Follow the links for "the story so far" in our series on the recession... Yes, times will be tough for a while but you shouldn't assume the sky is falling. It makes no sense to sacrifice your business and market reputation to survive the short term challenge. Instead you may need to pull your horns in and find ways to prosper while others decline. A good place to start is by analysing your budget and business model, and we have a spreadsheet to help with that. Most people react to the threat of declining sales by saying, "I've gotta cut my costs". Everyone needs to work out their own figures, To View More >>

The other day we received an invoice from Queensberry and my wife (the fabulous Jo Grams) exclaimed, 'Crikey!' (she's Australian). It was a lot of money for an album! Too much? We talked about it and came to the conclusion that we were getting what we were paying for. We want to give our clients the best we can deliver. This means many things, not the least of which is getting them the best albums we can. We could reduce our personal costs by using less expensive covers, mounting systems, and not getting the full colour service, BUT would the outcome still fit into the requirement of giving our To View More >>

Yesterday, I had one of the cheesiest sales line I've heard in quite a while tried on me... "Nigel, how will you feel tomorrow if you don't buy it now." I didn't buy and I feel OK. But I did buy wedding photography recently. I'm not sure which one of Johannes' categories I fit best, you'll have to ask him. And Ian – who says that, as a man, I'm not interested in the detailed (girlie) stuff? I was. Maybe that makes me a 'Control Freak'? Here's my take on selling to a man... (including a metro-sexual one). 1) Don't try any cheesy sales lines on me... I'll think you're a douche. Have a conversation To View More >>

It's that time of year when we take stock, make resolutions and ask questions ... like how can we make this year a winner? Are there too many photographers? Why do we ask our competitors for advice? What can we learn from musicians? And the big one: How much are our images worth? Sadly, that's not just about how good they are or how much time we spend on them in post-production. Our latest client newsletter is below. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment here or emailing Ian directly. Cheers, Nigel How much are your images worth? We received this present from our design consultants, To View More >>

If you want your order to sail smoothly through our ordering process, please make sure it's ready to go before you send it. Hopefully this post will give you some insight into why that's so important – why even minor changes to an order can cause a lot of work at our end. For example, suppose you request design or layout changes, or send us new versions of image files or album plans. First we have to call up your original order and work out exactly what you want done to it – not easy when we have hundreds of albums working their way through production at any one time. We may need to, for example: To View More >>