Photographer's Work
What do I do all day? Do you ever wonder why your professional photography costs so much? Man, sometimes I wonder why I have to charge so much. I know, as a family, that there's never a time where you're not watching your money. Who wants to "over spend" on anything? So, again, I ask, what is it that takes so much of my office time?
I recently started to log my office activities on Thursdays.... the one day a week that my kids are in daycare. And it kind of goes like this:
update invoice and pricing - 1 hour
respond to emails - 1 hour
Promotional Materials (samples albums, prints, products, business cards, etc) - 1 hour
More emails - 1 hour
Back up computer - 1 hour
Blog/Sneak Peak pictures - 15 minutes
Facebook ads - 15 minutes
Client pricing information - 45 mintues
Contracts - 15 minutes
Blog Prep - 10 minutes
Clean out my computer - 1 hour
Work on Public Pricing - 1 hour
All of this responding to emails, and posting blogs has to do with new business. Now, This is just last thursday and I'm spending a decent amount of time learning a new contract and pricing system. Hopefully, once set up, it will help lower the amount of time I spent on contracts, pricing and emails. But, notice that I didnt even really get to touch pictures. I did ONE blog post (which didn't even go up because I let my intern do some of the grunt work).
So, if that was my 8 hour day, not including any photoshoots or editing, It makes some more sense that I need to paid for all of that time. Also remember that a good portion of time is spent constantly attracting new clients and advertising. Some businesses (hair, childcare, etc) have ongoing customers, but I'm really lucky when I have a customer come to me once a year. Which I really am lucky because I have quite a few of those amazing loyal customer. =)
To wrap things up, Thank you so much to my loyal and wonderful clients who have taken the time and money to invest in their pictures because they will last a lifetime!!!!
