Not coming to me, but going to them

[robgomez]

<p>Hello,<br>

I have now done a couple weddings and engagements and have decided, this is GOOOOD money. For the price that each one is, I figure in this unstable economy that if I get at least 2-3 gigs a month, I am alright for the time being. Coupled with a part time job of course.<br>

So, I have a website and cards that I pass out. Word of mouth has done ok for me, but not nearly fast or good enough.<br>

I have decided: I want to chase them now, not just wait for the newly engaged to come to me.</p>

<p>So I was thinking: How would I go about finding newly engaged couples to offer my photography packages to, and how do you feel is the best way to approach them?</p>

<p>Thanks so much, always smart people on here.<br>

Rob</p>

[allyson_campbell]

How about getting acquainted with jewelry store owners for a start? Has anyone else done that?

[picturesque]

<p>Better yet, coordinate with the jewelry store owners--offer a 'free' engagement session with the purchase of an engagement ring.</p>

[allyson_campbell]

Oh that sounds even better Nadine! Will definitely get your name out there! I will see if I can try that where I am.

[john_deerfield]

<blockquote>

<p>this is GOOOOD money.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>As opposed to bad money? Perhaps off topic, but you may want to use a spreadsheet to figure out your costs. I haven't heard anyone that figured out the costs of shooting a wedding to say it's GOOOOD money. Remember, someday you are going to have to replace your camera, your computer, your software, etc. Even at one wedding a month, you need insurance. At 2 or 3 per month, I don't see how you could sleep without it. And the list keeps getting longer. By the time you are done, when you factor in hours worked, how much are you getting/hour? Most of the time you can find a part-time job that pays more than that with far less stress!</p>

[david_rosenthal1]

<p>How about two cameras, two strobes, and two main lenses as a minimum. Drop one on cement after being pushed by a guest trying to get a picture, and what do you do for the rest of the job? And in addition to camera insurance, there's liability insurance, and errors & omissions insurance coverage. Runs more than four digits a year!</p>

<p>Seriously, what's your advertising budget? $100.00 per month? $1,000.00 per month and you're starting to get serious! Do you have a web site? If you don't you're not a real photog yet! Ads, direct marketing emails, bridal shows and SEO send brides to the web site, and then they email or call.</p>

<p>In reality, you need a couple jobs a month just to break-even! In this economy everybody with a computer and a home-made business card calls themselves a wedding photographer. The brides want everything for nothing, and sometimes they can get it that way. Sometimes it's not worth trying to be in business, paying rent, insurances, payroll, materials, supplies, shipping, repairs (there's that 2nd camera bugaboo again--now you need a third while #2 is being repaired!), etc.</p>

<p>A spreadsheet of reality is what you really need to make sure that you can make money in this business.</p>

[ianivey]

<p>Sheesh. Going around calling this good money without spreadsheets or critical thinking. </p>

<p>[grabs pitchfork, lights torch]</p>

<p>LET'S GET THIS GUY! </p>

[cyrus_procter]

<p>Ian, what a great comment. I've got my pitchfork ready to go ;).</p>

<p>Rob, don't get too down, its a lot of work, but then if it wasn't it would be much of a living :D.</p>

<p>You know a business takes a long time to build. If you look at photo.net's own "Business of Wedding Photography" article the advertising section, nearly every photographer listed word of mouth first. Some of them had advertising, or cleaver ideas like Nadine's, yes, but the majority had word of mouth hands down (to quote Conrad Erb). My point here is, I think its great you do what you can in the advertising world, but in the long run I think the majority of your business will come from word of mouth, and that just takes time. I think its also very important to ensure you leave a good impression with the bride and wedding party, if you are hard working and your work is good, it will show, and future brides attending that wedding will make a mental note they want you for their wedding. Problem is, it make take years before they find the groom :), hence the time it takes to build a business.</p>

[frolickingbits]

<p>I agree with Skyler-building a wedding photography business is a long term proposition. I think very few photographers would tell you they did 2-3 weddings a month in their first year of business. Vendor marketing and referrals have been absolutely crucial to me, to the point where almost all of my couples for 2012 were referred by a vendor or another couple. It's taken me a number of years and a lot of effort to get to a point where I am known by most of the venues, planners, florists and other photographers in my area. <br>

I tried a promotion with a jewelry store where I offered free engagement sessions, but I didn't get any takers, possibly because the store didn't pass them out, or maybe for other reasons. </p>

[mariosforsos]

<p>I think what the OP did was what more and more amateur photographers do when they shoot a wedding or two - they see just the immediate cash in hand without counting anything else and reactively calculate them as profit. Of course, as everyone has said already, reality is so completely different it can be actually scary.</p>

<p>Rob, you need to go back to the drawing board and take into account all the valuable information given here, talk to an accountant and a lawyer, procure their services for those aspects of your proposed business and then start "hunting down" clients...the possibility of biting off more than you can chew are increasing multifold with every new shoot you arrange.</p>

[mike dixon]

<i>Sheesh. Going around calling this good money without spreadsheets or critical thinking.<P>

 

[grabs pitchfork, lights torch]<P>

 

LET'S GET THIS GUY! </i><P>

People are doing him a favor. I remember several years ago on a wedding forum far, far away, there was one guy who spent months bragging about how he and his wife only charged $X00 per wedding and provided lots of photos, and they were making tons of money, often shooting a couple of weddings each weekend. Their clients loved them! And photographers who were charging several thousand dollars per wedding were a bunch of ripoff artists. <P>Well, his tune changed a bit when tax time rolled around. He had turned over all his info to his accountant and discovered that he and his wife were not, in fact, making tons of money. They weren't making <B>any</b> money. They had spent all their weekends working to subsidize the cost of other people's weddings. After this discovery, he was asking all those "rip off artists" how to turn a profit . . .

