Consider the eBay opportunity. The pictures are what sells on eBay. Especially eBay Motors. If you look on eBay Motors, a typical car will have 5-20 pictures on it. Many do not help the seller auction off the car because they are so bad. The pictures are often blurry and dark.

The difference between good pictures and bad pictures might make hundreds of dollars of difference on a car auction because the buyer can actually see what they are bidding on.

You might offer to teach a class or seminar at your local community center, library or in your studio on how to shoot pictures of products to sell on eBay. You could show examples of what is good and what is bad. There are plenty out there to choose from – mostly bad.

Some of the eBay Photography tips that you could teach about during your class or seminar:

• Limit what is in your image to what is for sale
• Try to eliminate the carpet background that sits behind so many of the products that are for sale on eBay. Instead, use a clean background that contrasts with the product to really show it off
• Don’t forget the tripod. Having a small tripod will ensure crystal clear images for posting on eBay
• Shoot from different angles to make the product seem more interesting and appealing
• Make sure that you have enough light on the product to “show it off”
• Shoot more than just the product sitting front and center. Shoot from the corner, turn it over, change directions, shoot from above, shoot from below, etc.
• If you are selling a lot of product on eBay, you might consider a small product studio lighting kit that provides the ability to have diffused light on the subject.

You might also offer eBay Photography services from your website or on your business card, although with the number of digital cameras available today, I don’t think you will get a ton of business from this.

Being recognized in your local community as an expert will always helps future business!

Many local newspapers feature new baby announcements, marriages and anniversaries. Take the time to harvest that information, store it in a database, and act on it – regularly.

Lets think through the possibilities with a newborn baby announcement in the paper.

As soon as you get the paper, scan the births section of the paper and send the new happy couple a color card in the mail (using the address out of the phone book) with several beautiful pictures of newborn babies and a coupon for a discount for baby pictures, birth announcements or whatever is appropriate for your community.

The beautiful thing about it is you can use the name of the child, birthdate, and the name of the parents on the card, and capture that information for future reference.

When the couple comes in, get an email address from them and a list of any other children and their birthdays. Shoot an amazing picture of the newborn, suggest a special mother/baby picture as well, and encourage the father to have a shot taken with the newborn. They are only that small for a few months.

Remember, these pictures have to be amazing for the lifetime customer to exist.

After that photo session, think about the next 20 years.

What if you sent an email reminder at about 6-7 months with pictures of babies with big toothy grins reminding the parents to capture those new teeth with another quick shot at the studio.

A birthday reminder at a year (and every year thereafter) is a logical marketing step.

Kindergarten is such a huge step, what about a reminder at the beginning of the year just as school starts to get that school photo taken. The picture is going to be taken – why give the business to the school photographer when you can collect that revenue by getting there first. What about scouting, starting junior high, senior portraits, etc. You might alternate between email and letters to give some variety to the contacts.

Make sure you indicate the child’s name on the emails and letters. Suggest family pictures once a year. Capture the mothers ideas about the kind of pictures she likes. Does she like outdoor pictures? Formal, casual, spring, fall, etc. There are computer programs that automate this for you and several hours of brainstorming will result in many opportunities each year for you to photograph that family and their children. You can start the process simply by putting the child’s name and birthdate into the program.

Dentists are great at this. You get a postcard every 6 months from your dentist reminding you of the 6 month checkup. Restaurants are using this as well. Children get a postcard that they can fill out with the purchase of a kids meal. This postcard is sent out about a week before their birthday. The goal of the restaurant is to get the whole family in to celebrate the childs birthday. That’s a pretty good return for a postcard and stamp. This is a great formula that you can replicate for your business.

Focus on building your customer list and creating a lifetime relationship with your customers. Get to be the family photographer where you are asked to capture the memories during every significant lifetime event of the entire family – from the birth to the wedding and everything in between.

The list can start with several entry points taken from the local paper:

• the newborn announcement
• Eagle Scout announcement
• Marriage/Engagement announcement
• Anniversary announcement
• etc.

