If you want to make money with your photography, then I have some advice for you.
Here we go:
- First, forget about it.
- Then, if you still want to: go for it and follow your dream.
But in that case, do it cleverly – run it like a business from the start. Profit and loss. Accounts. Taxes. Budgets. Forecasts. Marketing budgets. Reviews. And so on. My Small Photography Business course starts again tonight at Sheridan College. I take 20 students through what, as a business executive, as a small business owner, and as a photographer, I have learned over the years.
- Photography skills
- Photographic Equipment
- Office equipment and -tools
- Marketing
- Accounting and bookkeeping
- A business plan
- Admin work
One small but significant part of a photography business is your web site. Can I suggest the following:
- Keep it simple.
- Make it about your clients, not about you.
- Be clear: why you? Not because you make good pictures: presumably that is a given. What’s in it for the client – why should he or she choose you, not someone else?
- Remove barriers. No slow-loading flash, unnecessary music, absent email addresses, compulsory fields, or other hoops for your clients to jump through.
I have seen some bad ones, but I think I have just re-found the worst web site I have ever seen. Since it belong to a working photographer I will not share it here, but I am so tempted.