You know by now that networking is important right? It’s one of the best ways the best way to start your photography marketing, period. In the following video, I share the story of how a single networking event (and my first actually) led to our studio landing the job to photograph a major baseball player’s wedding. And that wedding led to us photographing another major baseball player’s wedding. Plus a bunch of other weddings actually.
Networking is the foundation of vendor relationships. It’s where you have the opportunity to meet and mingle, get to know people outside the hectic event day. Networking can be very powerful when done right. It’s why I want you to network for your own business. Attend events, talk to strangers and then follow up. So many great things are in store for your business, but YOU have to get out there and make it happen.
This is the story of how we made it happen-how we launched our wedding photography business. And how networking led to us meeting one of our favorite people in the industry who became one of our biggest fans and supporters. It completely changed the course of our career.
I promised another video soon, here it is. If you enjoy this video, I would LOVE for you to share it. I need that kind of positive reinforcement to keep doing more videos!
If you feel that your business would benefit from more bookings I encourage you to check out my latest ebook, Get Connected: How to Build Relationships to Drive Your Business. It’s only $29 right now, it’s a-step by-step guide to creating powerful vendor relationships that will lead directly to more bookings for your photography business. It’s packed with stories, case studies, examples, tips and as much goodness as I could pack in to 160 pages. From the feedback I’ve gotten, people who bought the guide last week have ALREADY gotten leads from implementing some of the strategies right away.
Today, I’d love to share some pricing strategies with you, because I’m really passionate about the business side of things, and most photographers do live at or below the poverty line, which is not cool. It’s PhotoMint’s mission to help photographers run profitable sustainable businesses.
If you are just starting to think about setting up a photography business, read this interview style Q & A to get some insight from seasoned pro Lara White. To learn more about the business I am discussing, check out Geoff White Photographers. Let’s dive right in to the questions.
Q: When you say all packages come with digital negatives…what does that mean exactly? Is that a fancy way of saying a photo dvd?
A: Digital negatives are in place of film negatives. I would expect a photo DVD to be for Facebook or otherwise very small files. All our wedding packages include the wedding day digital negatives in both high and low resolution, and we factor that into the cost. We designed our pricing so that we get paid on the front end. We do sell prints, but that has never been our strength. We designed packages as a front end model instead of a low hourly fee to start with the profit coming in on the back-end, traditionally through print sales.
You’ve been trying to break into the photo business for a few months now. After many dedicated months of studying the business of photography, playing with your equipment and convincing family members to model for you, you finally have your very first gig!
This could be shooting a wedding of a friend or co-worker who didn’t have the budget for a pro, or you could be tagging along as a second shooter. Doesn’t matter. This is your first wedding and you want to make it count!
There’s this philosophy entrenched within the photo business world-that you need to “work your way up” the ladder. Where does this come from? Why is this concept so prevalent for a photography career path? You’ll mostly hear this concept thrown around on the forums and such when people are discussing how photographers price their work. A lot of traditionalists actually feel that you need to start at the bottom and work your way up to a decent living over the years, enjoying the “starving artist” phase for the appropriate number of years.
You know by now that networking is important right? It’s 
