5 Mistakes I’ve Make in My Photography Business | Photographers Create Podcast
Summary
In this episode, host Alison Hatch discusses five mistakes she made in her photography business and provides advice on how to avoid them. The mistakes include not finalizing her style before charging clients, incorporating expensive programs and systems, paying for branding, believing a big social media following is necessary, and charging too much. The host emphasizes the importance of consistency, simplicity, and understanding the local market when running a photography business. She also encourages photographers to support and advocate for each other in the industry.
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Hey everyone, welcome to the Photographers Podcast. Today I am flying solo and I'm going to be talking about the five mistakes, five of many mistakes I should say. I'm not gonna tell them all today, but five mistakes that I've made in my photography business that hopefully if you hear them, you won't make them and it will have been for something instead of for nothing, the mistakes I made. That's not true. When we make mistakes, we learn and I definitely have learned from these.
But before we get to that, I wanna talk real quick about the analog artist workshop that's happening April 27th and 28th in North County, San Diego, where we'll be going over all things film. So if you are wanting to learn analog film or incorporating it into your client workflow and becoming a hybrid photographer, I can talk, or jumping to film altogether, this workshop is for you. We will be going over everything, starting with the basics of your camera.
and light metering film and then how to work with your camera and your film and your light meter and to start creating work that you love with analog film. We're going to take the fear out of it. I know that it can be very scary to spend money on something that you just don't know if it'll turn out, but this workshop will help you feel confident in shooting film and feeling really good about your abilities with it. We also will be going over creative techniques.
and we will have two stylized shoots. It's a really small group of whoever wants to come and it will be so much fun. I hope you can make it. The other thing is my film soup guide is up and available on my website. It's a quick online course with really easy digestible videos and a PDF of tons of recipes. So if you want to try film soup, you won't be worried that it's going to be absolutely ruined. If you follow my...
it will not be ruined, it will be turned out and it'll look amazing. So let's get to my five mistakes. So the first mistake that I made was not finalizing my style before I started taking on clients and charging. When you're a photographer, especially if you feel the art pull of photography, you wanna try so many different things and that's absolutely okay. I think that I...
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diving into lots of different techniques and cameras and presets or what you're shooting styles, landscapes, portraits, food, boudoir, whatever, it's absolutely okay to do all of that. But once you start charging, you need to stick with it and not change. So I just kept trying to find that thing for me.
that I felt as an artist was worthy of charging people along the way. I don't know if that makes sense. So as I was upping my pricing, okay, also I need to take out the last couple of sentences. So as when I was charging clients, I wasn't quite there with my style. I wasn't feeling super comfortable or happy with the images. They were great images and my clients were happy, but I was always tweaking things just a little bit. And because of that,
I was being inconsistent with my work and therefore lost clients because of it. So if you are charging, stick with that style and what you put online on your website, that, so that way your clients know that that's what they're going to get. That was my number one mistake. My second mistake was incorporating programs and systems that were expensive, making things more complicated than they needed to be instead of saving me time. So for instance,
There are so many things out there that quote unquote save you time and yes they absolutely can be saving you time if that is what you're needing to incorporate into your business but it's really easy to listen to everybody and thinking oh yeah that's a great idea I should totally do that I should have all these systems in place so then when I do get busy enough I have all these systems and it will save me time.
When my business was smaller and I wasn't making as much money, it just was nonsensical to be paying for expensive CRMs, accounting, other things that just wasn't necessary. It was not necessary for my business, so it actually cost me more time and money than I had. And so that was a big mistake. I'm not saying that these are not good things. They are absolutely good things.
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If you're in your business that you're so, so busy, you know, with certain things that you need to create systems to simplify it. But when you're starting out, there are other ways to do the exact same thing for free and not cost you as much. The other thing that I did that was a mistake, number three, that was number two. Number three is, this is gonna be unpopular and I may make people really mad by saying this.
but paying for branding.
Okay, I don't know how to say this without making people upset because I have brand friends that that's what they do and what they do is amazing.
But I didn't need to pay for branding. For my work, for my business, I don't feel, this is so gonna be unpopular, I don't feel that branding is important. It just isn't. Picking your colors, picking your logo, picking your fonts and whatever is not as important as being consistent with that branding throughout time.
So again, with my style not being consistent for my clients, the same thing with branding. If you choose something, whatever colors, it's not going to make or break your clients coming to you and paying. What will make and break with branding is constantly changing your colors and your logo and your fonts and all the things. They want to, it takes time for people to make a sale with you.
