Cameras

Photography: scarlatti2004

McDonalds is famous for selling burgers too big to eat. It also pours soda into cups the size of buckets.

Customers might not need such large portions but by buying extra they feel that they?re getting much higher value for their purchase.

The company earns much higher profits by adding just a little more to each sale.

That?s upselling ? the strategy of selling more to a customer than they intended to buy ? and it?s a marketing technique that photographers can make use of too.

You don?t have to blow your images up to wall-size (although offering larger prints could certainly be one way to upsell your photos). There are plenty of other ways that you can offer your clients more and let you make more money from each of them.

Offer Additional Products
Photographers might earn income by creating images, but images can be delivered in all sorts of ways. A wedding photography package, for example, might include an album full of prints at a set price but a CD full of images might cost a little more.

And you don?t have to stop there. Maya Kovacheva, a Toronto-based wedding photographer, for example, also offers thank you cards for an addition $3-4 each depending on size. Having made the wedding sale, she gives herself an additional opportunity to generate a little extra income from the contract before saying goodbye to the client.

Portrait photographers can do something similar by offering digital images in different sizes suitable for Facebook and MySpace, as well as for email signatures, business cards and even passport photos.

Solve Storage Problems
Thank you cards and different sizes are all ways of delivering a photo product. But clients also have to store their images. That represents another opportunity for photographers who want to upsell.

Many photographers already market their prints in exclusive ? and expensive ? albums but you could do the same thing with online galleries (you could even offer to create a Flickr page for your client). Or identify the most attractive photos and suggest that the client buys it in a larger size and an attractive frame.

Create Joint Ventures
Those frames you could buy yourself and sell at a profit. But you could also set up a joint venture with a local framing business. That would remove the risk that you won?t make a sale, save storage space at your own business and give your client a wider choice of frames that would even include custom-made models.

You?d need to negotiate a discounted rate with the framer to make the deal attractive to the client (point out that you?ll be supplying a lot of business in the future), and you?d need to agree your own commission too, of course.

Framers aren?t the only people that make natural joint venture partners for photographers. Many of the photographer at LookBetterOnline.com, a service that provides portraits for online daters (and which is always looking out for portrait photographers), offer hair and make-up services before the shoot. That doesn?t just make their service more attractive than their competitors?, it also gives them an opportunity to earn a commission and make a little extra income.

Refer A Friend
And finally, the best way of getting more money from each sale might be to take a different approach altogether. Instead of looking for a way to get more money from your clients, you could give them money back in return for giving you completely new clients. Magic Eye Photography, for example, a UK-based photo company, offers a 10 percent rebate in return for referred bookings made within four weeks of a client placing an order. Peter Yamasaki, who works in California, has a more complicated system. He gives the referred client a discount and the referee a complementary print. Overachieving clients who bring five friends get a free session.

However you decide to do it, if you can offer your clients a little more value, you should be able to squeeze a lot more out of the contract.

Tell us how you upsell your photography services.

Photography: JR Geoffrion

It might not be everyone?s goal but just about anyone who has ever sold an image will have considered it at least briefly. Once you discover that your camera can be a cash machine, the thought of trading in the nine-to-five for days of professional shooting is never far behind.

After all, you?d be getting paid to do something that you currently do for pleasure.

But there?s a big difference, of course, between photographing for fun ? and enjoying the odd income from it ? and relying on your camera to pay the mortgage and feed the family. Starting any new business is hard, demands some very specific knowledge and often includes an expensive on-the-job education. That?s especially true of professional photography which now has plenty of tempting roads leading in but is harder than ever to stay in full-time.

Only 10 Percent of your Time is Spent Behind the Camera
JR Geoffrion, for example, became a professional photographer after completing an MBA and spending several years in management consultancy. As an engineering student at the University of Toronto, he had been the photographer for the athletic center, shooting sports events, summer camps and even weddings. When his first child was born he drew on that experience to swap a life of constant travel for a job that gave him more time with his family.

?[I]t was the perfect job for someone that takes care of kids during the weekdays as the weddings are on week-ends,? he told us. ?[T]hat was all the push I needed to start.?

That was in 2001, a time when digital photography was far less developed than it is today. There was little information and few resources to help him create his wedding photography business, JR says, and what he could find was often inaccurate.

His background helped. As an engineer, JR was able to master the technical aspects of digital photography and his business degree enabled him to think about the bottom line as much as the images ? an important consideration once he discovered that photography accounted for less than 10 percent of his time as a professional photographer.

The biggest challenge JR found though wasn?t the little time he had to spend behind the camera but the speed with which the environment seemed to change. Not only is the technology constantly improving but so is the number and skill levels of competitors, forcing JR to continuously re-invent his business.

?It?s? a very dynamic market with many new entrants due to the decreasing cost of digital camera (and increasing quality),? he warned. ?It?s a changing world.?

Everyone Thinks They?re a Photographer
That?s an observation with which Tovis Bratsburg is likely to agree. A former website designer, a job which sometimes included occasional product shots, Tovis took up professional photography after creating sites for other photographers. The design work gave him a network of experienced professionals he could contact for advice and inspiration, and what he saw on their sites introduced him to the business and post-production aspects of photography.

Photography: Tovis Bratsburg

Perhaps most importantly though, as a Web designer Tovis had a headstart in online marketing. Like JR, Tovis relies on both word-of-mouth and his website to show off his portfolio and win sales. His site has a Google page rank of 3, he says, and is at the top of most search engines. He has also combined recommendations with the Web?s affiliate model, paying clients and friends 10 percent of a job?s fee for referrals to new customers.

It was only when Tovis started shooting professionally though, that he realized just how competitive the industry had become.

?What surprised me the most was the fact that these days everybody claims to be a photographer,? he says.

Not everyone has the skills to be a professional photographer though, and over time, Tovis became more discerning, noticing flaws in images that he had once found impressive.

?I became pickier and noticed things like aesthetics, color, tone quality, and elements of design,? he told us. ?The photos I thought were awesome suddenly had horrible shadows, unacceptable color, and poor composition.?

That sounds like the growth of a professional photographer?s eye and to develop it even further, Tovis went back to school to add a college degree to his experience. He also kept his feet on the ground by holding onto a second job as a printer, work he says that he also loves.

Despite the challenges, neither JR nor Tovis say they have any regrets about their decision to choose a career in photography. For Tovis, it?s a path to becoming not just a photographer but a photography teacher too one day; for JR it?s way of working with great clients, enjoying photography and being with his children instead of on the road.

?This morning, my youngest, Pierre-Andre, said: ?Hold you tight? and gave me a huge hug. When we returned from school at lunch time, my oldest, Jacques-Charles, held my hand while walking home, and my little girl, Natalie-Soleil gave me the cutest wink you can imagine and sat on my lap at my computer. I wouldn?t trade that for anything.?

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