p.3 #3 · How many weddings will you shoot next year?
Given friday weddings, it's conceivably possible for a single shooter to do 150 in a year, I don't see why you guys are so surprised at 70'ish. As mentioned I'm still booking people as well.
p.3 #4 · How many weddings will you shoot next year?
I only have 7 for Dennis and I, and one for our associate photographers. By Jan. 1st every year for over 5 years, I've had 20 signed contracts. However, I'm the idiot that got screwed by my hosting company and didn't realize that my form email was rounted a different way and coming through as spam. I also had dropped off the search engines because of loosing my meta tags. I lost two months of potential clients, and I may not recover. The ones I do have booked are referrals, and two are sisters getting married 3 weeks apart. Poor mom...However, I did get two contacts (through the form) last night and one has already asked for an appointment. At least when I go to a bridal show this year, I will have some prime dates open... Yvette
p.3 #5 · How many weddings will you shoot next year?
How can you guys have a profitable business only shooting a handful of weddings every year?
We manage it pretty well. While we shoot less we also have far less overhead.
If you have to rent/buy a studio, do lots of advertising, pay employees and get hit by higher marginal tax rates as you make more the differences between net profit and gross profit become much more evident.
p.3 #6 · How many weddings will you shoot next year?
sejanus wrote:
I haven't noticed any effect. I have 72 weddings booked next year and still am getting plenty of enquiries.
HOLY GOOSE!!!
"Packages range from $3250 to $4995." I imagine that's in AUD?
Still if I could get half of what you're doing I'd be doing this as a total full timer. Australia's one of the healthier countries right now, you guys have almost no economic impact.
p.3 #7 · How many weddings will you shoot next year?
sejanus wrote:
Given friday weddings, it's conceivably possible for a single shooter to do 150 in a year, I don't see why you guys are so surprised at 70'ish. As mentioned I'm still booking people as well.
I agree. I have no doubt you're getting them. I have some tuesday weddings booked too. Hey, people don't just marry on the weekends. And who said 2-3 weddings a day can't be done?
p.3 #8 · How many weddings will you shoot next year?
yeah AUD.
I don't think Australia is in the clear, we have silly bail-out packages in the works for our car industry like america at the moment. our stock market has literally halved in value recently, 800 billion (not a typo) wiped out.
p.3 #10 · How many weddings will you shoot next year?
i will shoot about 90 -110 weddings - peak I will do 2 on a day and friday weddings as well and fewer in the low season ( june - sept). When there are two on a day (one with a morning cer 11 am and then lunch and then an afternoon wedding with cer at 3 or 4 pm). I have somebody to do the start or end of one of the weddings. the business should do 150 weddings. At one point we thought tht we may do 250!! so we put up our prices a bit - nearly every body who came in booked - we think 1 in 4 booking is about right for best money with about 150 weddings - because we cannot do anymore meetings.
My aim is to shoot most sat and sun and then some quality fri and then some quality midweek as well.
We shoot asian, Indian, jewish .. all who like different days and seasons which helps spread it out.
As sejanus says - how do people make a living on 10 -30 weddings??
In any case - the more wedding you shoot the better you get I find - the sunday wedding is often better than the saturday one it is just keeping in the zone.
p.3 #11 · How many weddings will you shoot next year?
Italo Campilii wrote:
I agree. I have no doubt you're getting them. I have some tuesday weddings booked too. Hey, people don't just marry on the weekends. And who said 2-3 weddings a day can't be done?
I am from Melbourne too and I know that sejanus has one of the better known and regarded business with a good following here so I would expect what he says or better.
Melbourne has reasonable weather all year and a good mix of cultures allowing weddings all year and nearly every day if you were very cleaver.
I know of other studios here that do 250 + but most I know of will do 30 or so - just all the peak Saturdays.
p.3 #12 · How many weddings will you shoot next year?
How many freakin' "Gavins" ARE there in Australia?!?!?! That's hysterical! And I thought I'd get confused with my "Ours", "Sowers" and "Gower" all being a few weeks apart!
p.3 #15 · How many weddings will you shoot next year?
Lucky_Dog wrote:
Really? You guys raise your price when you hit a certain number of weddings? Hmmmm, very interesting. I have my pricing listed... I don't think I can do that.
if i hit 18 weddings for the following year before nov. 1, then i raise my prices by $1000-$2000 per package.
p.3 #16 · How many weddings will you shoot next year?
julian45 wrote:
As sejanus says - how do people make a living on 10 -30 weddings??
if you cant make a living with 20 weddings then your doing something wrong. or have a day job.
with our average booking price we make well into the 6 figures with 20 weddings booked. and if you cant live off of $100,000 or more then you need to rethink your spending.
not saying anything bad about you just saying in general.
plus where i live the average income is $35,000. so in y city I would be considered upper middle class.
p.3 #19 · How many weddings will you shoot next year?
plove53 wrote:
72 wow... do you "farm out" some of your work
-p
not quite. The way I do it is that any booking for a date where I am free I take myself. If another enquiry comes in for that day that I'm booked I then let them know that basically I'm booked, but I have some other guys I can use for them. Most people prefer to get me but my other guys are great as well so I think I have 20-25 weddings next year where I'm not shooting.
But I still do all the PP work on the files and do the albums and so on.
Today (friday) I have a trash the dress shoot in 2-3hrs, then I have a wedding sat and sun. I then kick back a bit on mon/tue
or Nathan
Yvette
wow... do you "farm out" some of your work