to a photography website, online photo galleries, etc. I make my own t-shirts, calendars, post cards, greeting cards and other leave-behinds (items and/or literature with your contact info that is left after you make contact with people). How to start a photography business is a very large topic. Whole books have been written on just the smallest aspects of it. This report is an example of one photographer’s lessons learned. This report really doesn’t include anything new or any ‘secrets.’ I am simply sharing strategies that are successful for me. Don’t take these strategies for granted because they seem familiar. Take action. They actually work. More importantly, they will give you ideas for greater strategies specifically for your own photography business. Other successful photographers use these strategies successfully. So, why don’t you? At the end of the report, there is a list of resources for photographers chosen specifically for amateur photographers and experienced photographers looking to increase their exposure and the exposure of their photography. This report is aimed at amateur photographers, but you don’t have to be an amateur photogra-pher to find these business-building strategies useful. The strategies in this report are actions that I take to keep my work in front of potential cus-tomers and to expand those that see and can use my work. I have another strategy that I use that keeps me on the minds of my existing customers and encourages them to use my services regu-larly. This report contains strategies to increase your exposure for your photography services

Strategy Tip #1 Shoot quality. Whether you consider yourself an amateur photographer or a professional photographer, you have an obligation to pro-duce the highest quality photography possible. Poor quality photography doesn’t mean ama-teur photography – it means ‘poor’ quality photography. This is most important of all. There is no sub-stitute for quality. Unfortunately, many pho-tographers, at all levels, feel that there are sub-stitutes for quality. Continue to shoot. Continue to shoot. Con-tinue to shoot. Am I making my point? Photobuyers and customers buy photographs that they like – not the photographs that we think are the ‘best.’ Sadly, many photogra-phers ignore this. Don’t fall into the trap of ‘self-congratulations.’ Continue to shoot. Get better. Produce quality. Continue to shoot. Get better. Produce quality. Etc. etc. Your research will find that there is quite a bit of photography that is alarmingly poor. Face it, with technology what it is today, any and eve-ryone can take pictures. Heck, with digital, all we have to do is point and shoot and we get a relatively good image. Three or four people tell us that they like the photo – and presto, we think we’ve arrived! Your commitment to quality will establish your reputation above the fray. Like a diamond in a sack of cut glass, you will hold immeasur-able value among the glitter. You must show your work. Only show your best. Fight the urge to show ‘a lot’ of your work. As your skills improve, you will wish that you can take back some of the photos and images that you have floating ‘out there.’ I constantly fight the urge to display/publish ‘everything’ that I shoot.

Less is more. Digital allows me to take thou-sands and thousands of images. And I have shot thousands and thousands of images. Now that I am better at determining better quality, I am more selective with the photography that I show. Although I have thousands of images, I cannot honestly claim that the majority of them are the best quality. They may be of the best quality that I could produce at the time under the circumstances, etc. but, I have less than two dozen images (of the thousands) that I can honestly consider my ‘very best.’ My fight against the urge to publish ‘everything’ contin-ues. When I win the fight, only my best work is shown. Business gets better! When showing my photography work to po-tential customers, I focus what I show them on how I can meet their photography need. For example, if they are looking for an Executive Portrait, I show them a couple of my Executive Portrait samples, not all of my samples. If they are looking for a Pet Portrait, I show one or two sample sets – different poses of the same pets. If a middle-age woman is looking for a portrait, I show a couple samples of middle-age women (or slightly older women). Less is more. Only show your best. Strategy Tip #2 Focus on the needs of your customer. Too many photographers that want to be in busi-ness fail to focus on what makes a business successful – benefits to the customer. Usually the needs of the customer will tell you what specific benefits to emphasize and fulfill. So, focus on the needs of the customer and then overdeliver on the benefits to the customer. Hint: telling your customer the type of equip-ment you are using does absolutely nothing to meet their needs or provide benefits to them. Your customer doesn’t care how many megapixels or gigabytes you are using. They

