We run wedding and portrait photography courses and workshops for the serious amateur and professional photographer - see menu above

(all images by Brett Harkness) Wedding Photography Courses

Welcome to the second part of this 7 part series "Turn Your Photography Into An Excellent Paying Career".

YOUR WEBSITE AND YOUR PRICING

Your website

Any interested client will have initially checked out your website so do not skimp on this area of your business – initial impressions last and it will be your biggest selling tool. It needs to look professional and not too ‘home made’ and the images need to be plentiful and inspiring. Remember this is your shop window. You can view so many websites from great photographers that are just not inspiring, are hard to navigate, have very little information on as well as being a year out of date! The idea is to make sure that any visitor stays on your website for as long as possible. It is well known that the longer they browse your website, the more chance you have got for that all important phone call. The last thing you want is for them to simply click on then click off. If you are going down the paying for Google Adwords route, you want to make sure they have plenty to read and look at. Put on your weddings (several of them), prices and packages, editorials and competitions won, wedding fayres coming up, any newsletters and other services offered. Keep it up to date and fresh. We cannot stress the importance of this.

There is very intuitive software out there these days (and cheap too) that enable you to create your own website. Rapidweaver formac users and XSite Pro 2 for PC users. These are both excellent pieces of software that do a very professional job and do not require much computer skill at all.

If you have got an interested person onto your website, don’t just let them go. Offer them something free in exchange for their name and email address. This is where you have to use your imagination – what can you offer them free? It has to be something of value to them as people do not name and email address away for nothing.

This could be a free report on for example ‘Really Useful Local Contacts for Your Wedding Day’, with local wedding suppliers offering discounts on their products & services through your site. You do the work, ringing local wedding suppliers (florists, wedding cars, venues etc etc), and negotiate small discounts on behalf of your web visitors. You promise them that you will pass the traffic their way as long as they can offer a small incentive for your visitors who sign up.

Everybody wins; you win as you get your web visitors contact details so you can market to them again. Your web visitors win as they get to hear of suppliers willing to offer small discounts saving them money and the other wedding suppliers win as they get more business through the door. You have done this work to gainyour web visitors Name and Email address. However, use your own imagination on what you can offer your web visitors as an incentive to sign up; there will be lot of ideas if you pout your mind to it!

You will need to construct a report with contact details/website addresses/location on all your local florists, wedding car suppliers, local venues, bridal shops etc. with their associated discounts etc but it will be worth the effort to gain that valuable customers contact details so you can take a second bite of the apple. You could ring say, your local florist etc and ask their permission to put their contact details on a free report you are offering to your web visitors. They are hardly likely to say no as it should generate extra business for them. They are more likely to offer to recommend you to their clients in return - don't forget to send them your business cards.

Autoresponders
You will HAVE to learn a bit about Email Marketing packages and Autoresponders to capture these details – email addresses and names. Your web visitors will have to fill in their details before they can download your free report. You can then contact them again to see how they are getting on with their Wedding Plans or remind them you are there for baby portraits etc. and have they found a photographer yet. Very sneaky but subtle.

I have done a whole tutorial for you on using Aweber and I have covered:

- how it works
- how to set it all up
- how to create lists
- how to set up broadcasts and automatic messages
- how to create web forms
- how to put the forms on your website
etcetcetc - loads of stuff..

and it is easy once you know how – believe me. I firmly recommend using this Autoresponder. I have used it for quite some time (as well as others) and find this easy to use, very versatile, great choice on sign up forms and VERY professional. Also, it is one of the industry’s standards and extremely popular.

At the time of writing this, Aweberwere offering a 30 day $1 trial so you can check out AWEBER for a $1 TRIAL. When you get to read this, however, they may have taken this offer down so I cannot guarantee it will still be there.
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS AWEBER

But take my word for it, it is a great system to use. My 40 minute tutorial on using Aweber will be coming free to your inbox in just a couple of days. I suggest you sign up for now, have a quick play around and you will then be ready in a few days for the tutorial I am about to send you. This online ‘step by step’ tutorial I have put together for you is from a ‘users’ perspective because that is exactly what I am. They do run their own webinars but you have to be there at certain times of day andeach one lasts beyond an hour – I know I struggled to find this time to start with. So, I hope my tutorial helps you - it will show you all you need to know to set everything up quickly and efficiently.
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS AWEBER

Appearing professional and experienced

If an interested client is looking to commission you to undertake their wedding photography, they want to see that you are fully conversant and competent with your work, your equipment and with people. They want to feel comfortable and relaxed with you as their wedding day is one of the most important days of their life. The more competent you are, the easier their day and the better the photos.

