Gary Vaynerchuk said something about the worst thing you can do in business is being romantic about how you make your money. But show me a photographer who doesn't love taking pictures!

 In fact I just wrote two rather emotional posts myself about professional photography.

So I thought I'd set out four unromantic business reasons to sell products. Not how to sell or what to sell, but why. And yes, we make the products, so of course we’d love you to sell them, but this is what's in it for you.

1. You benefit from the sale of the products themselves — you make a profit, cash in the bank.  

2. They’re a way to generate add-on sales (eg more images framed, a bigger album, more pages) — it's not unusual for add-ons to double the profit, and more. 

3. They’re great for marketing, part of the online celebration, silent salesmen whenever someone sees them. “Wow, who did that?" — there's your next customer.

4. They help project your studio at the high end of the market — so you can justify higher prices overall.

Some people say, why bother? You sold a frame? An album? Woo hoo! The money’s in the sitting. All they want is the files!

That's not true! They're probably going to buy somewhere else, because they think they can get it cheaper.

Maybe that's right, maybe not, but either way the profit’s not going in your back pocket.

Still, these are business decisions, and there are objections to what I've just said — the money's in the sitting, products are too much of a hassle, I just shoot weddings at the weekend, etc — but I'll discuss them next time.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers, Ian