[david_rosenthal1]

<p>Rob,</p>

<p>The best recommendation I have (besides a lot of back-up equipment) is to join a statewide or regional professional photographers association. They sponsor "photo schools" at hotels where for a mere thousand or so dollars you go to school for 6 days and learn both the art & business sides of the industry. Look up www.PPANE.com, as they're in New England. Most PPA Schools also have sites you can visit to learn more and they're positioned all over the country.</p>

<p>Education, travel, association dues, etc. are deductible expenses, but they do affect the bottom line. Just like better equipment such as constant aperature F2.8 zooms, F1.4 primes, and that third or fourth body to hand to an assistant so you have two on you to use.</p>

<p>It's a good idea not to assume that word of mouth is all you need, especially in this economy. I had the sister of one of my brides in my office (planning a holiday affair) for an interview. She already loved the work and obviously came to me due to her sister's complete satisfaction. Her image (with all of the girls in the bridal party) was on my web site. I found my older price list that her sister booked with and gave it to her along with my current one, thus taking away the "what can you do for me" scenario, or so I thought. She WANTED MORE OFF THE PRICE! So I made a counter-offer that wasn't satisfactory enough to get her to book the wedding and still let me have a little something without just breaking even! She obviously was interested more in price than quality, so I let her walk and spent my holiday weekend with my FAMILY! Sometimes jobs aren't worth doing and this potential client was completely unrealistic in her expectations. So never assume that word of mouth is the "Holy Grail"!</p>

[frolickingbits]

<p>Mike, your story reminds me of one of the low rent photographers in my area-he had this long winded thing on his website about how he's cheaper than those overpriced $4,000+ photographers in their BMW's and Hummers, no need to pay all that money for photos, etc. Then he decided to show up at a photographer networking event populated almost entirely with $3,000+ photographers. Talk about awkward. He has since taken that piece off his site, but I still think of him as a talentless, charmless hack.</p>

[Dave Gardner]

<p>Nadine...what a great idea.</p>

<p>Rob...you can also try going to some of the local beauty salons. Moms love to brag that their Daughter just engaged.....also the girls themselves love to tell their friends. In exchange for passing out my cards or letting me put up some photos....i would do some promo for them.</p>

<p>Dave</p>

[savagesax]

It can be good money, if you have experience. A pro friend shot a wedding and the guy was a lawyer. My friend, the pro for 15 years or so, experienced a broken hard drive. Lost the lawyers wedding. Also lost over 10 grand fighting the lawyer.

 

Not everyone goes to small claims court.

 

Be careful be safe and have fun along with insurance.

[niko_korhonen]

<p>It sounds like a completely different experience in Scandinavia than in the US. You must have too many mediocre photographers crowding the market it seems.<br>

Wedding photographers are a highly respected elite and usually are fashion photographers as a day job. I've been reading a lot of the threads in this forum and it's my opinion that too much candid stuff at the reception goes on.<br>

In my country all the shots are posed or formals. It would be very unusual to offer more than 100 shots, often quite less. And the end product is not a cd with all the images but a bound book of the best 50. We would usually charge $1500-$2500 for this. Getting two to three of these a month is a good living, adding to you normal fashion work, so its not unusual to gross $6-8k a month.<br>

We never have these antics with mothers in law or fights over the quality. That would be seen as very bad manners and shunned. Premium quality photography for a wedding that is costing $20-40k is less than 10% of the all up cost. Thats what people here are prepared to pay. And you better be good as well. Its no industry for newcomers straight off. You would expect to have to work as a photographers assistant for perhaps 5 years before you would be let loose on paying clients. Couples here plan their wedding dates around a good photographers availability.</p>

<p> </p>

[david_rosenthal1]

<p>Niko,</p>

<p>Makes me want to move to your Country! Here in the States, we have beaten-up pro photgs to a point where it's almost not worth being in business. All of the brides want "PJ" and then cry when the mediocre shots come back from their photographers. Some of the brides even post their pissing rants here on this forum!</p>

<p>Back in the days of Hasselblads I made real money. Now, thanks to a willingness to forgo well-posed formals done by trained pros, all any wannabe needs to shoot weddings is $10.00 worth of business cards, a $1K cheappy kit beginner DSLR with slow as molases zoom lens, one shoe mount flash (no flip bracket), NO back-up, and a big smile to lull the nieve bride into a sense of fantasy!</p>

[paul_armes]

<p>Amen to that David!</p>

[robgomez]

<p>Even with all the red tape and all the stress of this, even when I am in the middle of it all, I still tell myself everytime: I would rather be doing this than a LOT of jobs. Would rather do this than work for the man.<br>

That's just me. And in the case, I love PHOTOGRAPHY.<br>

Thanks everyone.<br>

R</p>