How to Start a Photography Business In 10 Steps
Blog

Best 10 Tips to Start a Successful Photography Business

For an Ecommerce store, it is a necessity of doing product photography in order for them to sell their products. Without product photography they won’t even get to the point of conversions. Families and their children need photographers in order for them to have their core memories permanent. 

When I say product photography, I mean the professional photo shooting of a product, not just some home shot below average photography. For that, sellers need a photographer or a photography company in order to do the job for them. 

Running a photography company today can be very useful as it is well in demand right now for the amount of new online sellers are arising. The most profitable types of photography today are

  • Product photography
  • Fashion photography
  • Real Estate photography 
  • Social Media photography

Starting with any of the above niches will get you not only an immense amount of profits but also a noticeable amount of experience. Most of the starters don’t know this yet!

A girl is sitting in the office with a camera and checking the camera pictures.

How to start a photography business?

Starting is always the hardest. But the road is always smoother when you have a plan and know exactly what you are doing. 

three people making  using computer while having meeting with young couple making busness plans

1) Make a plan.

Ask any entrepreneur and they will tell you that you need to write down what you want on a paper and brainstorm your way to that point. 

Simply write down what you want, how you want to get it, how much time it would require you to get it, how much money you can invest, what are you willing to do in order to achieve it. 

Analyze and finance the costs of a startup

2) Analyze and finance the costs of a startup.

Analyze the plan you have made and based on that figure out how much each step is going to cost you and how you are going to finance it. According to Bplans, camera equipment can cost up to $10000.

But You really don’t need all the fancy stabilizers, top notch lenses for cameras or anything like that. A decent budget studio can be made within $1500-$2500.

https://articles.bplans.com/successful-photography-business/

classmate with megaphone huge phone screen giving news boy girl sharing information flat vector illustration communication education technology concept website design landing web page.jpg

3) Make a website that catches instant attention.

Imagine having genuine leather products but your shopfront looks like you sell cheapest quality artificial leather products. This same concept applies for your website. 

Maybe you have a very good service to offer but your website doesn’t say anything like that. You’re done. You lose the prospects.

If you don’t want that to happen then invest in a good website developer and make a website that is not only attractive but also very informative with simple wordings. 

4) Find out your target audience.

Once you understand who your target audiences are, your work is gonna become much more convenient and faster. But as you are just getting started, you may want to work another job to pay the bills until your business finally takes off for the long term.

For product photography, targeted audiences are mostly sellers of ecommerce stores trying to launch their products. Fashion photography would require you to reach out to varieties of brands, whereas, social media photography and real estate photography would require you to reach out to different influencers and  companies.

5) Gain Experience.

You may not immediately acquire currencies as soon as you start. If you are a beginner then you will need to gather experiences by working for free or by working at an underwage. 

This is done to show the future prospects your work experience so that they can value you even more. Everytime you are working for a low cost or for free, you are not only gaining work experience but also collecting testimonials and working samples to put on your website or portfolio. 

6) Set the pricing.

Now that you have gathered the necessary experiences, testimonials and work samples that were needed; it is high time to set the prices for future clients and start acquiring money from your business. 

Do not set prices over the bar or right on the bar. Do your own research on the market first and figure out how other business organizations are charging for their services, how they are charging, what terms and conditions are they following for charging, what changes in the pattern can you make to make it work even better, etc. 

7) Make a website that catches instant attention.

Imagine having genuine leather products but your shopfront looks like you sell cheapest quality artificial leather products. This same concept applies for your website. 

Maybe you have a very good service to offer but your website doesn’t say anything like that. You’re done. You lose the prospects.

If you don’t want that to happen then invest in a good website developer and make a website that is not only attractive but also very informative with simple wordings. 

A laptop with some images and social webpages.

8) Start marketing on social media.

Once your website has been launched already, start a marketing campaign on social media or by emails. Do not try to be everything like other businesses rather, try to specialize in a unique side of photography and apply it in rest of the places.

Instagram, Tiktok and Facebook are the best places for promoting your business whereas email marketing is also valuable but requires way more research. Google ads are very convenient in this case too

9) Reinvest for the first few months.

The first few handfuls of income that you will receive will make you feel really rewarding but if you reinvest all that money back into the business then the income you will receive in the next few months will be even more rewarding. You will thank yourself for reinvesting. 

10) Scale up.

By the time you will start earning more and more, you should start to diversify your business into more niches. 

For example, if you are running a product photography business then scale it up into more services like wedding photography, fashion photography or real estate photography. Remember to scale up to niches that brings similar or more value than your current niche.

If you are starting off as a sole photographer all alone, you should start focusing on your photography skills as that is the 90% of the work.

As a photographer you should know

  1. How your camera works
  2. Best angles for shooting raw
  3. Basics of the camera
  4. ISO, Aperture, Shutter speed of your camera.

It is easy to start a photography business following these steps but the market is very competitive. So, you will need to make quick moves and decide what to do otherwise, you will lose the opportunity that could have been yours.