don’t care how well you understand f-stops or depth of field. If you aren’t telling them how their photography needs will be met, it is a waste of their time. When you go to a first class restaurant, the owner or the chef don’t tell you what type of stove, pots or seasonings they use to prepare your meal. Think about it: most restaurant customers probably have a kitchen, a stove and pots and pans at home. They do business with great restaurants be-cause they want a ‘quality’ eating experience – not an education in how to equip a kitchen. The restaurants that meet their customers’ needs are the restaurants that are successful. By the way, the mechanic that repairs your car probably doesn’t tell you what equipment he is using, either. Because you aren’t buying their equipment, you are buying what their services do to meet your needs in the manner that you trust and want. Focus on the needs of your customer – that will establish, drive and sustain your success. Strategy Tip #3 Understand marketing. Continue your market-ing efforts. Marketing is a process – it never stops. Marketing has a beginning and it has a middle. But, it never stops. This report offers effective and easy to do marketing strategies. Having a marketing plan is a must if you have any serious intentions of being successful in any business – especially the photography business. This was one of my costliest mis-takes – not having a marketing plan or follow-ing the marketing plan that I had. If you understand what marketing is and what it isn’t, you will be very, very successful in your photography business endeavors. Market-ing is not advertising or selling. Marketing is marketing – it is a process that you continue throughout your photography business experi-ence. Without marketing you do not exist (in the photography business world)! Put and keep yourself on the map – market yourself and

your photography regularly. Commit to marketing your work. It takes time to develop. You must be patient and persistent. Believe in your photos and the quality of your work. Plan to spend time each and every day marketing and showing your work. Show the kind of work that you want, like and do best. If you want to sell portraits, put together a portfo-lio of your best portraits. If you want to sell stock photography, assemble a first-class stock photography portfolio. Advice on the importance of showing your work might seem obvious – it isn’t. Many pho-tographers fail to understand it and never achieve success. The more you show your work, the more business you will have. Take advantage of opportunities to show your work. That can mean entering art fairs and photo contests, posting on websites, publish articles, present community slide shows, hang your photographs in coffee shops, beauty parlors, and offices and even in galleries. Strategy Tip #4 Show your work. Again, this might seem obvi-ous, but, that just isn’t the case. For whatever reason, many photographers do not include showing their work as part of their ‘strategy’ for success. Too often, some photographers feel that their work is ‘so good’ that it speaks for (and markets) itself. This simply isn’t the case. The fact is that the most successful pho-tographers in the world are successful, largely, due to the showing/marketing of their photog-raphy – not their ‘artistic’ greatness.

Photography Portfolio: This is one of the most effective methods of market-ing your photography. Your photogra-phy portfolios represent your photogra-phy work, you and the perceived value that your message communicates about you and your work. You should have a portfolio for each of your photography

niches. For example, your Family Por-trait portfolio should be different from your Executive Portrait portfolio; your stock photography portfolio on urban life should be different from your port-folio on ethnic/urban children. Less is more. Only include your best work in your portfolios and you should always be refreshing and updating your various portfolios. Whether your portfolio is online, printed or on disc, the principle is the same – when editing, always and only show your best. Photography Portfolio Types

Print Portfolios – All serious photographers should have, at least, one (preferably one for each photography niche). Advantages: Strong impact, best potential im-age quality, attention to detail

Disadvantages: Cost, lack of portability, time to put together

Online Portfolios – Every photographer should have a photography website for their specific photography Advantages: Instant access anywhere in the world, inexpensive, great marketing tool, eas-ily databased by internet search engines.

Disadvantages: Image is limited to individual computer monitor cali-bration, low resolution

Disc Portfolios – CDs, DVDs, and zip discs are an acceptable method of sharing work Advantages: least expensive method, easy to duplicate, ability to incorporate multimedia

Disadvantages: Computer systems and software incompatibility, resolu-tion, inconsistent moni-tor calibration

Slide Portfolios – Once an industry standard, some editors and photobuyers still ask for them Advantages: Easily viewed, relatively inexpen-sive, easy to make several copies

Disadvantages: No longer an industry standard in advertising, fashion, and corporate photography

Photo Contests Art Fairs Art & Crafts Fairs Online Photography Websites – Every serious

photographer must have a photography website. Regardless of how easy and more user-friendly technology has be-come, there is a ‘learning-curve’ on establishing and maintaining a photog-raphy website. There is no way around it, to be a successful photographer, you must maintain and update your website yourself. A good way to learn is to get a free photography website. Upload your images and set up the site to meet your purpose. Refine and adjust the website to accommodate your knowl-edge growth. With even the most basic of computer skills, you can operate one of the free photography website that is now offered all-over the internet. Within about two months, you should have a very confident and comfort feel-ing about your ability to maintain a successful photography website. You can then either subscribe to the free website (they are almost always trying to get you to upgrade) or you can pay for a more sophisticated photography website hosting company. There is one website that provides a fully opera-tional photography website for free. They provide the website for three months for free – without advertising or popups. For a list of photography websites and other photography re-sources, click here. The disadvantage of having someone else build your pho-tography website is that you have to depend on the web designer/builder for every change and update that you want

to make – it’s a bummer, most web de-signers (in my experience) are in a separate world from the rest of us.

