You’re Not a Photographer, You Promote and Sell Photography

Do you think of enlisting an attorney who hasn’t studied a book on the law? However, millions of people launch an online photography business without understanding the basics of marketing, selling pricing, or merchandise.
The trap that many photographers fall into is that they love photography to the point that they only get caught up in it and forget about the other aspects of their business. Instead, consider yourself an owner of a business rather than a photographer.

Think of yourself as a store manager. You’re not creating the clothes; you’re selling and marketing them.

Now I understand that you are actually creating images, and the manager of the store doesn’t design the clothes, but this analogy is important due to various reasons:

Many photographers believe that if their photographs are good, then they’ll instantly be successful. This is rarely the case. It’s like opening a shop with elegant clothes and hoping it will succeed without the right pricing, marketing, selling, and merchandising plan. This is the reason some average photographers are doing extremely well while great artists are struggling.

When you begin to think like a business person instead of a photographer, you begin to view things with an objective view. As an example, do you feel at risk if someone entered your clothing store and then left because it was too costly? It’s probably it wouldn’t. It’s a subtle yet significant change in how you think about things.

Then you make your first decisions in the context of good business sense.

Are you among the smart 10%?

The research conducted by Dun and Bradstreet found the majority of small-scale businesses which failed were because of a lack of know-how and skills by the business owner. Obvious? Maybe. However, many people believe that their hard work is enough or that a great product is sufficient. Nope. You’ll need the information I offer on this site.

Since you’re reading this, I am sure that you are also a student, or perhaps you’re just desperate, I’m not sure.

The sole reason I’m able you these suggestions is the reason why you’re taking them in. I am a student.

I’ve been in the field of marketing since 1997. Before that, I took a course in it at university. You’ll be surprised by the amount of information that professionals in the field of marketing actually do. I’m studying nearly every day all year long.

In the end, I think marketing is the key to success, regardless of the sector you’re in.

When you next get business advice from an online photographer, take a look at whether they’ve researched what they’re promoting. And more importantly, did they test it and measure it, and compare it to other methods?

It’s insane to go through hours learning by trial and error without learning and evaluating your performance. With the right resources, you can learn what you require in just only a few weeks. You can learn from people who have spent their lives and billions of dollars learning what you should be aware of. Billions? Sure, I get plenty of ideas from different industries and successful companies. Reading the magazine or newspaper covers can give you lots of ideas for writing headlines for your articles. They invest millions of dollars learning about effective headlines. You can copy their strategies.

A word of caution

It’s not enough just to have plenty of marketing ideas. It can be just as risky as having no ideas. Why? Because you’ll be overwhelmed by numerous tasks and strategies that you don’t have any focus on.

You’re playing around with Twitter and Facebook, creating a blog and a newsletter for email and making direct mailings, creating advertisements, establishing joint ventures, and the list goes on. It’s easy to take on many different tasks and don’t do each one of them efficiently. There’s no plan of action for each task.

Choose the tactics for marketing that work best for your business by testing and measuring them. You must then be able to abandon the rest.