Starting a Wedding Photography Business - My JourneyStarting a wedding photography business seems a popular idea judging by the photography blogs. Could be that powerful digital cameras are so readily available and the crazy economic times we're in. Fact is - it's not simple to run a PROFITABLE outfit. I've lost count of the number of studios that have set up in my home town and gone bust. Remember - taking pictures is a business first and foremost like any other profession. Yes! - I know we all LOVE taking photographs and seeing the joy on people's faces when we show them the results. It's still a profession or perhaps, for some a second income.
How did I start?
A newspaper article catch my eye about taking someone off the street to train as a self employed photographer. I'd always been interested in taking pictures so decided to attend the open day about photo franchises. Wow - it really excited me and so I took the next step for a full day assessment along with my wife, Joy. We both enjoyed the experience and felt comfortable with the family company setup and having carried out our due diligence tests signed up for a 5 year franchise shortly after. The main advantage of taking a franchise was to avoid the extremely sharp learning curve of starting a new profession in a subject that I knew very little! It was to be my undertaking but with a load of support from Joy. Before being let loose on an unsuspecting public my training commenced. My 4 month training covered the photographic aspects of portraiture, graduations, schools, nurseries and wedding photography. On the business side we learnt about marketing, networking and and a host of other things just by being around photographers. Having completed a very enjoyable training period, it was down to me to find some clients. Fortunately, I had set up some display material and questionnaires in advance and was able to start taking portraits straightaway. Those early results were not brilliant but nevertheless I was gaining experience AND making sales. The work was mainly portraits and I quickly became adept at erecting a portable studio in people's homes or out on location. Within 3 months, I had booked 5 weddings for that initial year - which was really scary as apart from my training and helping other photographers, I hadn't photographed one. The strength of the franchise showed and with additional training, I like to think that I made a good job of those early weddings. Certainly, if the value of the re-orders was anything to go by, my couples thought so too! Mentoring is an important part of learning. So six months from starting my training, I was able to submit a panel of photographs to two photographic institutions to gain my professional qualifications. They are the British Institute of Professional Photographers (BIPP) and the Master Photographers' Association (MPA). So that's my story so far - I've been photographing weddings and portraits since 1998 and now have a wonderful purpose built studio here at home in Suffolk and have met some great folk as a result. About this siteOne of my frustrations since leaving the franchise was the absence of a web site that actually did something for the business.There's plenty of options out there and lots of web-masters that will promise you the earth. Yes, they'll build a wonderful flash operated gallery but unless it's driving traffic to your business, it's an expensive dodo. I went down lots of dead end alleys trying to find some-one to build a web site for me. At one stage, I had all the copy and images assembled ready for the web-master, when I happened on a article about the importance of developing a site around your particular niche and passion. I called a halt! I spent a complete week-end working until the early hours researching all the free material about not only how to build a web-site BUT how to build a business. It was mind blowing stuff! I realized that the information I thought was relevant - wasn't. You see, I had fallen into the trap of trying to suit myself (a big flashy site) and had not provided the information people were actually searching for. I bet there's lots of photographers out there that can empathize with me. They have wonderfully aesthetic sites showing off their work but can't get the traffic without paying for it..... One of the concerns I had about web-sites was keeping it up to date. Using a web-master would probably be expensive and I would be forever tweaking it. Now I build each page. I don't have any particular HTML knowledge as all that technical stuff is taken care of with the hosting company I am using. All the tools I need are in one place so I am not distracted by the latest claims of reaching No. 1 on Google or some quick get rich scheme. The process is simple - build a web-site with relevant content. That way you will build FREE traffic and not rely upon paid Ad-Sense and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tricks, which stop when your payment finishes. At present, I'm at stage 7 of a 10 stage site-building process but already we are building traffic. I'm really enjoying this journey. That's what it is - a journey that's building a successful web-based business. If you've got this far down the page you may be curious as to where I'm getting my information?
If you want the FULL tour of a 10 day site building process - double click the image once the video starts.
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