Not every business owner can call themselves a professional photographer. But every business owner needs to be a marketer.  Creativity lends itself quite nicely to marketing so the chances are, if you're reading this blog but don't claim to be a marketer already, you'll be quite good at it. I was reading an article by Paul Williams yesterday that made me realise this: The current economic climate is forcing every business owner (that's you) to become a marketer. The recession is a "training ground for us to hone our businesses. The difference (or benefit?) with the recession is that EVERYBODY To View More >>

These articles are about strategies to combat the recession. I ended my last post by posing the question on everyone's lips: what happens if my bookings drop? You'll need to have read my previous post to make sense of what follows, but to recap, based on the numbers in the graphic below, if I get 30 wedding bookings and average $5000 per job my income is $71k. If I could get 40 bookings I'd make $114k, even if my average dropped to $4600. All good, but what happens if I can only get 20 bookings? The answer is my income drops to $28k! I could still achieve my $100k income goal with just 20 weddings To View More >>

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 >>

Well in excess of 2000 aftershocks later, the region I live in still has no idea when the shaking will stop. [caption id="attachment_9611" align="alignnone" width="333" caption="I arrived at the bride's mum's house, and they had a big crack in their drive that went ..."][/caption] On September 4, 2010, Christchurch (New Zealand) was rudely awoken (4:35am) by a rather large Earthquake (magnitude 7.1 on the Richter scale).The energy released in that one shake is still way in excess of the sum of the energy released by all of  the aftershocks, even though many have been over 4 and several To View More >>

Meet Chris MacKenzie. He's new to the industry. He's working hard to build his business. He's doing it in the tough UK market. And, he's just set up a promotion with an exclusive venue in his area. A real 'corker' to use his words. "The first day I was there, I met the Executive Vice President at Pebble Beach Golf Resort. The next day I met a billionaire. On my third visit, I met an Australian couple who'd just returned from a luxury six week tour of Europe. They were so taken by my sample albums that the chap started asking about using Queensberry to display his holiday snaps." Now some might To View More >>