Collecting information in a database and sending regular, appropriate announcements (via snail mail until you get an email address) can create regular, repeatable, sources of income.

The badge idea kind of faded over time and you didn’t see as many around, but now they are coming back into style again just like those pants you wore in Junior High and some of those horrible hairdoos.

Badges are a print idea that you can offer on the photography pricelist. They are not for every occasion (I don’t see badges being a logical add-on to a glamour shot – although that could be some good humor), but for a birthday party for a young child, family reunions, Grandma and Grandpa pictures, etc. you can add this long forgotten item to your pricelist capture some incremental sales.

Besides, once you own the machine, you can use it for lots of other things, not just photography…Just think of your kids run for Student Body Vice President in 7th Grade.  You could have “Vote for Bob” pinned to every kid at the school.  Some of the ideas that you might use badges for:

• Fundraising
• Family reunions
• Business meetings – “Hello, my name is Bob”
• Church events
• School activities

Check out http://www.badgeaminit.com for the equipment needed to do the job.

They teach a Graphics Art Instructional program that includes courses on Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, Web Page design, and Quark Express. As we discussed the program and the benefits of each course, I saw an opportunity to partner with the college, instructors, and faculty to facilitate learning opportunities for the students.

Some ideas that I had:

1. Provide a guest lecture on the basics of photography, exposure, ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. It is always better to design when you understand the basics of how a photograph is put together
2. Provide digital images that the course could use to manipulate and/or do layout with
3. Onsite set design – understanding qualities of light, how to setup a photograph to minimize the Photoshop work afterwards, etc.
4. Be able and willing to participate in lectures, provide guidance, mentoring, studio tours, etc.

All these activities will help identify you as an expert in the field…one that the student can leverage when they need a photographer to shoot assignments after they graduate.

Oh – being the staff photographer has its benefits too. As part of the evening, they hired a photographer to come in and take pictures of the members of the advisory board. Not a bad gig – 1 hour to shoot ~15 pictures. It took the photographer longer to setup her equipment than take the portraits.

She also took advantage of the opportunity and handed out her business card to the members of the advisory board as they left the set.

Team up with the other professionals in the field to increase your photography revenue opportunities.

Have fun shooting!

Whether you are an aspiring photographer just learning the trade, or an established photographer that has been shooting for 20 years and regularly gets published in national magazines, you should promote your work online.

There are lots of social networking sites where you can hang your shingle, i.e. Facebook or Myspace. There are lots of photosharing sites (i.e. flickr) as well where you can post pictures for the public to view. Or, you can create your own website.

There are certainly advantages and disadvantages to all three approaches.

I will cover social networking and photosharing sites in a future post…

If you choose to create your own website, there are a few basic steps you should follow:

1. Register a domain name
2. Create the website
3. Host the website with a reputable provider

A domain name is the URL that a customer will use to access your website. The URL for the Photoincome website is www.photoincome.com. Domain name registration can be done at thousands of sites on the web. Some of the companies that I have dealt with are:

* www.networksolutions.com
* www.godaddy.com
* www.web.com
* www.register.com

The cost to register a domain name ranges from ~$7 to $35 a year

Various programs are available to help you create a website. They are very easy to learn the basics and many come with wizards and templates to speed things up. With some computer knowledge, you could probably create a basic website in an evening.
Some of the website creation programs that I have dealt with are

* NetObjects Fusion
* Adobe Dreamweaver
* Microsoft Frontpage
* HomeSite
* There are lots of others…

Website creation programs range from ~$30-$400. The higher priced solutions give you more bells and whistles…you actually could create a webpage with a simple text editor if you knew HTML.

The final step of website creation is publishing your site to a hosting company. There are thousands of companies out there that will host your website and provide many packages with features galore. You want to pick a plan that will provide adequate disk space for your photos, and adequate bandwidth for your customers to download your photos. Expect to pay ~$7-8 for a basic plan up to hundreds of dollars for online stores, customized programming, etc.

Contact me and I can point you to reputable, honest and customer service focused hosting providers.

I will discuss some ideas for good websites in a future post.