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Model yourselves on people who’ve built long, profitable careers — those who get as much fun out of making a sale as taking a picture.

Predictions

Here are some predictions for you:

Over the course of your career new cameras and technology will continue to make it ever easier for anyone to take a half-decent picture and share it with their friends and family.

Even so, many people will continue to make a good living using skills that they share with most people on the planet (not just photography — writing, cooking, music, making coffee etc).

But most of your competitors will give up, get a real job and be replaced by a new lot!

Same as it ever was.

The question is, in a competitive universe what will you need to do to end up among the winners?

Small business

Here’s a definition of a small business: “An enterprise employing less than, say, five people, including the boss, in which most if not all the capital and management expertise comes from the proprietor.”

That’s pretty dry. Ken the Accountant translates…

“A small business is an enterprise where there’s never enough money and never enough time to do what needs to be done. To make up for it, the boss flies around like a fly in a bottle trying to to make ends meet and get everything done.”

So, starting out, the first thing you’ll need to do is work out how to use your limited time and resources. And what may be hardest to get your head around is that what you have the least of is time.

Day One

It’s one thing to know what your business is going to look like when it’s established and successful. It’s another to work out how you’re going to get there.

Your business has to make sense from Day One.

Make some sales. Pay the bills. Pay you. Make a profit. Pay taxes.

The traditional way is to start at the bottom, grabbing any work you can for any price you can, and ratchet your way upmarket until you’re where you want to be.

It can be done, but it’s tough, because in this industry word of mouth is so important. Every job you do generates the next one, so if you do low-end work it quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Here are a some different strategies:

1. Keep your day job for a while. That’s the biggest advantage the back-yarders have over you, so why not do the same? That way you can pick and choose the work you do, and still sleep easy.

2. Be a generalist. Maybe you want to be the go-to portrait specialist, but meantime, take a tip from small town photographers. Shoot weddings, portraits, high school balls, products, real estate, freelance … Have camera, will travel. Just don’t forget to act like the high-end studio you aspire to be.

3. Have two brands, upmarket and cheap-and-cheerful. Make sure there’s a very clear distinction between the two. And don’t promise that you’ll be the cheap-and-cheerful photographer. Maybe collaborate with a colleague or second shooter so you don’t have to turn away high-end work when it shows up. What’s the cost? A second website?

You define yourself by the work you do

When you’re starting out it’s very tempting to take whatever work you can to pay the bills.

The trouble is the work you take on will define you.

No enterprise can thrive without repeat business and referrals. And both of those drive people in the door who want you to keep doing what you used to do when you thought you had no choice.

You think you’re on the road to a better future, but your clients are pulling you in the opposite direction. The longer you wait to change direction the harder it will be.

Average

I subscribe to a service that reports on average revenues earned by photographers in the United States.

When I see the figures my immediate reaction is always, “I hope our clients are doing better than that!” Because it’s hard to see how anyone could earn a living on it.

And since it’s an average, doesn’t it mean a few photographers earned a lot more … and most somewhat less?

If you can’t think of five things that differentiate you, there’s probably only one. You’re cheaper.

Respond to your competitors but don’t let them define you. And if you have a great idea your clients love, why spread it around? Not in your own neighbourhood anyway.

Who to listen to?

Starting out you’ll be wanting advice and guidance of course. And hopefully you’ll still be open to new ideas ten years from now.

But who to listen to?

Here’s something to ask your mentor-coach: How many weddings have you shot this year? How many portraits?

Don’t look at me, I’m different. I’ve never shot a wedding, never herded the kids for a family portrait. All I’ve done is listen to people who do it for a living … and try to build a business around them.

Four keys to success

1. Stand out from the crowd, don’t join it. We believe there’s less competition, more profit, more satisfaction and more pride at the high end of the market ... and it’s our job to help you get there.

2. Don’t just do what your competitors do (odds are they won’t be round for long). Pick role models by all means — successful people! — but then work out how to be different from them. Because you’ll never be as good at being them as they are.

3. There are only two ways to compete: differentiate or drop your prices (and you can’t win on price).

4. Get to know your clients, find out what they want, and give it to them (obvious, but strangely rare).

Copying

Most people respond to their competitors by copying them, and I’ve never understood why. It means you’re always just another little dot on Google Maps, as interchangeable as a machine part.

“Copying” shows up two ways.

The first is just that — copying — everything from pricing and “packages” to choice of albums and the latest money shots and Photoshop tricks. The second is asking your competitors for advice. And isn’t that what we’re doing when we blindly follow what the other guy’s doing?

What’s wrong with that? Well again, there are too many photographers. Many, maybe most of those around you today, will either give up or struggle on making an inadequate living. Chances are good that what most people are doing is the wrong thing to do if you want a long and successful career.

In my opinion you need a better idea, not someone else’s idea.

So yes, in business there are two options, differentiate or drop your prices. If you unthinkingly copy, you’re going with option two … and an average income if that.

Reinvention

If you had a great idea last year that your clients loved, don’t expect to have it to yourself this year, and don’t feel too disappointed when someone copies it. It’s just what happens. Always be thinking of new angles.

They don’t have to be expensive. I remember when we first introduced bespoke page design one of our customers got a year’s attention by showing an impressive, and unique, page layout in one of her sample albums. It cost her nothing.

Pricing your products

If you’re starting out, chances are you won’t be able to command the prices you eventually want to – and yet you absolutely must get your business headed in the right direction (upmarket not downmarket).

Ensuring your work is presented beautifully is a way of getting you on that upmarket path. Which may mean you shouldn’t price up your prints, albums and other presentation products as much as you’d like.

You’ll look great value compared with other people offering equivalent presentation — but you’ll be perceived as competing with THEM rather than with the bottom end of the market.

To be clear, you’d expect me to say that, and it may not make you popular with your competitors … or me popular for saying it!

But I think it’s good advice, and no-one said that getting started was easy.

Get on the price escalator

You can’t act the newbie forever.

Plan on putting your prices up every year, and I don’t mean by the amount of inflation.

This is not greedy. It’s your reward for becoming an experienced and respected professional.

Threats and opportunities

Christian made an interesting point about the future of professional photography.

The ubiquity argument — shoot and share is everywhere — says the market for professional photography is shrinking. But that’s not necessarily true. The consumption of photography has dramatically increased. We live in a much richer visual world, which means new opportunities out there.

What’s more, people are taking advantage of those opportunities, and the quality of the best professionals’ work is higher than ever.

You need to be talented, hard-working and savvy to have a fighting chance at success. But that’s nothing new. The failure rate has always been high.

A wedding photographer himself, Christian concluded, “Weddings nowadays have become such incredible visual feasts. Anyone who hires an amateur for their wedding is simply rolling the dice.”

Your challenge is to ensure people in your community understand that. Before it’s too late. For them and for you.

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