Are we there yet? How many times must I have put this question to my very talented partners in crime, Derek (co-founder and CTO) and Kain (Creative and Marketing Director)? Wind back the clock to September 2007. It was two years ago when Derek and I met at my home to discuss a number of start up ideas. After some discussion we settled on pursuing two opportunities. Opportunity one was to develop an online sales tool for photographers, a project Derek had been toying with for almost a year, and opportunity number two isn’t even worth mentioning as it lasted a mere three weeks. We learned very quickly that a) you need focus and b) things generally require a lot more time and effort than you think.

I won’t tell you what our initial time line for the project was as it is a tad embarrassing, but suffice say, we expected a sprint and found ourselves running an ultra marathon.

So what took us so long? Well, there are probably three key factors that turned this little project into a two year nose to the grind stone kind of endeavor.

1. PhotoMerchant is a turnkey online business system for photographers, and as such, the application turned out to be a complex beast of 2.5m lines of code and counting.
Yes, Guy (Kawasaki) and all you other smart people out there, we know, good enough is good enough, start small and iterate etc., etc. That all makes sense and we thought we understood the meaning of your words. But what do you do if you’re a delusional perfectionist? We thought what we were planning to build was bare bones (delusional!). We didn’t realize we were little perfectionists (delusional!). We thought we were using superior technology (not delusional) and as such, this was surely only going to take a couple of months or so (delusional!). Anyway, I think I’ve made my point. We’ve learned a lot and at the end of the day, we don’t regret the past for two reasons. Firstly, some things you just have to experience for yourself. Secondly, what we ended with is a very well thought out and executed solution, designed from the ground up to let you be more effective at what you do and ultimately run a more profitable photography business. But don’t take my word for it. I encourage you to see for yourself and be the judge of that.

2. Until recently, all of us were working full time in our respective day jobs, hence software development and business planning was a night time and weekend effort only.
As independence and total control over the direction and integrity of the product was important to us, we made the decision to self-fund the venture. Clearly development would have been much quicker had we raised external funding but with that would have come a loss of control, larger overheads from the get go, commercial pressures and considerations that would not necessarily have been in the best interest of the business/product, and last but not least a compromised vision and, no doubt, a different company culture to the one we’ve shaped over the last 24 months. That said, we have recently raised a small amount of cash from an investor who not only presents a great strategic fit for us, but also is culturally aligned with us. The decision to raise funds on the eve of launching PhotoMerchant was motivated by our desire to work full time in the business so we can provide the best possible support to our customers.

3. Had we known back then what we know now, we would have been considerably quicker.
If you work as intensively as we have on a project, you can’t help but learn a lot. Clearly, if we had to start all over again but with the experience of hindsight, the technical knowledge we have amassed over time and the technological developments that have occurred in the last couple of years, we would be significantly quicker now. No doubt about it. However, we believe there is a clear benefit of us having taken some extra time with getting PhotoMerchant to launch. The last couple of years allowed us to look at our business and the PhotoMerchant application from many different angles. What you see now is what be believe to be a well considered solution which should help you considerably with running your photography business online. We know there’s lots of room for improvement, because there always is, but all things considered we’re pretty confident you’ll be impressed with the functionality, ease of use and overall usability the inaugural version of PhotoMerchant offers.

So, are we there yet? You bet we are! And we have big things, very big things, planned for PhototMerchant.

The PhotoMerchant crew and I hope you will take advantage of our free 14 day trial and we hope you will enjoy using PhotoMerchant as much as we enjoyed making it!

The Statistics

It is safe to say that we live in an online world. In 2007 nearly 15 million households (61%) in the UK had internet access (source) and in 2003 62 million households (55%) in the US had web connected computers (source).

Selling your photos online is a great idea. It provides your existing customers with an easy way of browsing their prints and purchasing them. However whilst expanding your business online can offer many opportunities and benefits, it can also provide headaches, pitfalls and risks.

Potential Benefits

• The web offers a “potential” world wide audience
• The web is a convenient, no pressure medium for your customers to browse and purchase your photos
• Being able to receive payment more quickly from online transactions.
• Inexpensive way to reach new markets and interact with them
• A sign of professionalism

Potential Headaches

• Finding an affordable and reliable web hosting provider
• Developing your photography website (style, technologies, approach)
• Developing shopping carts and ordering systems
• Integrating with online payment methods such as credit cards and PayPal
• Ongoing maintenance

As you can see there are some very compelling reasons to go online. I’ve already spoken about some of the costs associated with running a photography business which include the time spent managing orders, sales and payments particularly for event and school photographers. If done properly, going online can greatly reduce the time spent on this part of your photography business.

