I have been shooting professionally for over 20 years. I shot my first wedding when I was 14. By the way, This is me.
Then I graduated from college with a Bachelors in Photography. I have worked in California running a studio that grossed over $ $450,000/anually. I've been working as a freelance photographer for most of my adult life. I have shot weddings in in 8 different states and my clients have always loved their shots! I have worked for 6 different pro photographers, one who was inducted into the Photographers Guild hall of fame. I have NEVER run my own full time portrait photography and wedding business until last week!
I am taking a leap of faith. On March 2nd of this year I turned in my two week notice. The company begged me to stay part time. I said I would work two days a week. My last full time day was March 16th. On March 17th I turned 39. My first day of running Ayres Photography full time was on March 20th. It has been a week since I started marketing my business.
I have decided to chronicle how things go. I will tell you want I do to make my Portrait and Wedding business work, or fail. I will tell you how I am marketing, how many appointments I make, how many weddings I shoot, pretty much all of the gory details. Also, If I am not clear, you, the reader can ask me questions and I will respond with the absolute truth(from my perspective).
I need to tell you right now that I am not the best writer, so expect to see mistakes in punctuation and grammar. I'm a bit scatter brained and so sentences won't always flow and sometimes might not ever make sense.LOL
Now that you have a basic idea of what is going to be said here, I will start with what I did last week, and the results of my labor.
So, last week on Monday and Tuesday I worked at my "sales job".
Wednesday the 21st was the beginning day of my wedding and portrait photography business.
So, a few weeks I ordered 4,000 door hangers for an online printer. I got them on Friday the 16th of March.
First mistake I made was with the Doorhangers. I thought I would go cheap. I found a website that offered 4,000 door hangers for $99. Since I am on a budget I thought this would be great. I mean, wouldn't you? Well my wife and I designed the hangers and uploaded them to the online site. When I got to the shipping page I found out how they make up some of the money they probably lost in printing!! Shipping was flippin expensive! I could do discount shipping for around $40 and expect them on my door in about a month, or pay over $100 to get them in a week. Well since I needed them by the 20th I paid the flippin 100 dollars to get them to me in a week. This kinda ticked me off. Well then to make it worse, I got the door hangers and opened the box. OK, I was expecting a thicker paper. These things are flimsy and thin. Even more ticked off. Well, I have to use them cause I can't afford to waste them. .
Lesson one, Don't go with discount door hangers. Pay a bit more and get quality.
Here is the second thing that happened. Around the 12th we ordered stickers to go on back of the door hangers so we could offer different discounts on the door hangers. We we were supposed to get them before the 20th, but we didn't get them until the 22nd. So, we went down to staples and bought some printable stickers and printed our discounts on them. We printed our discount on them and I was supposed to hand out a ton of them. I should say that I was very happy with the stickers that we ordered, just not happy with how long it took them to get here. Anyhow, the 21st, you remember, the day I started to market my business, well, it snowed! What the heck? I handed out around 150 door hangers and I was soaked and cold. My goal was 500 a day. I haven't even come close! My new problem is that I have 1,000 stickers to hand out and I printed April 5th as the end the promotion I am running. So, I have about 9 days to hand out 1,000 door hangers. My new problem, Family coming to visit. This means that I really only have about 5 days to hand out 1,000 door hangers or waste the stickers. I can't waste the stickers. That would drive me crazy. So, now my wife( who is wonderful) said she would help me hand them out next week. Just to make things funner, it's supposed to rain for the next few days.
Now for some of the good stuff that is going on:
Business Marketing is going pretty good. I went down to the Mall and visited every jewelry store. I asked them if they would refer clients to me. Out of 6, 2 said they would. Oh, I should mention that I offered them a finders fee of $150 for every wedding I book that they send me. One is even going to let me put up a display. Some might think it's not right to offer a finders fee. Well, I really don't care. Business is business. There are other photographers in this town that do similar things. For example there is a photographer here that has like 8 different domain names for his business so when you type in "missoula photographer" (or the 8 other key words) his site always comes up at the top. This ticks me off, because I could use a good domain name and he took all of them. But I can't really blame him. It's really just how business works. So, I don't feel bad about paying for referrals. Anyhow, I now have two jewelry stores working for me!
Next I went to the Direct Tv call center in town. A few years ago I worked for Enterprise Rent a Car and DTV was one of my account that I took care of, so I knew the girl in charge of employee relations. They have a website where local businesses can offer discounts to their employees(for a small fee) and I want to be on that site. I was given an email for a rep at the website who manages their account. I emailed him 5 days ago and he still hasn't gotten back to me. So, tomorrow I will get hold of some other salesman for the website and give my business to him. That site will hopefully get me a lot of business.
Next., I went to a few places in town where I now the employees and let them know I was starting my business. This was good because I found out a lot of info about my competition in town. It's funny, when you tell someone you are starting a photography business they start talking about the wedding photographer they used and give you all kind of info on them. I learned that one photographer in town charges 9,ooo dollars for a basic wedding( I'm a bit jealous truthfully, who wouldn't want to make 9 grand on a wedding). I was kinda shocked by that, especially when I looked at her website and her work isn't what I would expect to see for someone charging that kid of dough. Good for her thoug cause she's still booking weddings and getting 9 grand a pop!
One note about the door hangers before I forget: it really sucks handing out door hangers for two hours a day, so if you do decide to put hangers on doors, be prepared. Last week I handed out around 350. Not fun.
I also ordered cards last week and got the today!! They are fricken awesome! There are a few small details that I will change next time, but I am very happy with how they turned out. We used Kinkos to print them and they are great! I have handed out a few and everyone thinks they are cool! I will post what they look like below with a copy of what my door hangers stickers look like too. My wife has been designing my marketing material for me. Let me know what you think.
Week 1: Over all it was a good week. I have a few prospects. I have jewelry stores working for me. I should have an ad on DTV's site soon.Two friends said the have a family member getting married this summer and will refer them to me.
Here is what my Door Hangers, Stickers and Business cards look like:
This is my sticker that I put on back of my Door Hangers.
My problem is I printed 1,000 of the with April 5th as the cutoff date for the special. Now I have to hand all of them out before April 4th.
This is my Door Hanger. Make sure you get thick paper when ordering door hangers. Bur first make sure you have the motivation to stick them on doors.
My business card designed by my wife! She did a great job.
This is the back.
This is the front:
Well, that's the first week of me running my business. I am sure there are things I have left out, not on purpose, just because it;s past midnight and I'm tired. If I think of anything that is important I will do an update to let you know what it is.
By the way, I also work part time for an internet marketing company and am also building a website for a an agricultural company so I have to balance all of that too. So, I work 2 days a week at my sales job, 4 day on photography and have to find time to build a site and spend about 5 hours a week working for the internet marketing company. I'm a bit stretched when it comes to time but I do take Sunday off(wait, no I don't)
See you in a few days for the next update...
update:I forgot to mention I also run two blogs. This one and www.bufflalozphotographytraining.com which gets around 30,000 hits a month. Quesiton:When do I sleep? Answer: Whenever I can. And, my wife said "Clean up your language" so I did. I replaced some of the words in this post with more "respectable" ones.
Update: just uploaded some of my older wedding photography shots!! take a look !
Click Here!
