Starting Photo Sales: What to Pay for and What to Not Pay For

Are you debating whether or not to start selling your photos professionally but become flabbergasted by how much it costs to do this? Here's some completely non-inclusive advice about what to pay for and what to not pay for.


PAY FOR: 

1) Web hosting and domain. Personally I use  because their customer service is great (it's outsourced but they have online chat and fix things immediately.) and they are pretty cheap. People trust sites that have a .com address with its own domain over anything else. You have more control over what you can post where, and more control over raising your web ratings. You even have more control over who can see your work - I don't allow mine to be pinned on Pinterest, and I can track who right click / downloads my images.

2) A web site creator (a human) or an HTML / CSS for dummies book / or a class - I took a class on Dreamweaver at the community college. Great investment!

3) A lawyer and an accountant. Nuf said. The lawyer is even more important if you photograph people - I also invested in a Business Law course and a Small Business Owners class at the college.

4) Insurance.

5) Backup for your images. Harddrive crashes are your worst enemy. I would recommend getting a  or other form of backup for your precious photos.

DON'T PAY FOR:

1) A payment card program / print sales site separate from yours - I use  to sell prints online instead of  because it's free! It's linked to my paypal account. There are also apps out there that you can use to sell your prints off your site but they cost money. Some HTML geniuses can figure out how to do it - but I'm not one lol.

2) A business phone - I use  as a number for my business so I don't have to give out my cell number - for the same reason - It's free. I can organize calls into folders like Gmail. I can easily block numbers, and I can even record calls!

3) An online organizer program to track clients / sales / etc. I use Microsoft Access to track who ordered what when - what serial number print was sold to who when - etc. No need to pay extra money for something online.

4) A smartphone. (Unless you want to or do phone-ography or something.) Lots of people think they NEED a smart phone for their business. My answer is "why?" Clients can pay by credit card via Storenvy, and I don't need internet to finish a transaction with them. My portfolio is in my briefcase on shoots and not on my phone. I suppose some might find a reason they'll NEED a smart phone, but I don't lol.

5) Entry into contests!! Sometimes I joke about how I've never won a contest, but the main reason for that is that I rarely enter. Why? Well.... why the hell would I see it as a good business practice to PAY SOMEONE to consider my art? If my art is good enough to be seen in that way they should be PAYING ME to use it. Of course there are a few exceptions (a very few), but for the most part - if you're a pro photographer entry fees into contests are a waste!

Should I Become a Professional Photographer?

Starting out as a professional photographer is exciting! Chances are, if you are considering the answer to this question, you enjoy taking pictures. However, there is a lot more to being a professional photographer than simply liking the work. This blog post will (hopefully) help you realistically answer that question before you start a business. Some of the information in here is from my own experiences, and some is from the experience of other photographers I have had the pleasure of meeting or working with. Either way, this post is full of solid points that you should consider.

Do you know how to make your business successful? I was lucky because I have a parent who is self-employed, so I knew basically how to run a business before I made one for myself. There is a lot of extra work that goes into a small business that people don’t even realize: paperwork, budgets, even more complicated taxes, lots of time and money spent on advertising, extra bank accounts, extra stress on your credit score, more chances to lose it all unless you set up everything correctly. (More information about all of these areas is discussed in the below paragraphs).

Being a pro photographer does not necessarily mean that you can make your own hours. Most of the time, photographers work whenever the client is NOT working. This means weekends, evenings, federal holidays, etc. You need to be prepared to accept this as a reality if you want to be a professional photographer. You cannot simply set your own hours and expect the client to get off work to get photographs taken by you. Moreover, whenever you are not shooting clients you will be spending “normal working hours” advertising, networking, budgeting, editing, blogging, managing the website, and whatever other chores need to get done. In all reality photographers do not get days off, nor do they usually get sick days. 