Online Galleries Photo Blogs

Strategy Tip #5 Understand pricing. One of the mistakes many non-experienced photographer make is selling on the cheap. Sometimes they do it out of ig-norance. Too often, they do it out of under-valuing their work and failing to understand what quality photography is and what it isn’t. The photography business falls into two cate-gories: 1. Assignment Photography: Portraits, Wed-

dings, Corporate, Event, Glamour, Nature, Travel, Fashion, etc.

2. Stock Photography: Pictures taken on speculation of subsequent sales.

In photography, what is it that we are selling? We aren’t selling square inches of paper for the cost of printing them. Too many photogra-phers place value on their work based on the size of the pictures delivered. The most impor-tant thing to keep in mind is the value of your work. You are selling the value of your work! For example, your creativity and unique ability to capture something that others do not see or cannot capture, has value. Anyone can buy a camera, but can they capture the image exactly the way you do? The time you invest in train-ing to be ready to capture the image has value. The time you spend taking the image and pre-paring it for presentation has value. How you present the image to the customer has value. And, of course, your ability to assess accu-rately what your customer wants and overde-livering every time has value. If you are selling portraits (children, family, pet, etc.), the fond memories attached to the time and moments that you are capturing have value. We are not

selling photograph sizes. Part of the process of understanding pricing is correctly valuing your photography. Another part of the process is educating your photogra-phy customer. During your pre-selling phase, your marketing message should communicate the ‘value’ of doing business with you. Re-member, almost anyone can own and shoot a camera. When I calculated my costs of taking photo-graphs, I determined that I had to charge a minimum of $75 an hour to even begin to break even. And that amount is often too low. Of course there are times when I don’t charge or get money for my photography services. If I stick to my marketing plan, I can easily calcu-late the residual income that I usually get by not charging for my services. The customer may see the transaction as “getting something for free,” but, I can assure you that I have cal-culated the exposure that I can translate into business before I agree to give my services for “free.” I often tell potential customers that “they may not be able to afford my services.” This might seem rude to some, but, I say/imply it gently and helpfully. Under no circumstance do I ‘discount’ my photography services. My mar-keting strategy does not allow me to discount my work. The portraits that I sell are on the high end. For example, the smallest portrait that I sell is 16x20. My lowest priced portrait is above $250. The only times that I produce smaller portraits are when a customer is order-ing more portraits or when I include them in my marketing promotions. Needless to say, photography customers seeking smaller por-trait packages are not potential customers, for me. I would compromise the value of my pho-tography work if I discounted it. Marketing high end portraits initially proved very difficult for me. There were (and are) photography businesses all around me that were/are selling

lower priced photography than me. But, once I understood pricing and the value of my work, I established marketing strategies to focus on photography customers that buy high end por-traits. Consider this – almost all portraits repre-sent emotional value. Usually, the emotional value of a portrait increases as time goes by. Marketing high end portraits requires me to include the “emotional value to the customer” in my messages to regular and potential cus-tomers. Strategy Tip #6 Do the research. Do you know where the mar-ket is for your photography? Do you know what your photography niche is? Have you re-searched the market to determine what you have to do in this market to succeed? Have you determined what your “photography marketing strength” is? If not, don’t panic. Ninety-five percent of photographers, just like you, can’t answer yes to any of those questions. Unfortu-nately, most of them will never understand the importance of the answers. And others will try to successfully operate without answers to these questions. The advantage that you have is this report. Assisting you to ask and answer these ques-tions is one of the goals of this report. Asking and answering the questions will target your photography market like a laser beam. An-swering the questions will assist you to deter-mine the most successful, effective and profit-able marketing strategies for you and your photography. Do your research. I am making an assumption (so pardon me if I’m mistaken). I am assuming that by virtue of you reading this pdf report, you are ‘relatively computer-able.’ In other words, you possess enough familiarity with computers to do ‘basic’ and effective online marketing tasks. Using computers and the internet to research

information has to be the best contribution to mass education since the development of the book! Of course, I may be biased - I am a life-long ‘information junkie.’ I had an insatiable appetite for information even before the popu-larity of the internet. Since the internet phe-nomenon has exploded, I have literally been in ‘information-junkie-heaven!’ I can’t believe what we are experiencing! Of course, I must admit that I am not normal. My friends make clear to me, on a regular basis that I am walk-ing and talking proof that “too much informa-tion is not such a good thing.” Don’t worry; to do the required research, you do not have to be an ‘information junkie.’ There is good news and bad news about the easy accessibility and amount of information: 1. The ‘good news’ is that there is a vast

amount of information that is easily and quickly accessible.

