Market Research

I have been debating for a while whether or not to post it here. Anyway....
I posted an ad on CL asking to quote a wedding photography service - just to see who is out there and what kind of responses people get.
So.... I am in Maryland, and I get responses to my ad from photographers in NY, NJ, PA, DE and everywhere in between. People are willing to drive 5 hours each way to charge $750 for 3 hour event. Are you serious?
People asking anywhere from $75/hr to $1,500 (some sort of wedding package).
So long story short, received 50 or so responses in 2 days.

So if you respond to CL ads and never get replies, now you know why - you compete with low-bidders (probably from out-of-state ).


Any thoughts - please post here.

IQ of digital cameras is very high - some are better than others.
IQ of digital photographers is very low - some are lower that others.

that's quite sad, actually.

those photogs should pick up books on marketing and branding if they want to make $$ and not just cover gas.

Two words:

1. Shoot
2. Burn

With those in mind, $750 for a total of about 13.5 hours isn't so bad.

I don't know why people get upset at craigslist advertisers, it is a way of life now and they are here to stay for this type of service. We have some local forum boards of similar nature and they are pretty much the same.

It is however possible to get decent gigs off of criagslist. You have to learn how to upsell the customer. Sometimes that is possible and sometimes not. I picked up a commercial account off of their and I do their catalog work each year now. They were just starting the year they posted on craigslist.

Craigslist is simply another avenue for people to find services and those providing to find them.

I once posted a fake office job ad on CL just to see how much competition there was out there. I got like 200 resumes in 12 hours before I took the ad down.

As for advertising on CL, its not impossible to find half decent customers, though there are not many of them on there.

Found my first wedding on CL and they hired me. I guess I did well? lol. It was a $500 gig 2.5 hours away. After getting that one out of the way I know that I won't do a wedding less thant $1,000. One of the brides friends from that area asked me to come photograph their wedding for $300-400 and I had to decline. At 10 hours total for just a 4 hour wedding in gas, costs, and other things it's just not worth it but there are some that are willing to do that. In order to do that you're gonna get skimpers on their gear, though.

EL_PIC wrote in post #11457357
IQ of digital cameras is very high - some are better than others.
IQ of digital photographers is very low - some are lower that others.

truer words were never spoken... too funny

sniper_md wrote in post #11457278
I am in Maryland, and I get responses to my ad from photographers in NY, NJ, PA, DE and everywhere in between. People are willing to drive 5 hours each way to charge $750 for 3 hour event. Are you serious?

So, one long haul job, and 2 nearby jobs, in a week, nets you almost $2400.

At that rate, you could do over 100k a year, in net sales.

You can do this with barely any start up costs, and running your business out of a spare bedroom, with no employees, and virtually no overhead.

Ya, that's a joke...

Laughing all the way to the bank.

sniper_md wrote in post #11457278
People asking anywhere from $75/hr to $1,500 (some sort of wedding package)....

So if you respond to CL ads and never get replies, now you know why - you compete with low-bidders (probably from out-of-state ).

Any thoughts - please post here.

I'd say if I was a pro photographer, who had many years ahead of him before retirement, to start thinking about some other line of work.

I think the 'landscape' for pros, is going to get worse, not better...

.

Had to take the ad down, I kept getting 3 emails per day....

MP4/8 wrote in post #11466986
So, one long haul job, and 2 nearby jobs, in a week, nets you almost $2400.

At that rate, you could do over 100k a year, in net sales.

You can do this with barely any start up costs, and running your business out of a spare bedroom, with no employees, and virtually no overhead.

Ya, that's a joke...

Laughing all the way to the bank.

There are practical limits to how many weddings a person can do in a year, especially when they involve the travel, overnight stays, et cetera, that your thinking would entail.

A whole lot of people don't seem to understand the concept of "billable hours" when they look only at "money per job." Most weddings are on the weekend--can one guy actually do three weddings a weekend? How many weekends of the year can he do them?

Virtually no overhead? Have you thought about that? What do the travel and overnighting costs do to his cost of sales (presumably these particular clients won't be warm to extra travel expenses)? Include increased vehicle maintenance expense to that.

market, business class, GO!

MP4/8 wrote in post #11466986
So, one long haul job, and 2 nearby jobs, in a week, nets you almost $2400.

At that rate, you could do over 100k a year, in net sales.

You can do this with barely any start up costs, and running your business out of a spare bedroom, with no employees, and virtually no overhead.

Ya, that's a joke...

Laughing all the way to the bank.


.

Making $500 for 3 hrs of shooting, 10 hours of driving and 2 (more or less) hours of post-processing cannot possibly net 100k/year and can't be hardly called a "long-haul job". Gas and tolls will cost at least $100. And 2 nearby jobs - maybe just a (little) bit optimistic?...