Hey Girl, Nice Shot

Updating my Online Proofing System

I've been using the same online proofing system for over two years and it hasn't been updated in those two years.  So I have been looking around for a new solution.  Originally I had filtered out most other systems because many have very limited support for multi-pose print packages (seriously, what is up with that?) but with the change in my business model to be more digital focused I actually realized I don't really need print packages anymore so that opened up more options.

I checked out NextProof and was really impressed with it.  It has a bunch of different templates for your gallery but you can also completely customize it yourself by editing the template files.  They also offer premium templates AND custom template design services.

I am still in my 30 day free trial.  I signed up on their website and was able to go in and add in my pricing very easily.  I've only done some basic editing of the template but I am using a custom template.  You can download the template code for any of the standard templates and then customize them the way that you want too.  If you have any coding experience it is pretty easy to follow.  I will surely go in and do more customization in the future.

One of the things I really liked about them was the ability to use my own domain even though it was a hosted solution.  I created a sub-domain for placing orders then worked with their customer support to get my digital certificate setup for the secure ordering.  They were responsive and helped me get it setup. If you decide to use your domain (orders.bubblegumtree.com) instead of their domain (bubblegumtree.nextproof.com) then I strongly recommend buying a digital certificate.  I was able to order mine though GoDaddy (also where I manage my domain name).   If you don't get a digital certificate for yourself your site will still be secure but your customers will probably get a message from their web browser telling them that the certificate does not match the website address.

Currently the support for packages is limited.  You can put a package in as a product but they wouldn't be able to choose the images for the items in the package through the system...I assume they'd just pay there and then contact the photographer directly to determine which images to actually print.  I can say that StudioCart (which I have been using and which I am still using for some of my pre-existing clients that still order mainly print packages) has awesome support for packages.  Honestly, that has really spoiled me because of the level of package customization...it is probably also why it hasn't been updated in a while - too complicated to update.  I will be phasing it out though as I move more towards digital files and ala carte print orders.

I'm choosing to continue to do my own order fulfillment through the various labs I use but they do offer order processing through ProDPI if you'd rather have that part streamlined for your business.  And I like that I can create discount codes that expire - a great way to boost sales by forcing ordering in a certain window of opportunity.

If you are looking for an online proofing system check them out: http://www.nextproof.com.  If you enter the coupon code "BUBBLEGUM" when you sign up for your account, you'll get 25% off your plan. SWEET!

NextProof is a product by the same folks that put together BigFolio for templated photography websites.  I checked with Jen Thompson and her coupon code (JEN150), good for $150 off a premium template, is still active so if you are looking for an alternative to the other template sites for photographers, definitely check them out because they are doing some great work.  Also, Jen is now working through them for the logo design services they are offering (Jen designed my new logo for my rebranding of my business and did a FANTASTIC job).  They also offer some SEO services which I have heard they are really awesome at making that magic happen (search engine optimization for those you not familiar with the term).

One of the founders is going to be speaking at a workshop early this fall called Bent in Suncadia.  The location looks beautiful and the speakers includes Bambi Cantrell (who hasn't heard of her?), Jim Garner, and Erik Dungan (of Big Folio). 

"look at the big brain on Jen" or Big Folio, as the case may be...

Today Jen Thompson was giddy to reveal her newly designed website.  She's been working with Big Folio on getting the finishing touches completed and "ta da" here it is!   Also, Big Folio recently announced that they had partnered with Jen for logo design work so you can order up your logo design right from their site.    As you may recall, Jen Thompson did the logo development when I rebranded my business as Bubblegum Tree.   One of the things I really like about their designs are the way the URL reflects where you are in the site so you could give someone a direct link to an interior page...one of the MAJOR flaws I see with some of the other flash based websites. And, when I tried to go to her site on my iPhone, I was able to view all the content from her site without the flash wrapper which is GREAT!  Most flash sites simply don't work on my iPhone so I end up not being able to get information I want! 

And even better, Jen has a discount code she is sharing so you can get $150 off your own new Big Folio site: "JEN150".  UPDATED TO ADD: the $150 code is off of Premium sites.

Big Folio have templated sites (think fill in the blanks and add your own images) which are more budget friendly than custom design, and allow you to keep your site updated yourself.  And their designs are a fresh and new-not the same designs that you see over and over again online.

You know who else got a fancy new Big Folio site?  Learnfest!

And from what I've heard they may have a spot or two left for the September workshop so you might want to head over there and secure your spot!

Banking on Backups

This week my main workstation died.  As in, it acted as if it didn't have power getting to it.  My technical hubby tried installing a new power supply with no love.  After three years it had had enough.  Chances are it needs a new motherboard at the least..but we might as well rebuild the whole thing because so much as changed in three years!

