Church Directories

[curt_kalkstein1]

<p>I'm interested in trying photography for church directories. Where is the money made, on the additional prints I try to sell beyond the free 8 x 10 I'm supposed to give the families? Is it in the sale of the directories to families? Is it both? What are the heavy costs I'll have to take on?<br>

I'll be grateful for any advice.</p>

<p>Curt</p>

[bob_sunley]

<p>Have a look at this thread.</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/business-photography-forum/00KL5x</p>

<p> </p>

[lngroller]

<p>HI Curt, to be competitive at all you will be giving each family a 8x10 and a directory. plus about a 10-15% overrun. say you shoot 100 families, you will give the church 110-115. Most churches will purchase extras and there is a small mark up on that. Also besides the family photos and roster they will want a pastors page, and activity pages. Most companies will provide some extra pages free based on how many families are photographed. With 100 it may be 4 activity pages and the church can purchase extras. This will help offset your cost to print the directories.<br /> Your money comes from the sales of extra prints, and to do this well you will have to have a real smooth workflow down to quickly and easily show them your products and make your sale. You don't want to do any pressure sales or you won't be doing this long. The most accepted way now is to do this right after photography on a computer, Some still do preprinted packages where you print a package for evaryone and go back 10 days-2 weeks later. This can cause scheduling problems with families having to make another trip back to view their portraits but it also gets children out of the way on many so you have the parents full attention. Of course this requires a lot more expense on your part and lowers profit. I don't know of anyone doing it this way any longer but in the film days this was the standard. <br /> To make it profitable the trick is to get as many families in and out as quickly as possible while doing a good job. You don't want to have a 8-10 hour day and shoot 10 sittings. You also want to shoot more then just the directory pose. Just parents, just children, any requests they have and promote doing generation shots whenever possible.<br /> For the directory, you want all the portraits on the same background, you may want to have others to offer for additional poses. Scheduling wise you should photograph a sitting about every 10-15 minutes and you will want 2 people to show and sell the portraits for each photographer. It easily takes them twice as long to choose their poses and order, make the purchase, as it does to photograph them. If I am doing both I allow 30-45 minutes per sitting. If your scheduler for the church is a go getter you can have them schedule 20 minutes for singles and couples and 30-45 minutes for families If they know someone will be doing generation shots or bringing pets etc they can allow a bit more. The above schedule may have you sitting some, but you are better off being right on schedule or waiting for families then have them waiting. After pressure sales this is the biggest complaint about the larger companies. Encourage pets (some churches won't allow it, and some will but not for the directory pose) but many will allow pets and allow them in the directory pose. They will purchase as much of their pets as they will their children, also many companies won't photograph pets. <br /> If you have further questions feel free to ask.</p>

[curt_kalkstein1]

<p>I knew the 8 x 10 was free, but I didn't realize the directory for each family was free too. Yikes!<br>

Is it rare for someone to lose money, or is failure commonplace? The question seems to come to: are the congregation members pretty eager to buy pictures?<br>

Am I right that I probably have to set up on two or three consecutive Sundays or even a couple of the common Wednesday nights, or is it done on just one day?<br /><br /><br /></p>

[lngroller]

<p>Depends on the size of the congregation. Usually a Fri eve Sat and Sunday with make up days a week or two later. Of course a small church can be done in one weekend. Some churches may take a month of shooting. Again usually, at least in the beginning you can shoot starting at 2-3pm on weekdays and get the retired couples and singles in then.<br>

While most members are not EAGER to buy extra portraits, enough will that you should be able to make $. Some churches you may not, but I have never LOST money on a church directory. You have to plan to make money though. Set up a nice display of the items you plan on offering. Talk to the directory committee (or person in charge) and explain that there will be no pressure sales but of course you are not in business to give everything away and you can only do this because you know their families will be excited enough about their portraits to want extras and to please make it very clear that the day they come in to be photographed they will be looking at their portraits and purchasing. (In other words have them bring their checkbooks and charge cards) I also find it very beneficial to give the coordinator and paster a free package. (about a $100 credit). Of course a lot depends on your quality of work and how you show the portraits, have your workflow down pat. Also make sure you display at least 20x24's, retouching, etc.</p>

<p>Think of it this way a directory will cost you about $10.00 depending on the church size. Your free 8x10 will cost you less then $1.00 so for about $11.00 a sitting you are getting a lot of potential clients. Have lots of business cards. Even if they don't purchase then when they are in the market for a photographer if you did your job well with the directory you have a good shot of getting that. To me, that's worth a lot more then $11.00 per family in costs. Not counting payroll of course.<br>