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They need to see you multiple, multiple times. It's very rare that someone sees you and they're like, oh yeah, totally. I'm going to give you all this money. It takes time for you to build trust with that client and to build trust, you need to just stick with the same thing. You know, my clients may not love my colors, but they like my work. Like it's, that's not what is important here. What's important is the consistency and paying for branding. I just don't feel like is important. If you don't.
feel comfortable with all those things, by all means, pay for branding. But for me, it just wasn't a smart move at all. It felt like a waste of money and I'm gonna get a lot of flack for that, but that's okay. That was number three. Number four mistake was feeling like I needed a big social media following to be considered professional.
This is just dumb. This idea that we need to have this massive following to be considered a real photographer. You're a real photographer if you take pictures and you charge for it and people pay you. That is a real business. That is a real photographer. A real photographer is someone who takes pictures as a hobby and it makes them happy. That is a real photographer.
A real photographer, someone's gone into education, they have a college degree with it, or they don't have a college degree with it. Nothing, none of these things are, do you, says you have to have a massive social media following to be considered a real business. So I know people who are crushing it in the photography world, in the photography education world, who have a very small following, just like, you know, a couple thousand maybe.
and they're doing well. They're booking out all the time. They have, they have a steady flow of clients. They have this, you know, multiple income buckets for themselves and they're making generous amount of money each year with a small amount of followers online. And then I know other people who have tens of thousands of followers online who are not constantly booking, who do not have that consistency with their clientele.
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Social media means nothing. It absolutely means nothing. If you aren't using it correctly, and I wasn't using it correctly, I was trying to chase followers to hopefully give myself this clout with clients. So then they would be like, oh, she's a somebody, I should work with her. Instead of using social media as a marketing strategy and a way to connect with clients, I don't need thousands of clients every year.
I can't handle thousands of clients every year. What you want to do is connect with those few clients that want to pay for you through Instagram or whatever social media you're doing, TikTok, Facebook, whatever. That is what you need to be doing on social media is marketing, consistent marketing and connection with your audience. That's way more important than numbers. All right, the last thing, and this is also gonna be highly unpopular,
is I charged too much. So I got some bad advice and was told this is the minimum you need to charge and I admired this person so much. They were so successful and I just was like, well, I don't know what the heck I'm doing. I will do that. So I charged too much. And yes, I did get a few clients who paid me at that much higher price point. And for some people, I'm not going to say what the price point is.
But for some, this is actually very middle of the road. But for me and my location, I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It's the poorest state in the country and people don't value photography and the people who do value photography don't have a lot of money. There's just no money here. And so I shot myself in the foot by charging too much instead of looking at the market, looking at my, what I, my, um,
What am I word I'm looking for? What it costs for me to do business and trying to trim the fat so that I could charge and actually get clients to come into me. So I know that there's so much, so much emotion around charging. So I want to say something that is important with when you're thinking about what you charge. You definitely need to be charging enough that you don't feel.
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like you're being taken advantage of by your clients. Like you don't want to have that resistance or you know that feeling of not being valued by your clients. If you're in that price point, you definitely need to be charging above that. So you feel like it's worth it and people value you. But you also need to look at your market, your local market, unless you're a travel photographer, which you can totally do. But I think that's a totally different ball game here.
And as I wanna shoot locally in Albuquerque, that's where my business has been for the past seven years and I am now splitting my time between in San Diego. So it might be a totally different market out there. I just haven't been out there enough to know. So definitely look at your market when you are pricing yourself and then make sure you are delivering what you feel is of value with that price point. But when I started to charge way too much, which was this mass, I did.
this massive jump, I don't know how many, I think it was five times more, four times more than what I had been charging before. I lost all my clients, everyone. And it is taking me a long time, a couple years actually. I've had to lower my prices significantly. No, I did not go back to that very bottom price that I was at. But it's very close and I am starting to get clients again.
So that is the other thing that I did that was bad for my business. So there you are. There are my five things. I hope that you can take them and maybe if you are seeing that pinpoint within your business yourself that you can learn from me and stop doing these things immediately and change them because I want everyone to be successful. In the photography community, we are about support. In a...
If you are not finding that support, you need to find that support. Photographers, we need to support each other. Women especially, we need to support each other in this business. We need to be our own best advocates and advocate for each other. So that's it. A short and sweet podcast today. One last thing before I go. If you do like the Photographers Create podcast, would you please leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. That would mean the world to me.
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It would help other people find this podcast who are photographers or creatives and get in front of more people so we can share this photography community and education with each other. So thank you so much for being here everyone and have a wonderful week.