2. The ‘bad news’ is that there is a vast amount of information that is easily and quickly accessible.

The speed and amount of information can overwhelm you and much of it is wrong! Most people that do research on the internet use search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo! MSN, Ask, etc.) Still others that do targeted research use ‘search tools.’ Similar to search engines, these ‘tools’ allow you to enter information, based on the answers that you are seeking, and find many resources. Some search engines and some search tools allow you to search many multiple sources for your information. This is referred to as a mega-search. Often, doing a search requires knowing how one database re-lates to another (and other esoteric techno-speak). Search Tool: The most effective and easy to use search tool that I have found anywhere is called Search It! It is simply the best research tool available on the internet – at any price!

You can download a free copy of Search It! That’s right – free! Yes, it is the full version. This tool is offered by a website business com-pany called SiteSell. Like many successful marketers on the internet, SiteSell feels their products are so good and impressive that they give free copies of ‘full and complete’ internet tools, such as Search It! . The search tool was developed for webmasters to help them find the best keywords and success resources for their websites. However, Search It! is so pow-erful, that it literally can simply, easily and ef-ficiently research anything and any topic. Add this free tool to your marketing tool kit, and you will be light years ahead of your pho-tography business competition. I promise. Also, your time spent researching will be re-duced by, at least, 75%.

Lesson Learned: Great pictures that nobody wants! Shooting digital allows me to shoot as many photographs as time allows. Which, in turn, had me shooting almost everything. Consequently, I had lots of ‘great pictures.’ As I was learning about stock photography and gathering ‘all’ of my ‘great shots,’ my research made it clear to me that there are cer-tain photos that there is almost no mar-ket for – simply because everybody has similar photos.

For example, I enjoyed taking close-up photographs of wild plants and flowers. I offered them for sale in the stock pho-tography market only to find out through research that close-up photo-graphs of wild plants and flowers are very plentiful. Although my ‘great shots’ were ‘great’ to look at, there was no market for them. (Actually, there is no market of consequence. I have enlarged some of the close-up photo-graphs to sizes of 6 feet x 8 feet and used them as display at fairs. Their size and sheer brilliance attracts a lot of at-tention. And I sometimes have post cards and greeting cards printed up with the close-up photographs. How-ever, both of these strategies only sup-plement and contribute to my market-ing efforts. The money that I make from the photographs is small and, compared to my other photography revenue sources, is of no consequence.) Another Lesson Learned: Not every-body appreciates close-up photography. Initially, I made the mistake of includ-ing close-up photography in my ‘portrait portfolio.’ I got comments on how ‘beautiful and clear’ the photos were. But, I didn’t get follow calls from the people that I was showing them to.

These are two images that I felt had value ($) until I did the research. They ’only’ have value to me. I have enlarge these to 6 ft. x 8 ft. They get attention.

One day, a friend told me that women don’t want to have pictures taken of themselves that are as ‘clear and de-tailed’ as close-up photos. I removed the close-up photos out of my portfolio – the follow up calls came. I didn’t pay attention to my customer’s needs. If I had, I may have determined on my own that their needs often includes photo-graphing them in soft and feminine tones – not bright and detailed high-lights.

Strategy Tip #7 Overdeliver: Give great customer service. Solving your photography customer’s prob-lems will help you sell and publish more of your photography. Treat everyone you deal with as if they were your customer. Why? Your customers pay you the money that your photography business makes. They make your photography business possible. So who are

your customers? Everyone you come in con-tact with: vendors, co-workers, neighbors, family, clients, everyone. If you adopt the atti-tude that everyone is your customer, you im-prove the chance that they will influence future sales. When your photography customer has a prob-lem, you must find what should have hap-pened, what didn’t happen and what needs to happen. Giving good customer service is about attitude. Yours! When a problem occurs, treat it as a challenge or an opportunity not as a problem. Ask questions and listen. Show em-pathy, apologize and ask how you can fix the problem. If you focus more of your energy on listening, you will often discover their real problem or real need. Have a plan to solve common customer problems and treat each customer service issue as a potential opportu-nity for a new sale – because, in the end, it is.

By looking at magazines, brochures and other published literature, I get a sense of what style stock photobuyers buy. I then shoot stock images attempting to meet that style.

One of my photogra-phy niches is chil-dren. Capturing their charm in images re-minds me of photo-graphing flowers.

