Tools for Your Photography Business – Time

This is the last in our series looking at essential tools for your photography business.

Over the past seven weeks we’ve looked at some of the essential tools you’ll need to acquire in at least the first year (if not the first month) of your business.

Part 1 – Software and Online Presence
Part 2 – Financials
Part 3 – Wedding Photographers
Part 4 – Studio Portrait Photographers
Part 5 – Location Portrait Photographers
Part 6 – The Perfect Viewing

Part 7 – Time

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.
Charles Caleb Colton

The one resource we all have and yet continuously waste when it comes to running our photography businesses.

We’ve all been guilty at some point or another at getting lost in photography blogs or sites like Flickr once and a while (not there’s anything wrong with that).

Whilst there is networking and learning to be done, sometimes we can lose hours all too quickly.

So for me an essential tool for my business is time…. or rather time management.

Why is time management important?

Silly question really, but what good organisation breeds is consistency, and that is a wonderful thing to have in any business.

It also affords us those little luxuries in life otherwise known as days off…. a real luxury as any self employed photographer will tell you!

There’s also those other things know as friends and families which often require attention but sometimes fall to the wayside.

Where to start?

Workflow

Have one for every part of your business and follow it. Have a system and workflow that you follow for everything you do.

For example

A portrait session workflow

• You receive an email enquiry about a portrait session
• You respond within 24 hours by phone and book the session on a ‘shoot day’
• You send an email to thank the referrer and post them a money off voucher
• You shoot the portrait session
• Within two days you edit 30 images
• Within three days you post 3 preview images on your blog
• Within a week you have the viewing
• Within two weeks the client received the order which is delivered in person
• Call referrer and ask how they’d like to spend their voucher
• Make a follow up after care call to client one week after delivery

Imagine if you had a system like that for every type of client and every type of job you did!

You might say that you do but who is prompting you?

The best way to manage these is by using studio management software and calendars. Whatever you use at least make a list like the one above and stick to it!

Somewhere along the way you’ll add and remove things but that’s all part of perfecting your workflow….and you’re time!

If things are taking too long and not working for you then it’s easier to identify that if you have a solid system in place.

By recording these steps we can also get a better idea of how long we actually spend doing them and that will gives us a better idea on what we need to charge.

Client Capacity

A favorite company SEO of mine who likes to call me almost weekly trying to convince me that they’ll get me on the first page of Google always start their pitch with the words “Are you in a position to take on more work?”

Of course questions like this are designed to make me nod my head in agreement and eventually sign on the dotted line but it’s also a good question.

How do you know if you’re in a position to take on work?

The easy answer is that the bank balance will do the talking but have you actually worked out what your client capacity is?

We have touched in this subject in Affordable Outsourcing for Photographers so do go and have a look.

Setting a schedule

As a photographer it’s unlikely that your working week is ever going to be the same from one week to the next but there are certain things that need to be done regularly.

A system that I find works it setting aside different days for different tasks. Monday for example, is my blog day. It’s the one day a week that I sit down and write my posts for the week.

You can do the same with accounting, marketing….. anything really…. including setting aside a day off!

This also works the same for how you spend your time in the day:

9am-10am – Deal with emails and make calls

11am – 12 – catch up on some social networking

12-1pm – Lunch

1pm-3pm – Editing

….And so on….

It does sound like a very rigid way to work but why not start off by simply having a blog day like me.

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Michael Shilling

Michael has been working as a photographer for the last ten years. In that time he has shot over 100,000 peoples’ portraits and worked in four different continents. In 2001 Michael graduated with a degree in photography from Manchester Metropolitan University.

www.memorygate.co.uk