Spending money on additional camera gear and software for your computer is NOT optional. It is necessary. However, you don't need to buy EVERY upgrade. If you are going to be a professional photographer, you should be able to buy all the gear you need (or already have it, or have friends from whom you can borrow it). You should have at least two camera bodies, two memory cards with sufficient space, at least 5 batteries for each camera, two battery chargers, flash kits and filters, and necessary lenses to make your art come to life. I would also recommend having a separate computer for your photography separate from your daily use computer. If you intend to sell prints, you will need a professional-grade printer. I started out with a lot of camera gear because photography was a hobby of mine for a long time, and I still spent about $12,000 on expenses related to my business the first year. The other side of this is that you should KNOW all your gear inside and out. This means that you don't need to upgrade your camera until the camera you are using does not suit your needs anymore. The same goes for software. You don't necessarily need to buy every upgrade to Lightroom or Photoshop, but you should HAVE the necessary software if you are going to be a professional photographer.

You will need to formulate solid contracts, and that will mean you must get help doing so. Law suits are becoming more common in today’s society (at least here in the United States), and it would be unrealistic and irresponsible of you as a business owner to operate without taking all legal precautions to protect yourself. Draft a contract about your services - I have one for weddings and one for everything else. Then spend the money to have an attorney look at your contract and help you make sure it will hold up in court. I would also recommend taking an introductory class on business law. If your client has not signed a contract, DO NOT TAKE PICTURES. 

True story: I had a client a while back who wanted some photographs taken for his own business - he is a real estate agent. He and I got along well in the beginning, but he was very reluctant to sign my contract. I asked him why, and he said that he didn’t like bringing the law into his business transactions. Eventually I did get him to sign it. I took his photos in my studio, and sent him some proofs of which I was very proud. They looked like most real estate agents’ pictures. When he saw them he got really hostile, said they looked like [trash] and thought I was lying about my credentials. He told me he wanted a refund and the rest of his prints as a penalty for my bad work or else he would sue me for the amount I charged him plus legal fees. It gets better: he had asked me to use software to make his face skinnier, which took me hours. He agreed to pay the extra $200 I charged for that, but he wanted that money as well. After looking online I saw that he had cropped my proofs so that my name was not visible, severely altered the saturation to make his face look yellow, and then put it on his website.

You might get a similar situation one day and must decide what to do about it. My solution worked out well for me, but I knew about the law enough to know where to find answers I was looking for. If you want to know more about this, I’d be happy to talk about it with you. I use this book for my business law purposes, and I highly recommend it for any businessman, photographer or otherwise: 

The client will not like the same photographs that you like. If you can’t take someone saying “Oh I don’t like the way my smile is in that one” or “eew I look fat” etc. then you should reconsider whether or not to enter this industry. You as the photographer will like the artistic shot, but the client is only interested in the ones in which they look their best. Of course, the fashion of the shot matters as well. You need to let the client choose which photographs they are going to buy - and that means that they look awesome, and so does everything else in the photograph. If you’re ready to be a pro, you’ll get some comments like “eew I don’t like the way my nose looks huge in that one” but you’ll also get some like “oh wow. I like that one. I look beautiful there! Thank you!”

If you charge $100 per hour, you will unfortunately not be making $100 per hour. Why? What the heck? Let’s say you are lucky enough to only spend 30 minutes post-processing / editing for every 1 hour spent snapping photographs. You then are down to $75 per hour. You will also be driving to and from the location, which will take another 30 minutes. Now you’re up to two hours of work for that $100, which means you’re making $50 per hour. You also have to set up the shoot, which requires being there 15 minutes early, and you have to have a consult after the fact for them to pick photos, which could take 45 minutes. Now you’ve spent 3 hours on this. You made $30 per hour.

Don’t forget about time you’ll spend networking, money for advertising, etc. I like to make sure I get a little money from each client to cover my equipment if something happens. This means I typically charge more if I have to transport my lights somewhere or use my camera on the sandy beach or shoot over rugged terrain where things can break.

Bottom line: figure out how much it will cost you to do that photo shoot, and charge that rate. When you factor in all your time, you’ll be making minimum wage.

To be blunt (without knowing you, and without seeing any of your work) is your work good enough to go pro? If you get compliments on your work from your parents, your friends, and your step uncle twice removed, it means that your work is better than their snapshots. But is it good enough to compete with the pro photographers around you? If people offer to buy your work, you know you can compete. 

Your website. You can pay lots of money for a nice looking website, but unless you follow the rules of the great God Google, it will not get seen. Invest the money to have someone show you how to make your website so that it shows up on Google’s search results.