Lessons Learned: Solving your cus-tomers’ problems is often meeting their needs – and they remember you for it. My experience has been that the most common problem my potential photography customers have is a ‘time’ problem – they usually don’t have much of it to get what they need done. I specifically don’t do ‘rush’ work be-cause I don’t like to ‘be on call’ in my photography business. (Another reason that I don’t offer ‘rush’ services is be-cause products that are produced quickly aren’t perceived as having a high level of quality, by some. And I want the value of my photography to be perceived as having high-value.) How-ever, I have the capacity and the neces-sary contacts to produce almost any type of photography in a matter of hours, max. I don’t publicize this to customers (regular or potential) at all. When they call and frantically tell me what their problem is – I fix it. When I fix it, I don’t charge them more for the ‘rush’ job. They love me just for that gesture. And, of course, they then con-sider me ‘their’ photographer. From there, I do everything possible to con-tinue to provide the same level of ser-vice. When I fix such ‘impossible’ problems, they proudly recommend me to their friends, families and co-workers as ‘their personal’ photogra-pher.

Strategy Tip #8 Leave behinds. When you appear anywhere to show your photography work, speak to an au-dience, meet with editors to show your portfo-lio or talk to anyone about your photography, be sure to have a leave-behind. Business cards are also a must-have, but you need much more than a business card to leave a lasting impres-sion on prospects, clients or potential custom-ers.

I use business cards very effectively. I print my own with an inkjet printer using glossy business card stock. I put a striking image on one side of the card and a calendar on the other. I always include my website address and my full contact information. Another great leave-behind can be a calendar. Calendars al-low you to leave potential customers with a mini portfolio that includes 12 of your images. Newsletters are a powerful leave-behind. A brochure with selected images of your best work is a good leave behind (a good idea is to print your photography business brochure on a greeting card – my experience is that people hold on to a greeting card with good images longer than a brochure). They even sometimes save it and put it up in their space at work. If you have included your full contact informa-tion, you have a well-placed advertisement for your photography. Strategy Tip #9 Self-promotion. There is absolutely no substi-tute for promotion. If you want to be success-ful in the business of photography, your mar-ket needs to see and be aware of you all the time. And while you’re at it, you can contrib-ute to your community.

The duck whisperer! Sometimes, it’s a matter of being ready when the moment happens!

Here are some suggestions: 1. Join local service and business or-

ganizations 2. Volunteer to teach photography

workshops and seminars 3. Donate your photography to chari-

ties 4. Mentor someone with an interest in

photography 5. Volunteer your photography ser-

vices to a non-profit organization’s community event

There are rules to good self-promotion. Pho-tographers need to aggressively promote them-selves if they want to be published or hired. Here are some basic rules:

1. Make sure your contact information appears on everything you mail, distribute or show to the public.

2. Expect to contact someone at least seven times before they start to pay attention to you. Sending only one postcard, for example, simply is not enough and won’t work.

3. Use the media to spread the word about your photography business and yourself.

4. Use one dramatic photograph with high impact on your marketing pieces instead of several smaller images.

5. Show only your best work. 6. Don’t sound desperate – customers

don’t do business with desperate businesses.

Too often, some photographers underestimate the affection people have for their pets.

There is a very small (but totally dedicated) market for various icon niches, such as Harley-Davidsons. I wanted to shoot specific photos of motorcycle clubs. I took this shot and printed it on greeting cards that I sent to motorcycle club representatives. I don’t ride motorcycles, but I think club members appre-ciate the art photo of their passion.

“Mr. Bob” (LeSoinne) leads the music class for the toddlers of the Center for Community and Family Services, located in Southern California. As photographer, I had to be in the room without being a distraction. Young chil-dren are so sophisticated, that they will want to see the photo right after its taken - they know that digital is immediate!

Strategy Tip #10 Use ebooks. Stand head & shoulders above the crowd, consider producing a photography ebook. This report is an ebook. As you see, an ebook is a digital file that readers can download or receive on CD-ROM. Ebooks don’t have to printed on sophisticated presses, bound, inventoried, or shipped. Ebooks are never returned for a refund (especially the ebooks that are given away – like this one). Of course, you can sell your ebook on your web-site, at regular bookstores, on Ebay, or on internet forums. Photography ebooks are most popular when written with a how-to approach, as in travel, cooking, gardening, etc. You can build the ebook using any number of software programs. Almost every computer sold today comes with a program that can read ebooks – Adobe Reader software is available free of charge from their web-site www.adobe.com If you choose to publish an ebook to sell, you can then set up a shopping cart system on your web-site and sell your ebook online. Depending on the size of the ebook, you could make it available to download from your website. If the ebook files are too large, you can burn it onto a CD-ROM and ship it to cus-tomers for an additional fee. And, of course, you can print your ebook into a hard copy and sell it traditionally. Publishing ebooks is a very successful and lucrative marketing strategy for many busi-nesses, including photography business. While this report is in a pdf format, there are many other sophisticated ebook publishing software

