How Do You Start A Photography Business

The business of photography is something that you really need to approach based on a honest assessment of your abilities, strengths and interests. From there you can then see if there's any kind of market for your planned products or services, and do some proof of concept research to ensure those markets will indeed pay you for your offerings. Then you'll be ready to start planning your business! Unfortunately most photographers come at it from the opposite direction. They have a desire to make money selling their photos but no real understanding or interest in the business processes involved in converting photography to income. They mistakenly believe great photography is all it takes to build a successful business. 1. Start with an honest assessment of your current situation. Photography is extremely competitive simply because it seems like such a dream-job to so many people. Modern digital technology means anyone with basic camera skills can create a good image, so everything thinks they're a great photographer with real prospects, you need to work out what makes you different? What specialised skills do you have that will set you apart from the crowd? What interests and knowledge do you have that you can use to in your work? What subjects & fields do you do your best work with? Do you have a distinct personal style of work that sets you apart? Is you equipment suitable for creating high-res, high quality images? Do you have the skills and software to take an image from your camera and create a commercial quality print-ready file? What business experience do you have? What sales & marketing experience do you have? The idea here is to first of all identify the kinds of products and services you're able to offer, and then assess whether those skills are at a level where people will pay you for them? 2. Is there a market for those products and/or services? It's one thing to know you can produce some amazing work, but it's another to know there are people out there who want to use it. So you really need to put in some time to determine whether or not there is a market for what you do? It doesn't matter how good your work is if you can't find anyone to buy it, and yet many photographers go into business with little more 'market research' than the encouragement of friends and family. "Wow, those photos are good, you should sell them!" So somehow you have to answer the following questions... Are there people who need the kinds of images you like to shoot? Are there people who buy photos of the subjects you shoot? Are there people who will pay you to create specific images for them? Are there people who will pay for your expertise or knowledge? The best approach here is to find other photographers offering similar products and services, and then see how your offerings stack up? (Google is great for this!) Are your subjects similar? Is your technique as strong? Do you present as professionally? If the buyer was to view your portfolio and that of your 'competitor', who would they choose to do the job? Why? If you're serious about making a business of your photography, you need to be totally honest with yourself when you answer these questions. The truth is, you don't necessarily have to be a great photographer to build a success photography business, but your work does need to be at least as good as your competitors. You also need to be clear on what you're offering, who your offering it to, and why they are going to buy. Unfortunately, many photographers -- and many other would-be business owners -- start with little more than a product idea, and rarely take the time to objectively test their idea to see if there's likely to be genuine demand. They build a business based on little more than wishful thinking and wonder why it fails? Fortunately these days it's quite simple to test any idea and assess the likely demand using the search engines and keyword research tools. 3. Proof of concept testing This is where you prove to yourself that there is a real demand for your offerings. In days gone by this would have involved surveys and focus groups, and taken considerable time and money, but these days is super quick and easy. The best place to start is to simply search in Google for other people offering something similar? The volume of search results will give you an indication of the competition, which is a good start. Too many competing results and possibly your idea needs to be more unique. None at all and there mightn't be enough demand for it to be viable. The real test of course is whether people are making money offering those services, and that's easy enough to gauge. For that you look at the AdWords ads, to the right of the search results. In simple terms, lots of ads mean that those photographers are making money offering those services. No ads means there's no money to be made in that market. That probably seems a bit over simplified, but it really is quite simple... People only spend money on ads that make them money, so if no one is paying to advertise a specific service, chances are good it has been tried but didn't work. To be sure though, you should also test your idea in a proper keyword research tool. Google offers a very useful free keyword research tool... you may need to login to a Google Account to access it but it's well worth setting up! https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal The process is quite simple. Once logged in, type a keyword phrase into the tool that represents the product or service you're considering building your business around. It might be the style of photography, the field of work or the subjects you want to focus on. Regardless, once you submit you'll get real-time data back showing you the number of people searching for that phrase -- and similar related phrases -- every month. So the first thing you're looking for is search traffic... proof that people are in fact looking for the services you plan to offer. The next thing to look for is the CPC value. This is the average/approximate price paid by AdWords advertisers to have their ad shown besides the search results. This is a cost-per-click, meaning the advertiser pays this amount for every single visitor they get. So while most general photography terms might be in the $1-2 range, when you start seeing prices higher than that... sometime $5 or more per visitor... you know you're looking at a highly commercial term. And if that is closely related to your business idea, then you also know your concept has merit! Of course this kind of research is all relative and quite subjective, so spend plenty of time on it, test some broad phrases to give yourself a benchmark, and the zoom in on phrases related to your planned business, and see how it stacks up. If you find genuine search volume you know there's interest and if you also people paying to advertise with those phrases, you'll know there's a viable market... and that's a good starting point for building your photography business! 4. Developing Your Business Plan. It's only after you've done all this that you'll be ready to start planning your business, and that's where the real work begins. You need to spend even more time now planning how you're going to market your offerings, transact your sales and deliver your products or services. As a photographer your options are virtually unlimited so it's important that you take your time to get clear on your business model so you can focus on the best options for that and avoid the distraction of trying to do too many things at once. The good news is, by now you know you have the skills, the product or service, you know there's a market for it and you're confident that people will pay you for it, so it should be easier to focus on the specific processes -- sales & marketing, fulfilment and operations -- that will turn your idea into a sustainable business. One final point to keep in mind is, you don't have to be a great photographer to build a successful photography business. In fact, there are many mediocre photographers who do extremely well on the strength of their business skills. There's obviously minimal standards required to ensure customer satisfaction, but you should never assume great photography skills will guarantee you a successful photography business. The truth is, you'll be hard pressed to find a successful photography business run by a great photographer with poor business skills. So when you consider how many talented photographers share the dream of making a business out of their photography, it should be clear that the best way to succeed is to focus on your business skills as much as you do your photography. Matt Brading is a contributor to the GlobalEye Group of stock photo libraries. For more tips & suggestions on the business of selling your photography, be sure to check out their Stock Photography Business blog; http://www.GlobalEyeGroup.com/blog If you'd like to know more about selling photographs online with a complete Photography Business System, you can download a free photography business kit at: Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7305009

