Many businesses are resorting to words like SALE, or DUE TO THE RECESSION.  Using these words only instills fear, causing people not to buy.

Instead, why not changes things slightly and make it easier on your clients to purchase your services at the same price you’ve always sold them for?  For example, we sell our wedding photography services through an A La Carte System.  To protect the studio from a one hour booking on the busiest day of the year, we’ve always had a minimum purchase requirement.  We have now removed our minimum purchase requirement.  This makes it possible for our clients to reserve our services without the purchase of a wedding album.  While we are not getting as much per booking as we used to, we are still booking.  People still need 6 hours of coverage, and they still need their images delivered to them in one form or another.

Right now, volume is king.  Do what needs to be done to help your clients book your services.  Giving yourself the opportunity to sell a wedding album at a later date is better than not booking a client at all.  More than likely, when you do book a wedding the event will still be a few months off.  Book the wedding, and then once a month send out a news letter to your future weddings discussing the importance of purchasing a wedding album, a bridal session, or an engagement session.  Let your clients know that the purchase of their wedding album after their wedding is an option.

Once you have completed a wedding, and if your clients have not purchased a wedding album, then you still need to continue to periodically send reminders that a wedding album is still an option.

Times are changing.  Change with them.  See what works for you.

Is your studio changing with the times?  If so, leave a comment as to what you’re trying aned what’s working for you.

By Aric C. Hoek, owner and creator of Ten Houston Wedding Photographers

I’m attempting to create a win/win solution for my site’s visitors and subscribers by offering significant savings on computer and camera equipment.  To ensure the information on this site is even more relevant to it’s visiting readers, I’m only promoting products I currently use in my own business.

As you scroll down you will notice the newly posted promotions.  These promotions will help photographers save money on the items they need most, including their next camera or computer purchase.  However, because this site is dedicated to the business of wedding photography I’ve also added products that I use to me help me better market myself to my clients.

So far I’ve applied to promote products for seven different companies, and I’ve been approved by the following five:

Pro Twitter Marketing:  Interested in building a larger Twitter Network for yourself or company? This is what I use. Very cool, and loads of fun.

Stamps.com:  I exceed all of my wedding clients expectations by sending them stamps with images of their wedding on them to use for their thank you cards!  I don’t tell my clients that I’m going to do this for them.  It’s a complete surprise to my clients when a Fed Ex package arrives at their door containing a thank you note from the studio and enough stamps to use for all of their thank you cards.  Or, you can make stamps with your company logo on them!

B&H Photo:  This is where I buy all my camera gear.  The banners I’ve chosen to display for B&H can save photographers up to $300 on their next camera purchase.  If you’re an Apple Computer nut like me, you may want to take a look at the text links I have posted.

Adobe: I’ve been approved to advertise Adobe products!  I currently use three products from Adobe on a daily basis; Photoshop, Lightroom 2, and Acrobat Pro.  Look for the text link below the Adobe Banners to find savings on Adobe products.

Mac Speech Dictate: I use this software for writing my eBooks.

I hope that photographers will be able to take advantage of the savings that I am actively searching out.  I’ve subscribed to the newsletters of the companies I’m promoting, giving me fresh information on valuable sales when they first come out, which I will share with my visitors and subscribers here on my blog.

I’m still waiting to be approved by two more companies, Apple and Constant Contact.  With any luck I’ll be hearing from them by the end of next week.

Thank you for your time.

Comments welcome.

By Aric C. Hoek, owner and creator of Ten Houston Wedding Photographers

Can you imagine the nightmare of double booking the same date! While this is a very obvious problem to avoid, what is important is to understand how this can happen, and more importantly how to avoid it.

Perhaps it’s late because your prospect couldn’t meet until after they got off work. At the conclusion of your consultation your clients reserve the date. You create a contract, collect your retainer and have the contract signed by all parties. You’re tired and fail to place the date as booked in your calendar, or the date gets erased from your calendar.

This can happen for a variety of reasons: human error, a computer crash, a malicious employee, or more.

Another couple comes along inquiring about the same date. You check your calendar and see that the date is still open. The couple comes into the studio and books the date.

This time you successfully place the date into your calendar.

The date of the wedding soon arrives. You show up at the second couple’s wedding and receive a phone call on your cell. It’s the first couple wanting to know where you are! Not only will you more than likely be sued by the first couple, you will be so off your game at the event you are covering, you will probably produce less than professional results.

While this situation is very unlikely to happen, it is your responsibility as the owner of your studio to make sure that it doesn’t happen.

To prevent this disaster, keep all of your open contracts in a safe. Every month, on the first of the month, pull them out and compare them to the booked dates on your calendar. If you come across a contract that has no correlating reserved date on your calendar, you have just prevented yourself from a possible double booking.

Now, do this process in reverse. Check your calendar, and look at each weekend for a booked date. For each booked date you find, make sure you can locate a signed contract that correlates to the date! This will prevent you from booking a wedding and marking down the wrong date in your calendar. It also ensures you have possession of all your active contracts.

This is just one of many tips that you will find in my eBook Actions You Can Take To Promote and Protect Your Studio. The book is 50% until 3/27! Use the discount code “sale” to receive your savings.

By Aric C. Hoek, owner and creator of Ten Houston Wedding Photographers

One of the people I follow on Twitter, jtgstudio, was just expressing how she felt, “buried under her very long to do list”.

Our to do lists seem to get longer when times are a bit more stressful. One can easily get buried under the tasks we set before ourselves, and all in the name of time management. When a person gets bogged down, they lose their perspective and become inefficient.