programs available. Most of them are very good. The best that I have ever seen and used is from a company called the Internet Market-ing Center. They have a product called ebook-Pro that produces any type of ebook that you can imagine. It is a top of the line ebook soft-ware program that is surprisingly easy to use. And, best of all, they fully guaranteed my money back if I am not completely satisfied with the program. I am very satisfied with the program and I highly recommend it if you plan to be serious about publishing books – of any type, really. Strategy Tip #11 Greeting cards and calendars: Greeting card companies and calendar companies are large

consumers of photog-raphy. Unfortunately for emerging and un-known photogra-phers, they buy mostly stock photog-raphy. You must be persistent for this market. You’ll need to treat greeting card and calendar compa-nies the same way you would maga-zines. Study these markets closely and carefully. Since greet-ing cards have to con-

vey their messages in a limited amount of space, your photography must perfectly match the message. Make sure your photographs re-flect the personal tone of greeting cards. Usu-ally these are photos that have emotional im-pact. I publish my own greeting cards and calen-dars. There is no way (at least, as far as I can figure out) that I can mass produce greeting cards and calendars that I would need to in or-der to generate the profit to make it ‘worth my

As ‘attention-getters’ these images continue to serve me well, but images of colorful, wildflow-ers are plentiful in the stock photography market. Consequently, the only ‘value’ is either personal for the photographer and/or useful as marketing tools. I enlarge them and display them.

while.’ However, I find that my ‘limited edi-tion’ greeting cards and calendars have great marketing value. I make calendars for non-profit organizations and give it to them to do whatever they choose. Most of the times, they distribute a few among their employees and clients. Initially, I started this marketing activ-ity thinking that the organization would want to mass produce the calendars (as fund-raisers, packet fillers, etc.). What I find is that they are very effective because the people that do get them hold on to them (and my contact infor-mation). Sometimes the organizations call me to ‘inquire’ if I plan to ‘donate’ calendars for the year.

Lessons Learned: People love their pets. A marketing strategy that I use to in-crease the exposure of my photography business involves modified ‘street-shooting.’ For me, this form of photog-raphy has me, as the photographer, walking down the street or sitting in a heavily populated area and taking pho-tos of people with pets. I ask if I can take their picture. My experience con-tinues to be approximately 99.9% say yes – those that don’t usually cannot get their pet to be still. If they ask me what I intend to do with the photo, I tell them that I am a pho-tographer that I am publishing a photography book on ‘pets and their people.’ They sometimes ask me to notify them when I publish the book. About 4 out of 10 peo-ple ask me how they can get a copy of the photo. I use a photog-raphy fulfillment company called Printroom.com. Using their ser-vice, I can give my business card and tell inquiring pet owners to visit my website to get a copy. I upload the images to my Prin-troom.com web space, set the

prices for photos and that’s it. The cus-tomer/pet owner visits the site and if they like the photo of their pets they buy. I generally set my photo prices low – I use this marketing strategy sim-ply to keep my photography and my photography business on people’s minds. However, the response from pet owners was so overwhelming that I added Pet Portraits to my photography niches. And trust me, people love their pets. Make their pets look good and you have a customer for life. My Pet Portrait regular customers have more portraits taken of their pets than fami-lies have portraits taken of their chil-dren and families.

When it comes to submitting images to greet-ing card companies, you shouldn’t start with Hallmark or American Greetings. Start with a regional approach. Calendar publishers are somewhat more receptive to photo submissions from emerging photographers. Calendar sub-mission requires thematic submissions. For example, calendar companies look for 12 cat pictures, 12 landscape pictures, and 12 cars. The more original you can make the theme, the more likely you are to see your work accepted for publication.

Product photography is a niche that can be profitable. A store owner in California had trouble selling leather ski jackets. She had me shoot this jacket which she then used in an online store. She was able to market the jacket to cold weather customers.

Strategy Tip #12 Get into the stock photography market. The stock photography market is experiencing some of the most turbulent and dramatic change since the beginning of the stock pho-tography industry. Some long-time stock pho-tographers don’t like and are fighting the change. Others are adjusting to the changes and profiting from their flexibility. Stock photography is a photography niche worth investigating. Once in the world of stock photography, you will need to find and de-velop a ‘specialty’ photography niche. One of the most significant ingredients for success in this market is to specialize. For example, if you shoot sports, landscape, travel or architec-ture photography, it will be easier to sell stock photos than if you were a generalist. Being good at photographing people is a must, also. The majority of stock photographs sold in the United States contain pictures of people. Another important element in stock photography successfully is to know the types of photographs agencies look for. Do this by looking through magazines to see the types of images that sell. To be truly successful at stock photography, you must determine what your ‘photographic strength/areas’ are. Rohn Engh, author of “Sell & Re-Sell Your Photos,” provides the easy-to-understand steps to take to identify your photographic strengths. It is also a great way to get to know yourself better! Identify, refine and continuously develop your own niche. One of the best ways to improve your chances of sell-ing or publishing your photography is to de-velop your own niche. Just about every professional photographer