How to Start a Photography Business Without Any Money

If you want to start off quickly and build a stable company that will keep money coming in year after year, I can highly recommend family portrait photography. Once you get established you will always have a constant stream of babies, children, anniversaries, engagements coming to you. If you are fresh out of Photography College and think that's selling out, don't forget that you can still stamp your own unique style over your images. Just because everyone is shooting on white backgrounds does not mean that's the best thing to do. My advice is to do be creative and do the opposite, that will make you shine out amongst the competition. Product photography is another great way to use a home studio. More and more people are opening their own online shops, or businesses and all of them will need photographs. These can be great customers as they will always be updating stock and will need new images. Wedding photography is maybe not the first thing you should tackle, in fact maybe it's not your second or third. You will be asked all the time if you do by the other customers that come to you. The money is great but you will have to get a lot of photography under your belt before you attempt this. If you do however, start doing it alongside your other work and make sure people know your style before hiring you. You could do some portfolio shoots first as a second shooter to get into the rhythm. Are you going to be a pet specialist? Maybe you already love Cats and have a social circle who would love the most amazing cat portraits. I once heard of a photographer who travelled the world after she specialised in photographing prize winning cattle. At the time there were only two people who did such a thing. The only important rule is that you must be passionate about your subject matter! Finding a style niche If you know what type of photography you are going to do, you need to find your style niche You are going to have to stand out from the crowd and also make people remember you. It could be the image effect that you use in post-production, such as everything is chocolate brown, or you put new born babies into piles of brightly coloured scarves. Whatever you do make it visually memorable and worth talking about. I once knew a guy who worked from home photographing children in boxes; he did it for years and was known as "the guy who does the boxes thing". It stuck in people's minds and that helps if they are thinking about finding a photographer. As long as you have your camera and at the very least a laptop, your world is your studio. It's worth going out and about beforehand and finding stunning and interesting scenery, colours and textures that can be utilised for whatever subject you pick. Your sales office could be a trendy coffee bar or you could even strike an arrangement with a shop that would complement your type of client. You might think that having a portable studio will most likely require you to have at least a car, but not always. For many years I carried a cheep Chroma key backdrop, made from synthetic crease free fabric, which I took into woodland at a local family attraction to shoot fairy portraits. I had no lights, no card machine, no bookings and just the popup flash. I didn't even have a laptop and could only show people the images on a tiny screen on the back of the camera. I would arrive with my costumes and props, set up a display of images around an oak tree an sell my services as a fairy photographer. On a good day, I would make around $600 or £400. What I was selling was the experience of a fantasy session and though my examples they could workout that it was something unique. I also made sure that the shoot was fun for the children, as well as being energetic and loud. It became something that attracted a crowd and interest. You could also carry some funky rolls of wall paper, which is great for home or street portraits. Lighting can also be small. A couple of flash heads or even, video lights can be used to amazing effect. I bought a couple of very cheap lights from eBay and used them to great effect. Also useful if your camera can shoot movies in High Definition. No printing, no problem! Take the shots and email them to the client. Don't forget to keep the emails for contacting them for all your other great offers.