Lets say you have a bad job and only average $40.00 per sitting. If you photograph 4 per hour then on a weekend Fri, Sat, Sun 8 hours each day you shoot about 80 sittings (that gives you some no shows). 80x$29 (your $40 less $11 costs) thats $2320.00 to pay for printing the $40order and payroll. $40 in sheets would/should be less then 2 sheets) so deduct another $2.00 per sitting to print that. So $2320.00 less $160. in printing is still $2160.00. Depending on your lab and what you've sold those numbers can go up or down. (if you sold a lot of image CD's they cost you maybe .25 for a blank CD) If you paid your sales people $15 per hour figuring on 2 sales people and one photographer then you have 24hrs x$15x2=you pay them $720.00. That leaves you $1440.00. Now you will still have another 8 hours say in work in getting the directory together etc. but as you can see it should be safe to try. It's a lot of work but on good jobs and large churches you can make some very decent money. This doesn't take into account extra books the church orders (at a small profit per book) or extra activity pages they purchase which shouldn't add much to the cost of printing.<br>

The people who fail usually fail because they do mostly this and have run out of good churches and start trying to make churches do it more frequently then every 4 years, or they pressure sell and no one wants them back. Also, don't be discouraged if one day you only run a $15-20 avg. some days are just like that. What you are concerned with, and all you are concerned with is sales Avg for the whole job. Some days it seems like everyone that day got together and decided not to buy.</p>

[lngroller]

<p>Subtract another $120.00 from the above costs, I forgot to include costs for 15% overrun on the books.</p>

[curt_kalkstein1]

<p>Those are really great insights, David. Thanks for being so clear.</p>

 

[lngroller]

<p>In case you are still checking for updates here I wanted to add a very important detail not mentioned before. I am shooting a fundraiser this weekend (same as directory type photography but no books printed) and it occurred to me I failed to mention one thing that will kill sales quickly... Making people wait. They don't mind waiting a little to view but be on time with photography if they have to wait 15-30 mins. or more to be photographed they start having negative feelings towards the whole thing and it shows in sales. BE ON SCHEDULE. Generally this isn't their first choice for a weekend activity and you don't want to give them any excuse for negative feeling about this. <br>

I had a difficult family yesterday with 14mo. old twins, a 3 yr old and a 5 & 8 yr old. as we pushed it to the end of the scheduled time I settled for good enough so I wouldn't keep the other families waiting. The family with the twins loved their shots although I knew I could have gotten better, and the next family raved about not having to wait and they knew the previous family and was just certain I would keep them waiting. They made a very good purchase and no doubt a lot of that was just the good feeling they had about how smoothly everything went.</p>

[ted_suss]

<p>Marathon Press specializes in printing church directories and also offers small quantities. I would talk with them about marketing and pricing questions...-TED :-)</p>

[curt_kalkstein1]

Again, thank you. That's great information.

 

Another question occurred to me: is it always a free 8 x 10 that the family gets? It's never a free 5 x 7? I just want to avoid a financial disaster while not breaching some standard of etiquette.

[lngroller]

<p>everyone I know of offers an 8x10. If you are using a good lab for volume work you will probably be buying your printing by the sheet also so even if you give a 5x7 most likely you will be buying a sheet of 2 so more work for you cutting them and same cost.<br>

That said, this is your gig and if you want to offer a 5x7 you can and just because everyone else uses 8x10's doesn't mean you have to. I would (and do) give 8x10's. are you thinking the cost difference? or is there another reason why you are thinking 5x7? It may hurt you as you try to sell it to the churches. you giving less then everyone else.<br>

Are you in the USA? Where in the country are you? </p>

[curt_kalkstein1]

<p>I'm just thinking of the cost, but if 8 x 10 is universal, you're right: churches would say "why would we hire you offering 5 x 7s when we can hire someone who offers 8 x 10s at no cost?"<br>

I'm in the Midwestern United States.</p>

[ted_suss]

<p>All bids are about being competitive in every way. Each person/company providing a bid will have some items that are more appealing and some that are less. It may be product, delivery, personality, quanlity, price or any number of things. Probably not a good idea to fall short of he standard offerings or you'll most likely be booted out in the first round. It appears that you have no track record, so do what the other are doing and more. There has to be a real reason for them to hire you, so you need to make everything better than equal to the others.</p>