So the bad news...I have three years of pictures, templates, actions, and the like, stored in a way that I understand, on that machine.

The good news...my husband was able to pop out the hard drive and get my data off of it for me.

Now, when I get back to my office after a shoot, I copy the CF card to my machine with all the originals and make a copy straight to DVD of the originals.  I have a giant case of these DVDs.

 

Most of my finished sessions are also archived to DVD or backed up to an external hard drive. 

And my 2009 sessions have a DVD backup that has the originals and retouched files stored with their client contract.

So I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Then my computer wouldn't boot and I got a little panicked.  Did I really have EVERYTHING backed up from the last three years?  Would I be able to find it? 

Since my husband could copy the stuff off the hard drive I'm not in any trouble (and if you are a client, your files are safe) but it did make me wonder...

WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR BACKUPS?

And there are different levels of backing up.  For example, if my computer melted down and I truly couldn't get anything from it, it would REALLY suck but I could recover from it.

But if my loft burned to the ground, I'd be in much bigger trouble since my backup disks are stored here too.

We looked into doing online backups a while ago and it seemed cost prohibitive.  Maybe the market has changed enough to reconsider?

Outside of your data files, what steps do you take to make sure your business is "backed up".  Do you have off-site copies of your incorporation papers, your federal EIN assignment, important bank paperwork?

What about all those templates you bought, the actions you bought, fonts that you have bought?  It is easy to forget to back those items up.

How long do you keep client files archived or backed up?  I've heard of people getting rid of them after a year.

So, friends, tell me what you are doing for your business continuity and backups because I'm currently terrified of any stray sparks...

120 minutes a day

I've been thinking a lot this week about how much more goes into a photography business than just taking pictures.  The actual portrait sessions are a very small part of my time actually.  If I were to do 3 sessions a week that really is only about 10 hours a week of time between travel and the actual session.  But you've heard it all before...all the time to review the images, edit the images, present the images, sell the images, produce and deliver the images really adds up.

But then there is the BUSINESS side of things that takes a bunch of time.  I'm talking about the extra two hours a day of what I consider unscheduled tasks.  Not that I don't always know they are going to show up, I just might not know that I'll be doing those tasks that day. 

I'll give you an example.  Last week I needed to call my equipment insurance company to authorize them to send the proof of insurance to my leasing company.  I called on Thursday, navigated the phone menu system which did not have an option that worked for me AND did not have an option to talk to a customer service agent so I pulled the "customer service" card and managed to at least get a live person who could transfer me to the appropriate person.  I left a message in their voice-mail with the appropriate authorization.  The next day the leasing company still didn't have the certification so I had to call again, navigated the phone menu, got transferred, waited on hold...got disconnected, called again, waited on hold, and FINALLY got to speak to the person I needed to get this taken care of.  All in all, it was probably 40 minutes of time over two days.  Not 40 minuted I had scheduled on my calendar, but something that needed to get done.  It may not sound like a lot but it is like the death by a thousand cuts.  Each cut isn't a big deal but those little tasks can really add up to a lot of time...and you may not even realize it!

One of the types of data I like to look at is my efficiency with my time.  There are weeks where I know I've spent too much time on Twitter or Facebook.  But lately I feel like I've been better to focusing - especially when it comes to processing images.  Now when I'm editing a session I usually try to keep all my other stuff turned off so I can really focus on it. 

A while back installed Rescue Time to both my laptop and my office workstation.  It is software that runs behind the scenes to track the time I spend on different applications allowing me to get a sense of what I've been working on.  The results of last week's reporting are shown above.  So I worked 45 hours on my computers last week.  That doesn't include my two portrait sessions and the time I spent interviewing two associate photographer, any of my phone calls, and the time I spent packaging and shipping orders.  So, um, yeah, I work a bunch (although my personal computer time is also included).  Not surprising is that I spent most of my time is spent in "Design/Presentation" software which is Photoshop!  Second is my email which is also not a surprise since I do spend a LOT of time emailing every day. 

One of the interesting items was the "business/finance" category which was about 2.5 hours last week.  That is the time I spend in Quickbooks, on Paypal, and on my bank website.  That actually seems pretty reasonable to me.  A half hour a day to manage my money, easy.   The week before I spent 6.5 hours on that same category because I had gotten WAY behind on my quickbooks and had to reconcile like three months worth of bank statements which really sucked.  Last week I was MUCH better about updating as I go so I shouldn't have such a big chunk of time all at once.  And I finally got the syncing between my bank and Quickbooks setup so the transactions automatically get imported into Quickbooks.

