David Barnett
April 11th, 2020, 09:36 AM
With alot of us shutdown, and work being slow, would anyone be up for interacting & reassessing things in hindsight on 'the business side of things'. Mostly, what you feel you would change or correct as we move forward?
I feel it could help us all discuss & learn what we could do different to more effectively go forward in the next year or two.
Personally, I suppose I'll try listing mine below:
Marketing/Netwrking/Advertising - I can admit, I was bad at this. I dabbled in wedding advertising, WeddingWire & Google Adwords. I'll admit, Adwords I got ok with, (it shows related advertising like The Pros & other local & national studios and their CPC vs mine, I was up pretty high with them but just didn't get the leads. I felt it helped me learn it & I should've tried obtaining work for it, but in the end had to stop. Probably shouldn't have). Wedding Wire was what you hear, expensive, alot of flyby requests & price checkers, I might've got 1 or 2 booking a year from nearly $100/mo. Did it 2 years, then I think they offered a reduced price but moved me off the 1st page so it was worthless. In hingsight, I did work with a phototographer who was about my age, 45 or so. Had an interesting story, ran a kiosk in a mall for years selling jewelry or something, then over time malls faded. I think they got married & he saw how much photographers charge, and as is typical he got into it. He was really good however, not spray & pray like alot of what I see. Anyway, he mentioned he was paying $1000/month for WW. Crazy, but he said it was the only way he could break in, early on would make $40K year, with $12k spent on advertising, however he said 5 years in he was finally at the point where his referrals exceeded his advertised clients, and he might reduce or stop his WW ads. Food for thought.
Pricing - I was bad at this. Originally I started in depositions in 2010 after leaving an office job. I had my price set but didn't account for how many depos only last 1-2 hours. Good money for 60 minutes of shooting maybe, but when I factor in travel, setup time, troubleshooting, dealing with situations like no one there yet, room not available etc. I didn't like doing them. A year or two later segued into weddings, didn't think Id like them but I actually did. I like the fast pace of them. However, I couldn't market myself as more than a guy coming down in price, as opposed to a business with pretty firm pricing. Also, I once did sorta volunteer work in a lower income city, that's fairly big (75,000). It was charitable, and I didn't expect it but a year or so later got a call from the poliice department. I think the chief had taken my card at the event, and asked I shoot like a quarterly awards ceremony. I mean, government work is ideal, but this is a pretty poor city, I didn't wanna take advantage of it. Plus I thought they were just 'returning a favor'. I should've asked to price it out, and call them back, but instead threw a number out figuring it would be good demo reel & past clients resume type of thing.
Networking - I feel I coulda been more active on LinkedIn/Twitter, about the video industry and local events (like the police ceremony). I'm sorta connected with friends tho, and while it isn't like Facebook, I don't always like to keep them updated on my life. I probably should have the LinkedIn app ready to go for posts tho. I should blog more also.
Accounting/Financial - I signed up for Quickbooks last year, and they have really good free Youtube tutorials, possibly effecient even without QB, just learning about accounting methods, invoicing etc. Paypal actually has a similar lite version of bookeeping. Wish I had a better business model of X income allows for 15% to be spent on advertising, and constantly check everything out. Recently I took a pretty good 'Accounting Fundamentals' course on a site Ed2Go, plus I bought a book.
I can freely admit I made mistakes, I suppose almost entirely in business ownership. I'm a hard working guy, never been late to a wedding or deposition, reliable, dependable etc. Always delivered what was asked & then some. Never really had a dispute of much sort with clients/people. Just, couldn't scale it bigger, and that's on me.
I feel it could help us all discuss & learn what we could do different to more effectively go forward in the next year or two.
Personally, I suppose I'll try listing mine below:
Marketing/Netwrking/Advertising - I can admit, I was bad at this. I dabbled in wedding advertising, WeddingWire & Google Adwords. I'll admit, Adwords I got ok with, (it shows related advertising like The Pros & other local & national studios and their CPC vs mine, I was up pretty high with them but just didn't get the leads. I felt it helped me learn it & I should've tried obtaining work for it, but in the end had to stop. Probably shouldn't have). Wedding Wire was what you hear, expensive, alot of flyby requests & price checkers, I might've got 1 or 2 booking a year from nearly $100/mo. Did it 2 years, then I think they offered a reduced price but moved me off the 1st page so it was worthless. In hingsight, I did work with a phototographer who was about my age, 45 or so. Had an interesting story, ran a kiosk in a mall for years selling jewelry or something, then over time malls faded. I think they got married & he saw how much photographers charge, and as is typical he got into it. He was really good however, not spray & pray like alot of what I see. Anyway, he mentioned he was paying $1000/month for WW. Crazy, but he said it was the only way he could break in, early on would make $40K year, with $12k spent on advertising, however he said 5 years in he was finally at the point where his referrals exceeded his advertised clients, and he might reduce or stop his WW ads. Food for thought.
Pricing - I was bad at this. Originally I started in depositions in 2010 after leaving an office job. I had my price set but didn't account for how many depos only last 1-2 hours. Good money for 60 minutes of shooting maybe, but when I factor in travel, setup time, troubleshooting, dealing with situations like no one there yet, room not available etc. I didn't like doing them. A year or two later segued into weddings, didn't think Id like them but I actually did. I like the fast pace of them. However, I couldn't market myself as more than a guy coming down in price, as opposed to a business with pretty firm pricing. Also, I once did sorta volunteer work in a lower income city, that's fairly big (75,000). It was charitable, and I didn't expect it but a year or so later got a call from the poliice department. I think the chief had taken my card at the event, and asked I shoot like a quarterly awards ceremony. I mean, government work is ideal, but this is a pretty poor city, I didn't wanna take advantage of it. Plus I thought they were just 'returning a favor'. I should've asked to price it out, and call them back, but instead threw a number out figuring it would be good demo reel & past clients resume type of thing.
Networking - I feel I coulda been more active on LinkedIn/Twitter, about the video industry and local events (like the police ceremony). I'm sorta connected with friends tho, and while it isn't like Facebook, I don't always like to keep them updated on my life. I probably should have the LinkedIn app ready to go for posts tho. I should blog more also.
Accounting/Financial - I signed up for Quickbooks last year, and they have really good free Youtube tutorials, possibly effecient even without QB, just learning about accounting methods, invoicing etc. Paypal actually has a similar lite version of bookeeping. Wish I had a better business model of X income allows for 15% to be spent on advertising, and constantly check everything out. Recently I took a pretty good 'Accounting Fundamentals' course on a site Ed2Go, plus I bought a book.
I can freely admit I made mistakes, I suppose almost entirely in business ownership. I'm a hard working guy, never been late to a wedding or deposition, reliable, dependable etc. Always delivered what was asked & then some. Never really had a dispute of much sort with clients/people. Just, couldn't scale it bigger, and that's on me.