Right up there with the 3% rule as a Queensberry mantra is Good Better Best. We don't claim that either of them is original, just that they're common sense. In fact fundamental if you want to build a sustainable longterm career. Good Better Best is a strategy for up-selling – having products and services to tempt your clients across a range of price points. To be blunt, you're offering your customers what they want (something cheap!) while at the same time encouraging them to spend more. Simply put, it does so by offering people three choices… GOOD is your entry level – affordable if you To View More >>

The other day I proposed a way to encourage enquirers to look past your prices and make personal contact. It was partly a way to start identifying people who should be your clients, and withdrawing (politely) from those who probably shouldn't. You need to demonstrate to the first group why you’re the right photographer to spend their wedding day with! The 3% rule The 3% rule is our way of saying that you can't succeed by trying to appeal to everyone, and you definitely shouldn't try. It stems from the time, years ago, when we tried to estimate the number of professional photographers in the To View More >>

I'm often told that brides do all their research online and communicate with photographers only by email. And that it's normal to book a photographer based on such minimal interaction: "Stephen it's no use. They just want a price. It's all about the deal, so I just give them one and hope." I don't believe it. Or at least, I don't believe it's the only possibility. I wasn't going to start these posts this way, but maybe a simple response to this challenge is useful, something you can use immediately. Anyway, here's how I would reply. Rewrite it in your own words of course, but I hope it helps engage To View More >>

How interesting are your wedding photos? It depends how old they are. If your wedding was a month ago you love them. If your wedding was a year ago maybe you haven't thought about them in a while. If your wedding was twenty years ago you won't have thought about them in years! If your wedding was thirty years ago that hunk you married is someone's granddad. If your wedding was forty years ago, your grandkids are a bit impressed by the hunk that Granddad used to be … and how strangely people dressed back in the day. § After forty years those old pictures are as interesting as they were a month To View More >>

Want to make the Workspace Image Gallery even more powerful for Events with lots of images (eg weddings)? If that's a Yes, check out an optional feature called image categories, which you can switch on in Basic Settings. Here's how they work. The normal way to organise images in your events is using collections. Collections work a bit like iTunes playlists, in that images can be in more than one collection (eg album selection and favourites as well as Nan's). On the other hand images can only be in one Category (eg Ceremony or Family Groups, but not both). You use Categories to divide your images To View More >>