A Good Portfolio

To attract clientele you need to have a good portfolio of work to show. To build up this portfolio, be prepared to shoot weddings for free, for friends and family or at a very competitive price. Another good way to make a start is to contact other photographers in different geographical areas. Explain your situation to them and that you are willing to assist free of charge providing you can use some of your own photos from the wedding and gain some experience.
It is important to be able to show a whole wedding album from start to finish to illustrate consistently good work throughout. It is no good showing a selection of 20 images, all from different weddings – this is just cherry picking and will look incoherent and unprofessional. Present the work well in nice albums and mounts and, if possible, when they come to see you, present a digital slide show to romantic music. Setting the mood will transform your photographs.

It is important to remember that the whole aim is to create a storybook of the couples’ day and this involves careful forethought prior to the wedding.

Pricing and Packages

If you are first starting out in business, pricing is the most difficult thing to get right and it is a common pitfall to underestimate your costs. It is important not to do this as you must consider the full costs of what is actually involved in your business. Remember to cover the following: your advertising bill, petrol, telephone, insurance, postage, tax, National Insurance, pay back on your equipment, consumables used in your business, assistant costs (if you have one), accountancy costs, materials and of course your own time. This does not exhaust the list. Although if a thorough budgetary plan was done during the preparation of the business plan, you should know what your costs are likely to be and able to structure your prices accordingly. This is another reason why a Business Plan is so vital, even if you do not need it to secure funding.

You will find that your prices will change as you learn and appreciate the actual costs involved in running a business as well as become more confident. At the end of the day, you do want to pay yourself a decent wage as wedding photography comes with a lot of responsibility. You only get one chance at it and it is biggest day of the bride and grooms life! It is a competitive business and there are many photographers almost doing the job for nothing. Quite often, their results are substandard and printing methods and albums cheap! Try not to fall into the pitfall of being too cheap, you will end up working all hours for next to nothing. If you are at the lower end on price, make sure you still come out making a profit. For example, don’t go offering an expensive wedding album with lots of photos. You may think about offering a CD full of high resolution images instead.

Services - whole package or by the hour
There are various ways of pricing up weddings but the key to pricing is not to confuse clients with too many options and remain flexible enough to discuss specific requirements.

Some photographers offer a cheaper package with prints only and covering maybe just the reception right through to others offering a fully inflated Graphi studio wedding book covering all day right through from the brides house to the first dance. You may want to capture the lower end of the market as well as the middle to top by offering all options. You will soon realise the cheaper end of the scale can be undesirable and not conducive to generating profit but it can allow you to build a portfolio. It is quite common for photographers to deviate away from this lower end market towards the middle after building up confidence in what they do. If you are going to offer print or CD only packages, be aware that you are attracting a client with a tight budget and ensure that you include enough profit margin to make it worth your while! It can be more desirable to offer album packages as quality albums can really do your photos justice. If the client has prints only they may choose to put them in a cheap and shoddy album, which will pull down the quality of your images. When they show friends, you may get the reputation of providing a sub quality service in sub quality frames so beware!

Many clients like to see what they are getting for their money and offering packages is the easiest way of doing this. For example, you could offer only 4 packages – 30 photos or 60 photos in two types of album and offer flexibility around these packages.

The standard is to include from the bride getting ready (optional) through until the speeches (after the meal). Note: the cutting of the cake is a posed ‘set up’ shot done prior to the meal. If you are asked to stay after the speeches this should be charged as an extra.

Different pricing attracts different clients

If you set your prices low, you will attract more customers. Whether they are the right sort is debatable – they may be those that are looking to skimp on the photography and you don’t really want this type of customer, especially when it comes to reprint orders/parents albums etc. However, never rely on good reprint orders! These days, unfortunately, many clients scan the photographs at home and even though illegal, there is very little you can do to stop it. Price cheaply and you will undertake a lot of weddings and be very busy. Sounds good… however, you could be busy working all hours but wondering where the profit of your hard work is.
If you set your prices moderate to high and advertise in the right places, you will attract the wealthier client with the nicer venues. You will have fewer weddings to photograph, be less busy and make more money. This equals less stress!

Timing for costs

Do not underestimate the time wedding photography takes. A typical example of the time input that is required per wedding from start to finish would be as follows:
Meet the client and get the business (2 hours)
Meet them at the venue prior to the wedding (1/2 day)
Getting your kit ready for the wedding (2 hours)
The day itself (all day)
Processing on the computer (2 days)
Wedding viewing and design of the album (1/2 day)
Ordering albums and reprints and putting the album together (1/2 day)

The list amounts to about 4 working days! Keep this in mind.

Consider offering them the ability to pay in Standing Order stage payments from the month that they book your services. This spreads the payments for them in manageable amounts, right up to the day of wedding.

Remember that we run Wedding & Photography courses (including Essential Business Advice) using Top Pro Tutors in fantastic venues and using at least 9 models on every course. Check these out on:

wedding photography courses   portrait photography courses