My personal view is that within the next 2-3 years, maybe sooner, at least 60% of professional and serious amateur photographers will be selling their photography online. I’d even go so far as to say that the current “teen generation” of the western world will expect everything at their finger tips, instant gratification and a photographer that can shoot their wedding, senior photos, party, graduation, glamour portraits or what have you and then provide an “online shop” for them to browse, choose print sizes, paper types, colour styles and then pay with their credit chip!

Our blog’s been quiet for a while, but over at the PhotoMerchant offices, it’s anything but quiet.

We’re still powering away on PhotoMerchant and looking forward to release. Our alpha-testers have given us some truly valuable feedback, and we’ve also been busy meeting and talking to people about PhotoMerchant. We’re looking forward to releasing PhotoMerchant in the near future, slowly at first… we’ll get some more feedback from our Alpha group and see what you think.

Here are a few hints about the features we’re currently working on:

• Print-shop integration in Australia and US (with more to come…) – this means that when your customers order prints, PhotoMerchant can automatically send the order to your local print house and the prints will be delivered direct to your customers!
• International currency support: you – and your customers – can carry out your transactions in your local currency.
• Usability testing our member interface: exciting stuff! Our latest interface designs are being tested for usability and we’re looking forward to offering you a sleek, simple interface.
• Bigger selection of web-store design templates: we’re creating a selection of templates so you can customise the look of your web store.

We’ll keep updating you with the latest developments at PhotoMerchant – each day, we’re a step closer to sharing the product with you, and we’re looking forward to it!

We’re half-way through our mini-series on how to sell your photos online. In this series, we’re covering:

• Planning your site
• Content you should consider
• Choosing and creating your website’s functionality
• Marketing your website
• Using the website to increase business and profits

There are three important things I want to cover here:

1. Choosing functionality
2. Creating the website
3. Getting online

Now, I don’t want to mislead you: I’m not going to tell you how to make a website in one little blog post, but I will give you some ideas about what to think about, what your options are, and where you can find out more. Continue Reading

When designing a website for selling your photos, plenty of photographers start in the wrong place. They start by trying to learn how to ‘create’ a website… yes, it’s important, but as I discussed last time, you need to start by understanding your site’s goals first. Now, wait… there’s one more thing you need to do before you fire up a development tool…

Plan your content

When I talk about content, I’m referring to all the stuff you’ll put on all your web pages:

• information (words)
• images
• portfolio
• functionality

If you’ve ever tried to create a website, you’ll be familiar with this problem: you spend hours working out how to make a web page… and by the time it’s complete, you can’t think of anything to write. Or maybe you can only think of one or two things – not enough for a proper ‘website’. So, let’s take this step by step… Continue Reading

Selling photos online might seem like an obvious step for any photographer who is planning to take their business to the web. However, creating a website that showcases your work and makes it easy for customers to purchase prints can be complicated.

This is the first post in a series aimed at helping the photographer who is considering or trying to sell photos online. Over the next five posts, we’ll cover the topics of:

• Planning your site
• Content you should consider
• Choosing and creating your website’s functionality
• Marketing your website
• Using the website to increase business and profits

So, on to planning your website… Before you start trying to work out how to use HTML or any other web development tools, you’ll save yourself some headaches by answering a few key questions. Continue Reading

Sometimes life hinges on the most insignificant things. For example, my life could’ve been very different but for one sturdy lunchbox.

When I was 9 years old, I was run over by a bus. While playing around with the other kids at the bus-stop, I slipped and fell under the wheels of the school bus as it arrived.

Lucky for me, I had a chunky Décor lunchbox in my backpack (remember those?). Talk about tough! The lunchbox took the force between me and the bus, and instead of life-threatening internal injuries, I got away with just a broken pelvis. (The lunchbox didn’t make it.)

Like I said, insignificant things can have a big impact. Another apparently insignificant thing in my life was a certain Excel spreadsheet, an ordering sheet for photographs following an event shoot.

OK, I’ll back up a bit…

A few years ago, I was hired as the photographer for a girls’ College Ball. The College was in Brisbane and I live in Sydney, so all my contact with the customers was done remotely. When it came time to get all the girls to order their photos, I sent them an Excel spreadsheet and asked them to enter what they wanted into one sheet and email it back to me. Continue Reading

The workflow, presentation and sales methods and practices are an integral part of any photography business. However, they can also be costly.

In the last post, I raised the issue of the ‘real cost’ of photography.

As a youthful photography enthusiast, I thought professional photography was a pretty lucrative business. My contacts on photography business forums were charging anywhere between $1,000 USD to $15,000 USD for a wedding and I couldn’t believe the mark-up.

Great, I thought! So I just work for 8-12 hours one weekend, polish up the photos in Photoshop, and then sell the prints to my client at a huge profit – maybe 70-90% higher than the price of printing. And I get paid for my weekend work!

This was all true – but after quite a few long nights with Photoshop, I realised that my calculations had neglected one element – I hadn’t counted the cost of my time as well as the learning curve.