Also not shocking...I spend a TON of time on Facebook.  I try to check in a little during the day, and then really get updated at night.    Some of that is purely personal time.  But a lot of it is keeping up my relationship with clients that have become friends, networking with other photographers, managing my fan page, and managing my facebook ads.

So, what are you doing to stay efficient?  Do you keep track of your time for all your tasks? 

Seniors, Seniors, Seniors

For some reason I avoided senior portrait photography for a long long time.  Well consider me a convert!!!

Senior portraits have changed a LOT since I was in high school.  Our senior portraits were done at the school.  You went in and were draped in a black wrap and had about 10 pictures taken of which you picked the one that you would use for your yearbook and for your announcements.  Blah.

Now senior portraits have so much more personality!  They are more fashion photography meets portraits.  And seniors don't run away when you try to take their picture!!!  

I had my first senior session about a week ago.  She showed up with luggage, hanging garments, bags filled with jewelry, and bags of shoes.  It was awesome. 

I would have been FAR more nervous about it but Natalie sent me her Senior Solutions Guide to help get me started!!!  I got the posing guide printed at WHCC so I could flip through for some ideas.  Unfortunately I had a touch of food poisoning the day of my shoot so I was sick in my bed all morning but I still had a chance to brush up on some ideas before the session which was mid-afternoon.

As it turns out, I have plenty to talk to a senior girl about. After all, some of my favorite shows are Gossip Girl and America's Next Top Model.  Yeah, I'm 34 going on 17.  LOL.

And it seems like information on how to approach senior sessions can be found all over this month!

Check out:

• Natalie B's Senior Solutions Guide
• MCP Actions Blog: How to Pose Seniors
• PPA Magazine Current Issue: Focus on Seniors

Here are a couple of pictures from my session...

And, of course, I did an animoto video of the photos too which I posted to Facebook as well...

For this shooot I used:

• Canon 5D Mark II
• Canon 50mm 1.2L Lens
• Canon 20-35mm Lens
• Impact 32" Reflector Disk

For editing I used the Jesh de Rox Textures, and the Totally Rad Actions.

New Associate Photographer Kits

I really couldn't be more excited.  The gear for my associate photographer kits have come in!!!!

I already hired one associate photographer and she has been training on my hand-me-down 5D but no more!  Her new Canon 5D Mark II is here and ready for her!  I have three associate photographer kits because it took kind of a lot of time to get the paperwork in order and get the gear to come in so we just got three kits worth to be ready for additional hires.  I am looking for an associate in Houston (a mom with connections and a passion for photography would be ideal if you know of one) so two of these kits will be spoken for pretty quickly leaving me with one for my next hire.  It may even be in a different city!

The kits are designed based around what I find as my favorite gear for a portrait session.  Since I train the associate in my style, it made sense to me that they would be using pretty much the same equipment.  The one big difference is between the Canon 50mm 1.2L lens, and the Canon 50mm 1.4 lens.  I use both regularly.  I actually think my 1.4 is sharper, and certainly it is easier to to focus.  The 1.2L creates beatiful background blur but is a little harder to hit the focus with AND is way way more expensive so for the kits I decided to go with the 1.4.  It is a great lens so I feel pretty confident with that being the way to go.

So here's what I have in the kit (all the equipment was from B&H Photo, only the Shootsac was ordered separately):

• Canon 5D Mark II Camera Body
• Canon 50mm 1.4 Lens (which is finally back in stock)
• Canon LP-E6 Battery (although these are on backorder)
• (2) Lexar 4GB Compact Flash Cards
• Lexar Multi-card reader
• Impact 32" Reflector Disk (silver/white) which I like for individual portraits
• Impact 42" Reflector Disk (white translucent) which I like to block dappled light)
• Shootsac (and we're going to make custom covers with our logo!!!)

These were delivered a little earlier than I expected so it was a great surprise!

Learnfest Workshop Registration Opens Tomorrow (friday)

Just a quick note that the next Learnfest Workshop is in September and registration opens tomorrow.  The last one sold out in about 4 hours so get your credit card ready and make sure you set your reminder to go sign up at noon tomorrow (EST).

What is Learnfest?  It is an awesome workshop put on by a few of my favorite ladies: Lena Hyde, Audrey Woulard, Tamara Lackey, and Laura Novak.  The workshop consists of 4-1/2 day segments - one with each photographer in small 15 person groups.  It is fantastic to be in such small groups with these photographers because you can ask questions and have more of a discussion rather than it being totally lecture style.  You actually get to go out and shoot with Audrey and Tamara and seeing the ease with which they work with children will help you go back and have more fun in your sessions (at least it did with me).  Lena Hyde is a branding genius (no surprise that she also created Design Aglow), and Laura will get your business in shape.  This was easily one of the best investments I made in my business and it has helped me to grow.  I only wish I paid more attention to some of the associate photographer talk because NOW I am doing that (at the time I had no interest in hiring other people). 

