How busy are you?

[kiwinvan]

Hi - I have just completed my second season doing weddings on my own. As a newbie in a heavily manned city (Vancouver) I started 2006 with 5 bookings and ended up doing 20. I got my feet wet with a lot of smaller coverage wedding - 3-4 hours to get ceremony, family, bridal party, couple and sometimes beginning of reception.

I am surprised by the numbers I am booking for 2007. I set a target of 10 by xmas, got it so raised it to 15, just got that and have now it raised to 20. I have 4 more couples to meet with in the next 5 days.

The weddings I am now booking are in the 4-8 hour range and some of the locations are more expensive, so I guess I'm moving into the next tier of wedding budgets.

Anyway, while I am ecstatic about the number of bookings compared to last year, I want to keep the workflow at a reasonable level so I can maintain standards - quality of images and timely delivery.

How many weddings do you typically do in a season? I have set an aim for 30 and think that would be enough of a step up. Do you take what's going or do you limit bookings?

Any advice about this stage of business would be gratefully received - I have browsed bride forums and seen some horrible horrible threads about some photographers getting suddenly busy and their customer service levels drop and with the word of mouth factor, it's definitely a pitfall I want to avoid.

Thanks,

[tony fanning]

Oh! how I dream of being too busy. I have just set out on my own with two in the bag. I have just signed my life away for some advertising and hope that it will pay for itself, along with the word of mouth from my other weddings and portrait stuff.
If I can nail down 10 next year I`ll be happy, then move on from there.
Good luck with yours.

[islandphoto]

Is photography your only source of income or do you have another job. If that's the only thing your doing I'd say book several weddings. You will have plenty of time for post processing, putting together albums etc. I'm teaching this year and I'm doing on average about 2 weddings a month. That is pretty stressful for me but next year I don't plan to teach full time so I'd like to get even more business.

[agosling]

Because I work fulltime and weddings are something I do because I love doing them and I set my standard very high, I have a maximum limit of 12 a year and at the moment I have 7 booked, which I'm pretty happy with.

[tim]

If I had one wedding per weekend i'd do photography full time, but I only have that only summer, so I work full time as well. During summer I work 3 days per week. I can do 1 wedding a weekend easily enough, I have 2 weddings some weekends, that'll be pushing it a bit but i'm sure i'll cope fine. I may have to take a week off to catch up after summer.

[jessiper]

I have at least 20 weddings booked for 2007 so far. I'm doing one per weekend, and 2 on just a couple of weekends. I'm also taking one weekend off in June and one in August to relax and catch up, or go on vacation. I don't work, but I have 2 kids and do volunteer work.

[bpuppy]

If you're getting TOO busy, you should raise your prices a bit ... makes more sense to work less for more money.

[Arnie1]

I have 12 booked so far for 2007, If I can hit 20 I'll be happy.

Hopefully 2008 will generate enough for me to quit my day job as an Art Director,
Or I'll shoot weddings in the summer and freelance in the Winter.

[Banbert]

7 Booked for 2007 so far, which is from a standing start a few months ago, so even though were very cheap at the moment (we aim to build our portfolio next year and arent really bothered about making any real money) I am very pleased to have that many. Some way off our target of 20 so far but apprently things liven up again in January over here, lots of people getting engaged at xmas I guess, and we have a few other possibilities to generate some enquiries.

Tony Fanning, what advertising yah signed up for ? Weve invested in a few bits of advertising since starting up a few months ago and although some of the paid listings may have helped our google rank a little bit I would go as far to say as apart from that it was pretty much worthless.

By far the best investment we have made along the way is in search engine optimisation (strictly speaking the SEO didnt cost anything except our time because we did it ourselves but if we didnt have the knowledge it would have been worth paying others to do) and google adwords.

If your a wedding photographer and havent done one or either of these then your missing out in a big way. You can have the best website in the world but unless your a famous photographer and people are entering your url directly then they are likely to search for "photographer town name/region name" or "wedding photographers town name/place name" or other variations of that and if your site or your adwords advert isnt appearing on page one then your missing out imo on the cheapest form of advertising there is.

[Arnie1]

Banbert....please enlighten me on SEO. (I'm a bit of a web numbnut)

[Banbert]

Banbert....please enlighten me on SEO. (I'm a bit of a web numbnut)

Search Engine Optimisation means just what it says, optimising your website so that it appears well up the search engine rankings for the key search terms that your targetting. Your website is designed to show your work off to your clients but it should also be designed to look good to the search engines

If you dont want to learn the stuff yourself or someone else does your website design and they dont do search engine optimisation (you would be amazed at how many web designers just design sites but dont know diddly about SEO) then its worthwhile you spending some cash on SEO.

This thread is a good start point for SEO> http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=179549

Plus ton of info here> http://www.googlerankings.com/

And of course here > http://www.google.com/webmasters/

Yahoo is deffo worth submitting your site to as well as MSN

Adwords is very worthwhile imo as well > https://adwords.google.com/

[Scott_Quier]

Banbert....please enlighten me on SEO. (I'm a bit of a web numbnut)I second the plea. I believe any sage advice would be well received. Thanks

[Meena482]

As said earlier, if you are booking that quickly you should raise your prices.

[kiwinvan]

Is photography your only source of income or do you have another job. If that's the only thing your doing I'd say book several weddings. You will have plenty of time for post processing, putting together albums etc.
Yes, I do this full-time. Weddings is primary and then portraits, then whatever other jobs I can get to help survive.

If you're getting TOO busy, you should raise your prices a bit ... makes more sense to work less for more money.
I do see the sense in that. Price increase will happen in the new year but I have a "sale" on for people booking before xmas (2006 prices). I didn't start the year with a lot of bookings this year so am trying to encourage people to book early (and help to cover my Dec/Jan rent :confused: ) I updated my website a few weeks ago and then got a rush of bookings. I hope it will continue into the New Year.

were very cheap at the moment (we aim to build our portfolio next year and arent really bothered about making any real money)
Yes, this is what I did the first year with very low prices, just to build my portfolio and gain more experience. Now I feel like I'm more priced where I should be and I may actually make some money. The starting out was really really tough.

I guess my question was really - if full-time, is 30-40 weddings a good number to aim for?
Thanks for all responses and opinions.

[tim]

Leanne, welcome to another kiwi :)

[kiwinvan]

Leanne, welcome to another kiwi :)

Cheers Tim!
I'm popping home for a visit in February. Been a couple of years so I'm really looking forward to it!

[luminairephoto]

Hi all. Looking through your sites and your images, you're a talented bunch and it's obvious why people hire you. What methods have you found successful in getting word out? Word of mouth is the typically answer from most, but until you have a good number of clients under your belt to spread the word, what have you found to work well?

Cheers,

Ryan