thebeginning Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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glort wrote:
Without trying to upset anyone ( which I'll do anyway) the whole online delivery thing -to me- is rather hypocritical to a lot of the parroted mantra shooters go on with and it's also shooting onself in the foot for a lot of extra profit potential.
Many shooters crap on like primmadonna's about the idea only they can edit their pics to their ultimate perfection, only they can know how to shoot and work their clients images to a standard no one else could, they go on about their brand and reputation ad Nauseum.
Then, they go and deliver those images unprinted, not in an album, with no layout to make the most of the presentation of them on the page, without little enhancements like borders and graphics that make such a difference....
To me it's just not Cricket.
And once the couple get these images the shooter has doted over like a mother hen, what happens then? Are they destined to be shown on mal ajusted computer monitors and maybe TV screens? Maybe bastardised and stuck on face waste to be viewed on tiny phone screens or printed on a machine of quality as questionable and nexts years weather and then -maybe- stuck in some cheap arse chinese album that will degrade the pics and are slapped in with as much knowledge and skill as a photographer could apply to brain surgery.
There is a lot more to a good wedding coverage than the pics and editing thereof.
Another common trend with shooters is their cult like beliefs and opinions that every wedding must be blogged in order to generate new business. That to me seems ironic when they are just going to give the couple a bunch of images over the net.
I haven't blogged a wedding or anything else in my life but to this day, I get loads of brides coming to me whom never knew I existed but saw the girl at works album I shot or their neighbour, friends cousins etc. And repeatedly, thats a lot more frequent to be a year or 3 ago, not last week.
Every single album plan I do I wow people with shots they will tell me they aren't really interested in till I show them how they go together on the page and work to compliment each other and help tell the story. Thats the way I shot them in the first place with that in mind.
It's a case of the sum being a lot more than the individual parts especialy when you throw another part in like an album that a lot of brides carry round with them like a handbag for months after the wedding showing it round to anyone that will stand still long enough for the newlywed to get it out of the box with the little engraved plaque on the front I put there for them. They see my name on cards in the front and back covers of the album and the pile I throw in the bottom of the box which always get handed out.
From the profit POV, I work and always have, on getting a basic coverage fee and then upselling. I find it much easier to sell something tangiable, even in the form of an electronic image when I have it, IE after the wedding, than before where I'm effectively saying " Imagine this".
I can't remember a couple who weren't blown away with their pics and said something to the effect that they didn't think -THEY- would look so good in the pics. By selling the package before you have this leverage to deal with, a shooter is really selling themselves short of maximising what they can get out of each couple.
The idea with digital delivery seems to be to get the pics out the door asap, save time not having to meet with the pesky clients again and get to the next couple as fast as you can. Used car dealers work in the same price range we do yet give their clients more love.
My knowledge of marketing tells me it's a lot easier, cheaper, more profitable and less hassel to work with less people you can get the same amount of money from at the end of the year than working with a heap more.
To me, the job isn't finished till the pics are printed to the same standards as they were created ( and often edited to death) and in a finished album that is of the same quality as what was put into the pics and reflects that.
I understand Digital delivery for lower end job where you have to get what you can out of the clients but to deliver ones preimum work over the net just flys in the face of what so many proport to stand for and to me seems a highly unprofessional and impersonal delivery of customer service amoungst anything else.
I have always spent time with customers on the phone for initial inquirys, I have always met them in person for showings, bookings, confirmations, album plans and deliverys and the reasons for continuing to do so are only mounting not diminishing to me.
I can sell an elegant looking album that has class and oozes value and looks like a family eirloom that looks like a craftsman and artist put it together a lot easier than I can sell a bunch of images that the clients can't see any of the effort and skill that went into them even if they are 3-4 times the price.
Sure it takes more time but my hourly rate is higher than what I would get doing things the other way. Seeing as I haven't yet figured a way to get paid for sitting on my arse and it has always been a lot easier to get the max profit out of existing clients that deal with more new ones, I can't see me ever going to online delivery.
For those in the low end market, it may be a worthwhile time saving ioption but I'd still be able to milk those same clients for a lot better return by giving them something tangible even if it were a disk or USB.
The marketing and referal value along makes a physical delivery a far better proposition for my business.
Anyway, that's my observation on the subject for what little it's probably worth.
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k.
It should be said that this is a business as well, not just some 'I'm a fabulous artist' wankery. I started with a method more like yours several years ago, but demands changed. It makes far more business sense for me to focus on up-front sales rather than long drawn out album ordering processes and complicated (or worse, forced) sentimentalities of how my work should be viewed. There's a time and a place for educating and surprising the client with something beautiful, but when it takes me 5x the amount of time for the same amount of money, I just don't see it as feasible. And as an important note, this isn't a high vs. low end issue, at least in my market.
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