Photography business quote of the year...

Disneyland (Photo credit: andy castro)This is from a friend of mine, Michael Campbell and it is so appropriate. In the world of event photography, way too many photographers choose to place their photos online only.  It's usually a big mistake. Michael says it best...

"PEOPLE ONLY BUY THE MICKEY MOUSE EARS AT DISNEYLAND. They don't go home and buy them online, they don't buy them in Walmart or Target."       -Michael Campbell

That's right folks, if you expect to make money in event photography you have to plan for the here and now, not the maybe next time. I would be rich if everyone who has said they would go home and buy their photos online, actually did. Sadly, only a small percentage ever do.

So what do you do to get your product in front of your potential buyers? You basically have three options.  1. You can print up everything you can as soon as you can and sell actual product at your sales table.  2. You can print everything up on demand by using viewing stations and high speed printers. 3. You can have the customer view the photos at computer viewing stations, they place and pay for the order and you send it out in the mail to them.

The disadvantage to printing everything up is you are speculating and paying for everything up front.  However, if your wholesale price is small enough, it doesn't take long to make a profit even if you only sell 30 percent of what you print up, providing you have it priced right in the first place. This works best with a multiple day event.

The disadvantage to printing on site is if the technical end of it doesn't go correctly, you will have a mess on your hands really quickly Plus you have the expense of the equipment and hiring an IT guy. You will have less of a problem if you just don't try and print on site but use the viewing stations as an ordering station only.  It will take a lot of the pressure off having to produce a product immediately. You will still have much higher expenses with all the equipment. But for a large scale event, this is really the best way to show the product.