Just because you have no money and business is slow doesn’t mean you can’t outsource! In fact getting someone else to lighten the load might even give you more time to make some more bookings!

Bookkeeping
Amazingly we spend nearly 10% of our time crunching the numbers. A good accountant can not only save you time and money but they can be written off as a business expense!

Editing
My goodness, you people are spending up to 40% of your time sitting at that computer and messing around in Lightroom. Ask yourself ‘What would you do with 40% more time?’

They’re are plenty of companies out their who can take care of batch processing and retouching for a lot cheaper than you might realize. Many of these companies have trial offers so why not give a few a go to see what results you get back.

Websites
This is one of those immeasurable drains on time! If you don’t do much then you’re probably not doing enough and vice versa.

The best advice I can give is get someone to put together a site for you that uses a simple content management system (CMS) like WordPress or Joomla. If they offer aftercare training then all the better! If not, these open source CMS’s have such a large community surrounding them that you won’t have to look far to find a little assistance.

The biggest mistake many photographers make is going for an out of the box website with it’s own CMS. After a while they get frustrated with it’s limitations and end up either spending a lot of time learning to do it themselves or paying someone else to do it for them anyway.

Album and Storybook design
This is another one of those things that is taking up around 10% of your time! Ask yourself are you a photographer or a designer? If you prefer the former then this is one of those services that you’ll find surprisingly affordable.

In many cases your album supplier will probably offer this services but make sure you have a good look around and if any other companies do offer a trail service then give it a go. Make sure you always know how many changes they allow and how much extra changes cost….. be sure to pass this cost onto your client!

Data Collection and client calling
There’s lots of companies out there who are more than happy to sell you their data. Even better there are even more companies who will make calls and arrange bookings for you! Do lots and lots of research on this one and make sure your pricing can swallow what you’re paying to book each client. Chances are it’ll work out much cheaper than print adversing.

Conclusion
Have you worked out your client capacity?

Take this example…. A portrait studio with 1 photographer working 40hrs a week (47 working weeks a year). This example doesn’t include the ‘photographer’ doing data collection or finding the clients.

Time spent per client

1. Booking and confirming appointments – 20mins
2. Shooting – 1hr
3. Editing – 2hrs
4. Prep of images for print framing etc – 1hr
5. Viewing – 1hr 20 mins
6. Social media marketing (blog posts/Facebook) – 20mins

Time spent per client = 5hrs

Studio capacity – 8 clients a week

Studio capacity per year – 376 clients

If you’re average sale is £400 ($627) then your maximum turnover is going to be about £150,400 ($235,737). Doesn’t sound bad but take out the editing and have a look at these figures….

Time spent per client = 3hrs

Studio capacity – 13 clients a week

Studio capacity a year – 611 clients

Max turnover average sale £400 ($627) – £244,400 ($383,072)

That’s nearly £100,000 more just by getting someone else to edit for you!

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I divide my time between being a photographer, retoucher, photography blogger and podcaster. Deep down I like to consider myself a portrait photographer and in my short 10 ten years in the business I’ve taken over 100,000 people’s studio portraits. When I’m not taking pictures I’m writing about it, most of my rambles can be found daily at http://photocreative365.com.

Phone: 07714327862
Website: http://photocreative365.com/
Twitter: @memorygate
Facebook: http://facebook.com/PhotoCreative365

Photo Credit: © 2010 Michael Shilling

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