You can read more about what I wrote from my experience at Learnfest.
You can read some of the questions and answers I posted about my Learnfest experience too.

I wish I could go again.  The relationships you develop with other photographers will follow you home too!  Feeling all happy just thinking about it!

Advertising and Marketing Budgets

I'm deep in the process of planning for purchasing some advertising for the upcoming year and planning my budget for it.  Almost all of my marketing to date has been word of mouth and me hitting the streets to meet people.  But as I grow I recognize that I'll need to do more online marketing.  I have started doing some tests with google ads and facebook ads and may possibly do some advertising in some local resource guides.

Questions for my readers!!!!
So for you, what kind of budget do you set for advertising and marketing?  If you have done print ads what types of ads have you done and have they worked. Did the size of the ad play into your return?  Were you in targeted resources guides like bridal magazines or local general interest magazines?  How did you track your return on investment?  Also, how has online advertising played into your marketing plans?  Leave a comment to share some things that have worked for you, or some things that didn't!

Cook Up Something Delicious

The new Totally Rad Actions Recipe site is up and running!  I do love my Totally Rad Actions.  Check out what some other folks have made with theirs:

Totally Rad Actions Recipes

Planning for Packages

So we are going over all the data from the reader survey and it is super interesting.

This is a combination I thought was interesting!

52% of the survey takers don't offer any kind of print packages.  

And 80% have average sales under $500.

So that got me thinking about how I increased my average sales, and my highest sales.  I remember when I first started out and I would get a $150 order and do a happy dance around my home workspace.  Now I get a $1500 and I do a happy dance!

So what was one of the biggest things I changed?   My print packages! I started with fairly inexpensive packages.  And I wondered why I wasn't selling LOTS of pictures.  The bottom line is you need to use your packages as a way to guide your customers into purchasing the $$ amount that you want them to spend.  If your print package are $140, $190, and $240 you are basically telling your customers: I expect you to spend between $140-$240!

So in my case I revised my packages to include more value, but also to be MUCH more expensive.  My current packages are $495, $895, and $1195 for print packages.  For print packages my $895 is my most popular package because it includes a session album with ALL of the proofs from the session as 5x7 prints.  Everyone wants all of their photos so this is a great way for them to get it (plus prints).  My full digital package was also extremely popular at the $1195 price point.  Frequently my clients use the packages as a starting point and choose various upgrade options such as upgrading the size or finish of the prints (going from luster to gallery wrap, for example).

For me, I found it was best to have packages that were flexible.  If you say "you get 2 5x7s, 1 8x10, 1 11x14) you open yourself up to lots of "can we change it to ...." .  But if you instead say "you get 3 8x10s or smaller plus an 11x14" you can show that you are being flexible AND you get a lot fewer of those types of requests.

If you feel overwhelmed with the whole sales process you are in luck.  The fabulous Wordsmith (you may remember me gushing about her What to Wear guide and her What to Write guide) has just released her What to Sell Guide which is focused on doing online sales, guiding customers through the sale, AND how to setup your pricing to give customers incentive to buy more. Definitely check it out...Wordsmith: How to Sell Guide.  And most of her tips are worthwhile even if you are doing in-person client reviews.

Another great way to increase your sales is to help your customers determine how they are going to DISPLAY those great images.  Many customers are completely overwhelmed by the thought of putting together a wall collection.  So if you are challenged in that area or don't have the time to mess around with it, you can check out the Design Aglow templates.  If you are doing in-person sales you can get their Inspire Guides Plug-in For ProSelect which are a great way to drag and drop designs right in front of your clients.  I can tell you that my clients LOVE this!  And they buy bigger prints because it tells them exactly how to display them.  If you don't do in-person sales you could get the printable Inspire Guides and use them to give your clients a handout with sample layouts, or use the actions to place your client's images into the design and create a PDF file that you can email to your client if you are doing online sales. 

 

Here is a sample layout I did for a client.  First I laid out the design using one of the Design Aglow Inspired Guide for ProSelect layouts.  The client loved it but wanted to make sure it would work in her home.  So they took a picture of their fireplace wall and emailed it to me. 

Then, using ProSelect's ability to resize photos to scale I showed her the layout over her fireplace (which she wanted to do as gallery wraps so there was no matting or frames). We made some of the images a little smaller to fit her space better but overall it was the same pattern!  She was so excited about the design.

As it turns out we did another sample with just one family photo as a 30x40 which is what she went with but she loved this design!