has a ‘great’ sunset photo and a ‘great’ wild flower close-up photo and thinks their photos should be published somewhere. However, the number of sunset photos and close-up of wild flowers that are published is pretty small. Developing a niche may be the best way to find a buyer for your photography. Specialize or be as specific as possible. Finding your niche doesn’t mean that those are the only pho-tos you can take. But it does mean that when it comes to selling your photos, this subject is what you are known for and where you con-centrate your marketing efforts. This sort of target marketing approach will produce a much higher quality of buyer. It’s also easy to sell to a tightly targeted market rather than a broad market. You’ll likely be more successful if you target a specific type of photography to a specific buyer. The more spe-cific and targeted you are in your approach, the more likely it is you’ll have success over oth-ers who are tying to sell a broad range of pho-tos.

Research has shown me that a good stock photography niche for me is children.

Strategy Tip #13 Working with local businesses. Every business has a need for photography of some kind. They might need pictures for their website, catalog, advertisements, prod-ucts or their building. They need pictures of employees for annual reports or business flyers. If you are inter-ested in this type of work, create a portfolio and call on local businesses. Making cold calls is scary for some people (including me). However, with practice, you might be amazed at how productive it can be. All you are actually doing is introducing yourself to the person who needs your photography. If you want to sell to businesses, you must turn your photos to products. It’s best to start with companies that are familiar. For example, if you always go to the same mechanic, chances are the mechanic will recognize you. You then only need to say to them, “By the way, how would you like me to make some custom calendars that you could give to your best customers?” Developing this kind of relationship with businesses is a very non-threatening and low key approach to selling. Do that with every business that you do business with regularly, and you’ll start to quickly generate new business. Publish custom products. Think of other products that you could custom publish for local businesses. Photog-raphy books are a good high-valued product. Establish-ing a working relationship with local designers, typeset-ters, and printers generates targeted referrals. You can generate multiple income streams by creating custom products such as photography books. There are many good companies that can produce high-quality photography books. One that I have recently begun to use is called ASUKABOOK. They produce art books for digital photographers. Strategy Tip #14 Start and operate an online photo service. In addition to having a photography website to sell photographs online, you can also use an online photo service to sell your photos. With a photo service such as Prin-troom.com, dotPhoto.com or Shutterfly.com you set your own prices and payment terms. You upload your logo and add it to your site as well customize the experi-ence for buyers. This option makes your photos publicly searchable and to market them, you send email invita-tions to your researched and targeted list.

Research showed me that images of children interacting with adults, in educational settings, has value in stock.

Often, the bright and innocent smiles of the children makes the clearest statements - life is great!

Final Strategy Tips – For now Whether you’re selling wedding or portrait photography, stock photography, or commer-cial photography, there are factors that your potential customers need to know before they make the big decision to work with you! Re-view your marketing plan and self-promotion materials with these final strategy tips in mind and make sure that your photography business message is represented.

What Are Your Photography Cus-tomers Are Actually Looking For? Your marketing strategies and self-promotion materials must reflect what potential customers need to know about you and your photography. This knowl-edge about you is necessary because all of your potential customers you are selling to probably already have pho-tographers they work with. Photographic Ability When you have a hidden technical ca-pability, it should be brought out to give you a competitive edge. If you’ve got – flaunt it! Give The Clients What They Want Overdeliver on customer service to all of your customers (regular and poten-tial). Most potential clients want con-vincing assurance that they can depend on the job getting done the way they want it done. Focus on the needs of your customers. Make Them Look Good Be very aware of how sensitive cus-tomers are to how the photos will make them look! This awareness is a poten-tial competitive edge and added value to your photography business. Help your customer to become and look like a hero.

Create The Perception Of Effortless-ness Every customer’s dream photography job is the one that eases her fear and meets her challenges. Your marketing should be addressing this issue. There is always something their current pho-tographer has done to frustrate the cus-tomer or made a portrait purchase diffi-cult. This could be your way to ‘earn their trust.’ Be Flexible This means you will be easy to work with and solve problems, not make more than your customers already have. Whether it is a family or a execu-tive portrait shoot, no customer needs more problems. Flexibility does not mean dropping your price to get the job. Work Within Deadlines And Budg-ets Do your research. Know how much a job will cost you and figure in worst case scenarios. When explaining a job to a customer, he may recognize the value of the end product. But, he may not recognize the timelines and differ-ent steps in the processing and packag-ing of the end product. They can see the obvious. Talk about what they can’t see – time and money management. Can They Trust You? Being able to fully trust you and know your work together is kept confidential is very important to your customer. Al-ways make sure you consult with cus-tomers before using her image or prod-uct in any of your marketing strategies.