The truth is there is no such thing as time management, only event management.

Make a second to do list for yourself, only this list is a 24 hour to do list. At the beginning of your day, add two or three items to this list that you want to complete. When you start one of the items on your 24 hour to do list, do not stop until you have completed the item. Give all your energy to the one task at hand, always keeping in mind what the completion of the project looks like and how the reward will feel once the project is done.

If you are unable to accomplish all that you placed on your 24 hour to do list in 24 hours, then you can either move the remaining projects back into your bulk to do list, or leave them for the next day.

This simple system has really made a difference for myself, and my business.

By Aric C. Hoek, owner and creator of Ten Houston Wedding Photographers

For some time now, the seasoned photographer has had to compete with the new and upcoming wedding photographer.  The shooting star if you will.  A tag line that reads, “Doing business since 1986” just isn’t good enough anymore.  You have to have a WOW product in order to stay on top of your game, and boy do we have some WOW products that we offer our clients!

But now we have something new to deal with.  The economy.

The seasoned photographer with more overhead is going to have it harder than the photographer that is just getting into the field and only charging a fraction of the cost.  So what is one to do?

Is the answer to lower your prices?  It took me years of education and sweat to get to the level that I am today.  The thought of going backwards sickens me.  None the less, something must be done to maintain cash flow.  So, I have come up with a hybrid solution to the problem.  One that you may choose to follow as well.

The experienced wedding photographer has one thing over the new entry level photographer.  Professional relationships with other wedding vendors.  Specifically, professional relationships with the Catering Directors and Facility Managers.

Canon tediously as LenoMy plan is this.  I have made a reduced price, which I will only offer to the patrons of one of the wedding facilities that frequently refers me.  I will create the offer in such a way, that only the couples that book the facility for both their ceremony and reception will be able to take advantage of the special.  By doing this, it will be in the best interest of the facility manager to promote the special as an enticement for book couples to book their facility for both the wedding and reception.

To make this plan even more effective, the patrons that are able to take advantage of this special offer will be given two package choices.  The two choices will be exactly the same, except for the following.  Each of the two packages will represent two different photographers.  One will be for me to photograph the wedding and only slightly more expensive that the second package, which will be for my associate to shoot the wedding.

By making my package only slightly higher than my associate, I give myself a better chance of getting booked first, and my associate second.  This only works because the facility is capable of holding multiple weddings at the same time.

I see this as a hybrid solution.  I have created a win / win situation for the facility manager, myself, and the patron.  Plus, I have still left my prices intact for couples that contact me from other wedding facilities.  Lowering my prices completely just doesn’t seem prudent at this point, and this is my solution.

I’ll let you know how it works out.  I’m off to the facility right now with 50 copies of the special and a stack of vendor prints.

You’ll find a few more real world ideas in my eBook.

Your advertising caused your phone to ring. Your professionalism on the phone resulted in a consultation, and you’re sitting across the table from them now.

After bringing out a sample album for your potential client to view, you place the album in front of them. Thirty seconds later the couple has flipped through every page and is ready to look at the next album!

Take better control of the meeting and turn the pages of the album yourself.

If you place an album in front of your prospect, more than likely they are going to do exactly what you expect them to do. They’re going to open it, but not in the way you want them to. You’ve spent years of your life developing your craft. The albums you show should represent that. Allowing someone to go through one of your albums in less than 60 seconds is shameful!

Whether you know it or not, you are not just selling your albums, you’re selling yourself! The people who hire you to photograph their wedding are hiring you, not your album. You need to let your passion for photography flow, and telling stories is a great way to communicate that passion.

Tell stories about your albums. Why is one album more important to you than another? Tell beautiful stories. Fun stories. Unique stories Show that you care. Educate. Talk about the individual stories behind one picture on every other spread. Tell stories about the care you take to design each individual’s album. Keep in mind this is quite possibly the first time the person sitting across the table from you has ever shopped for a professional photographer, so tell your stories with a smile on your face.

My business tip is this. If you want to book more weddings, tell better stories. Keep in mind also, that nine times out of ten you will be telling these stories to women.

Take better control of the consultation. Place your sample albums down one at a time and slowly turn the pages of your sample wedding albums one at a time. Do so in a manner that shows you value and respect the album.

When your prospect leaves your studio they should know that you respect your own photography and you’re passionate about your artwork. Your clients can’t afford not to have you at their wedding!

My eBook, Actions You Can Take to Promote and Protect Your Studio is now being translated into Spanish.

my eBook, Actions You Can Take to Promote and Protect Your Studio has now been professionally edited and refined.

For the longest time now I have had carpel tunnel in my right hand.  I drive my commute with this hand, carry my camera with this hand, and I retouch with this hand.

Retouching has been difficult as of late.  I have been noticing that I have not been able to draw as straight a line as I used to.  Recently, it got pretty bad.  So bad in fact, I realized that the problem was not me!  It was my Wacom Tablet!

So, I began to budget for a new tablet to retouch with.  They are about $800 for the size I like to use.  At any rate, the pen that is used with the tablet has an eraser side.  I decided that I would go into the preferences for my Wacom and see if there would be a way to make the eraser side of my pen behave like the tip.  No joy there.

However, while trying to make this happen, I noticed something important.  The eraser on my pen worked great!!!!  It suddenly dawned on me that the problem was not my carpel tunnel, or the tablet.  It was my pen!

I reveiced my pen in last week and I have been in retouching bliss ever since.

Having trouble with your Wacom tablet?  Check out the pen!  It’s a much less expensive repair.