WORK = TIME = EXPENSE

Today I want to present a simple example to illustrate the costs associated with doing a single wedding. Weddings are relatively simple from a business and workflow perspective in comparison to other types of photography. They are a little more stressful because if you stuff it up… it’s not good, but generally, they’re straight forward and repetitive. Ask any seasoned professional photographer, traditionally, weddings are the bread and butter of your business, especially when you’re starting out.

Let’s consider the following example:You agree to shoot Bill and Jane’s wedding. You offer them a package which includes your time for 8 hours on the day, a set of printed proofs, 25 5×7″ prints, 8 8×12″ prints and 1 16×20″ print. You also explain that you will place the proofs online for friends and family to view and find the image numbers and email you so the prints can be ordered and shipped. You offer this package for $1,850.

You need to keep track of every hour you spend working on Bill and Jane’s wedding.

In this example, your time was used as follows:

• Driving to wedding (0.5 hours)
• Shooting the wedding (8.0 hours)
• Driving home from wedding (0.5 hours)
• Downloading images to computer (0.25 hours)
• Making duplicates (backups) of original files (0.5 hours)
• Post processing of photos (12.0 hours) – you took around 700 photos and are going to provide Bill and Jane with 150
• Preparing images for web presentation (2.0 hours) – This is basically resizing images to lower resolution
• Uploading images to website & making it look pretty (2.0 hours)
• Sending order for 150 proofs to print house (1.0 hour)
• Speaking with Bill & Jane, managing their order(s) as well as any orders from friends and family (approx 5.0 hours in total)
• Managing the shipping and billing of all orders (3.0 hours)
• Misc (5.0 hours)

Total time spent: 39.75 hours

The cost of printing and shipping the 150 proofs to Bill and Jane is $0.90 per print (you are using a reputable professional print house, printing on archival paper on commercial grade Lambda or similar printers). $0.90 x 150 + $12.00 (shipping) = $147.00.

Once the entire package is delivered printing and shipping costs are:

Proofs as above = $147.00
$1.35 x 25 (5×7″ prints) = $33.75
$3.50 x 8 (8×12″ prints) = $28.00
$7.00 x 1 (16×20″ print) = $7.00
Shipping = $12.00
Total for prints: $218.25

You can’t forget the costs of your equipment, fuel for the car, paying an assistant, and general business operating costs:

Fuel = $15.00
Wear and Tear on equipment (depreciation) = $50.00
Assistant = $120 ($15/hr)
Business Insurance = $35 – this is based on a $2000/yr cost
Equipment Insurance = $20 – this is based on a $1040/yr cost
Marketing material = $5 – this is a very small marketing budget approx $260/yr
Misc = $35 – there’s lots of expenses we haven’t covered here
Total operating costs: $280.00

Now we take the package price of $1,850, subtract the print and materials cost of $218.25 and the operating cost of $280.00 and then divide the result by the number of hours worked (39.75):

1,850 – 218.25 – 280.00 / 39.75 = $34.00 per hour. This equates approximately $70,720.00 per annum. Now this isn’t really your salary, you have to put some money back into the business. Let’s say you put $10,000 per annum back into the business. your hourly rate drops to $29.20 and your take home salary would be $60,720.00 per annum. It gets worse. From the salary you need to deduct tax and money for your retirement plan. That will leave you with much less in reality.

The above example is just that. An example. All calculations are based on doing 1 wedding such as the one above each week for 52 weeks. A photographer just starting out isn’t going to have this much business and an established photographer is likely to have much more business than this but also higher expenses.

So,

How can you increase your photography income?

You should always be endeavoring to improve your photography and editing skills. This boosts the “quality” of your product which as was discussed in my last post, will generate more business and therefore more income.

Streamline your workflow. In the example above you spent 12 hours on post processing. More experienced digital photographers might spend less time as well as achieve better results. This comes with learning and experience as well as trial and error.

Raise your prices. This is always an option. Especially if your work is good.

It’s my belief however, that skill alone will not solve these problems entirely.

I believe that in this era of digital photography, we need to rethink the way we deal with photographs. We’re still struggling because we’re still working from the mindset of traditional photography. My feeling is that we need to start using digital technology not only to shoot and edit – we need to start using digital technology along the whole workflow.

Sure, in the end, customers are always going to want a picture they can hang on their wall. But there’s a lot more we can do with digital technology from shooting to printing that will help us take better photos and produce more efficient, valuable images.

I have much more to say on the topic of streamlining your workflow and the use of digital technology, especially when it comes to using the Internet to your advantage. Stay tuned over the coming weeks.

So let’s hear it… how can we start using digital technology more to improve our efficiency? Any ideas? Anything you’ve tried?

Leave me a comment – I’m looking forward to hearing your ideas.