T he major purpose of this report is to pro-vide information to you that is valuable

and effective. Another purpose is to provide resources for your photography business activi-ties. At Marketing for Photographers and Photogra-phy you will find constantly updated resources for your photography business and passion. The website is designed and maintained to provide information similar to what is contained in this report. Visit regularly and make sure that you take advantage of the available resources. Almost always, the resources are free. Sometimes free is what you get. You get what ‘you pay’ for. What I continue to find on the internet, however is changing that dynamic. To me, resources have four price categories: free, low-cost, expensive, and cost-effective. Free – Means that you do not pay money for the resource. There are many free resources for photographers on the internet and other inter-ests. Although you do not pay money, with ‘free,’ you must invest time. Some resources that fall into the ‘free’ category I have found to be very valuable. For example, I learned how to build and operate websites (photography web-sites and non-photography websites) with free websites. There also are companies that give-away volumes of their information for ‘free.’ I got a very thorough education about business online from ‘free’ literature. Sometimes, ‘free’ can be valuable. Low-cost – Means that, comparatively speak-ing, you do not pay a ‘prevailing’ price for the resource. For me, low-cost eventually becomes expensive. I had websites hosted on ‘low-cost’ websites. And the quality was evident. A couple of them had poor technical support. Still others had absolutely no technical support. With ‘low-cost’ you save money but often pay for it by spending too much time trying to get things to

work properly (without tech support). True story: I once subscribed to a low-cost web host-ing service. When I first subscribed, they were a small company that appreciated their customers. In the span of two years they had explosive growth. Their first-class customer service turned into vulgar arrogance – as if they were now doing their subscribers a favor by taking our money to host our website. One day I called their customer service department to tell them how bad I had been treated by their tech sup-port. During the course of the conversation, the customer service rep cursed me and then hung up on me! Expensive – Means just that: pay a lot of money for questionable value. Some of us make purchases based on the ‘status’ of paying ‘top dollar.’ Some of us buy our cars, clothes, watches, sun glasses and contact lenses, in that manner. Cost Effective – Means the amount of money that you pay for the resource brings you a return that is multiples of the costs of the resources. For example, as I mentioned earlier, I sub-scribed to a ‘low-cost’ web hosting service. The service became so erratic that I had to spend a great deal of my time becoming a technology expert – which was time away from what I ini-tially wanted a website to do! The ‘low-cost’ web hosting service cost me under $20 per month/$240 per year. Among the websites that I own and operate, one of them cost me just un-der $300 per year. With this particular website, I never have to repair technical glitches; I don’t have to learn html, programming or how to fig-ure out ‘tech-geek-speak.’ This company pro-vides their subscribers almost every internet tool available. They don’t sell me any ‘upgrades’ or ‘premium’ packages. Since sub-scribing to this particular web hosting company I have built a successful internet business – not just a website. Long story short – the $300 in-vestment has been returned in multiples of $300. For me, that’s cost effective.

At Marketing for Photographers and Photogra-phy every effort is made to provide the best re-sources available. Of course, things change at a break-neck speed on the internet. Sometimes what was offered for ‘free’ last week now has a price – and visa versa resources offered for sale one week is given for ‘free’ the next. Every at-tempt is made to stay current. Do yourself a favor – stay in touch. Visit our Photography Resources page for pho-tography websites, stock photography resources, marketing plans, photography software, online galleries, etc. Visit us – you’ll be glad that you do! I hope you found this report useful. Please, feel free to pass it on to a friend or aspiring photogra-pher seeking to increase their presence in the photography world – and beyond! This may sound self serving, but it’s true – I wish that I had the information contained in this

report before I decided to ‘try my hand’ at a pho-tography business. I now have this information that has helped me to establish a successful pho-tography business. I got it because other success-ful photographers gave it to me. I feel that I’m obligated to give it to you. You can help by shar-ing this report with your friends and/or fellow photographers. Choose two or three of the Strategy Tips in this report. Take Action. Be consistent. The information contained in this report is valu-able and effective. However, the most significant component of success for a photography business is quality photography. Develop your photogra-phy business. But, don’t ignore what it is that your business is about – photography. “To thine ownself be true.” This is Volume 1. Volume 2 is being researched and compiled. Visit our Photography Resources Page and let us know what you would like to see in Volume 2.

Hey, who’s the dweeb with the camera?

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