You really do need all the lights and gear to do studio photography.This is also expensive, but if you try to do photography without lights it will not look professional.

Of course none of these are all-exclusive, but I’m sure most professional photographers would agree on these in principle.

Maintaining Long-Term Clients

To those of us who are blessed enough to own / operate a small business, long-term or returning clients are extremely important. First of all, unlike Walmart or McDonalds, we have the ability and responsibility to maintain a certain unique culture about our business which attracts people to hire us over the bureaucratic corporation we are forced to compete with. And you know what? People ACTUALLY DO hire the little man over the big man in a lot of cases - especially when it comes to photographers. Why do people hire independent photographers instead of getting their photographs done at Sears or Life Touch or hire David’s Bridal to photograph their weddings?

1) Artistic style - I was looking back at some of my baby pictures that my mother had done at Sears, and I noticed that they used generic backdrops, and were very good at getting both me and my little brother to smile and look like we loved each other. Of course, my brother and I were close friends so that last part wasn’t so hard. I loved having my picture taken, but my brother absolutely loathed it! That photographer had some great skill in getting my brother to smile. One thing, however, that was not-so-skilled about those Sears photos is that they were incredibly RAW in nature. It was like they took the picture and then immediately printed them - which I’m sure is exactly what happened. As a photographic artist, my work is elevated far beyond that to something unique - something that, although I put my name on it, I’d like to think I wouldn’t have to do in order for my work to be identified. A client will hire someone like Sears when they are on a budget and looking for something generic - and that’s exactly why my mom hired them. People hire a photographic artist when they want something to set them apart from other people. My MOST COMMON repeat-customers are my fellow small business owners: models, real estate agents, masseuses, beauticians, etc.

2) Vocabulary - It’s not a gigantic secret that I’m a tomboy. I’ve lived my whole life wanting to scale mountains, stalk fancy cars, and play football rather than go to a salon where I can exfoliate and get my nails done. This made it easy for me to speak in what I like to call a “non-prissy” manner. Being able to communicate with someone without the words “um” “uh” and “like” show two things: confidence and education. Whether or not you have a master’s degree in photography, you will appear smarter if you can clearly communicate with the client.

3) Interest - I am a photographer because it interests me; however, I happen to also make money off this interest. I photograph things that interest me and tend to pass off subjects I don’t find interesting to another photographer who would find it interesting. It is for this reason that clients can say that I show interest in my work. I’m not acting - I am actually interested in the photo shoot. It’s important to express this to the client. Taking an interest in them makes them more inclined to be interested in you, and that is the foundation of a personal relationship. Have you ever noticed that the locals in mom-and-pop restaurants of small towns tend to set the mood of the establishment? The art is in line with what the locals like, the menu is food that they like, and the restaurants staff knows them by name. Waiters know what food locals usually order, “Would you like the usual?” This utopia is the same in any small business - clients like the usual treatment. If they are “a usual” they expect a more-personal relationship than others, and they deserve it! My “usual” customers get Christmas cards (among other things.) People here in southern California usually find that weird at first, but then they love it! It’s a gesture that I don’t have to do, but choose to do to show them that I value a relationship with my clients on a personal level beyond a robotic business level. Another thing I do to show that I am personally interested in a client is this: I give them the opportunity to critique my work! It’s a win-win situation because it helps me improve my own work, something that artists always want, and it helps the client get exactly what they wanted for their investment.

4) Networking - this is a big one for photographers! Most of our “usual” clients have a lot in common with us in that they tend to have lots of competition, they tend to have to pay their own health care, and they have bills for things like “web hosting” that they must try to pay for by boosting “web ratings.” Normal Americans who are not in small businesses don’t fret about things like this or even know what they are. One of the best ways to keep a client long term is to form a sort of business partnership through networking. They advertise for you when people say “Oh I love that photograph.” They say, “Thanks. It was taken by this really friendly photographer in Ocean Beach.” If you gave them enough, they can provide that person with your business card and viola! you might have another client. You also advertise for them when people see their photo in your portfolio and say, “Oh I like that one.” You say, “Thanks. It’s a picture of a very gifted hair dresser in La Jolla.” then you can give your client their business card. Of course there are other conversations that spark networking types of scenarios, but advertising for other small business owners is the best way to keep their business, I find.