The Photo Attic

The Photo Attic
Unite. Share. Learn. Inspire.

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updates coming soon :)
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Sunday, August 16, 2009

Next Gathering: Monday August 24th!

Album designer and photographer, Julie Boucher, of Design-29 Custom Album Design, will be joining us on Monday, August 24th!



Check out her site & bring your questions! She'll be covering tips and tricks for designing albums for every occasion.

Please Bring:

-Notepads & Pen

-Questions on Album Designing

-YOUR Albums to share (online or printed)

*reminder: please bring CD of pics for those you have photos of from the May 18th gathering!*


The Photo Attic Gathering: 6:45pm

The Corner Bakery
103 W. Imperial Hwy

Brea, CA 92821


Friday, August 14, 2009

Aug. Success Tip: 8 Ways to get YOUR Phone to Ring...NOW!

Photographers from all over the country have been asking me, “Bruce, my phone isn’t ringing. What can I do?” The answers these days are not easy, but there are 8 pro-active things you can implement right now to get your studio’s phone to ring! Some of the reasons for the "Summer Surge" I've been blogging about on the Daily Mentor Minute comes directly from these 8 strategies!

Pin-point target marketing using variable data: It’s simply not enough to send out a mailer and hope for clients to call you; but everything has to done at a different level in order to achieve success! We try to target specific groups of people whenever we can, with marketing pieces geared towards their lifestyle. You’ve seen our custom lake cards before—that is exactly the kind of target marketing I’m talking about!

Niche it! Anytime you can niche a specific market, go for it! We are doing it with HS seniors right now, and we even developed a senior’s only website, not to mention our Facebook presence and direct mailings to help drive more clients to us. Just by niching seniors by themselves, we are already seeing a bump in less than 2 weeks of the site going live! It’s all about taking it to another level!

Effective email marketing with a focus on lead generation: I hear from a lot of photographers that their email marketing isn’t working anymore. I think it comes down to expectations. If you’re expecting a huge return on emails sent out every time, you’re dreaming! But you can increase your rate of return and use your email marketing to generate leads for your studio. For example, attach a link to your site promoting an end of summer promo. Track the number of clicks and send a follow-up letter, card, or email! The more touch points the better! You’ll find that your emails become an automatic lead generator for you every month!

Using social media marketing to your advantage! –Facebook & Twitter: They’re free and effective, and they can create a buzz in the community like you wouldn’t believe! Since adding social media to our marketing efforts, we have actually done quite well! Not just for seniors, but for families and even for commercial! If you’re not familiar with social media, talk to a junior high kid—they’ll fill you in! Here’s a tip: when you get your Fan Page up and running, give people an incentive to want to join. We offer a $50 Gift Certificate! Social media also provides your website with more referring links, which helps your Google search ranking! The more web traffic the better!

Speaking in your community: Being seen as an expert in your community is key to getting your studio brand noticed. This is one of those marketing tools that can be extremely effective, not to mention it costs only a little time out of your day. Call your local chamber, service organization, or high school and see if they need any speakers. This is a great way to educate the community about professional photography and showcase your work.

Co-op marketing with the right partner! It’s not enough to partner with another business—your target demographics have to match! We’ve developed a referral program with a few cosmetic dentists and surgeons. The referral letter is from the doctor, and it’s in a nice package with a custom gift card. This is a hit with the right kind of client and the doctors do all of the marketing work…well, their staffs do!

Win-win marketing: When’s the last time you volunteered your services for your local chamber? Charity? City? There are a ton of in-kind trading opportunities out there for photographers! I do work for the school district, city, and chamber, all in exchange for sponsorship opportunities! A few years ago I was the platinum sponsor for a jazz concert in our city, complete with radio advertisements, all for the cost of doing some work for the school district. Talk to members of your chamber and your clients. It’s a great way to get your name out there!

Get pro-active! Lastly, you have to be pro-active everyday! Send cards to your clients, follow-up emails with personal phone calls, and leaving nothing on the table. Start each day off with some positive momentum and always be mindful of weekly cash flow. Like I’ve told many photographers this year, I am working as hard as ever! The same notion was repeated by Lori Nordstrom during her Monthly Mentor Interview, which is featured this month.
It’s time to get your head out of the sand and start running your business again! It’s all about developing a plan, tweaking the plan, perfecting the plan, and implementing it!

Hope to see you guys there and I hope you’re having a great summer!

Article by: Bruce Hudson
Click Here to Register for this FREE Webinar, Sponsored By Marathon Press!

Sunday, August 9, 2009

The Photo Attic Faces!




Efren Beltran: Photo by Kristi Klemens

Nicki Smith: Photo by Liz Thompson

Julie Boucher: Photo by Kristi Klemens

Liz Thompson: Photo by Kristi Klemens

Friday, August 7, 2009

Turn your dream business into reality

By Ellen Breslau

Who hasn’t fantasized about starting an online jewelry business or a parenting website? Turn the fantasy into a reality with these tips from Genevieve Thiers, founder of Sittercity.com, the country’s largest network for babysitters (caregivers and pet sitters, too). Need a little motivation? Genevieve’s idea is now a multimillion-dollar corporation.

Step 1: Find the Pain“If you don’t already have a business in mind, go out and find an area in which you yourself have been inconvenienced or in which you’ve watched somebody be inconvenienced. There’s a company in that,” says Genevieve. “When I was in college, I watched a pregnant mother being horrifically inconvenienced by walking up 2,000 steps posting flyers for a sitter. I thought, “Wow, that is just desperate need. There’s a company in that.”

Step 2: Stick with It“There’s not a single idea in the world that doesn’t have at least five bad apples the first second you conceive it,” she says. “Nine times out of 10, people—women especially—will just talk the idea out of the window and say, ‘Oh, well, that was a good idea, but it’s not perfect.’” Imperfection is always going to be there—live with it.

Step 3: Make a Business PlanThis will answer your questions and makes you think about the specifics: demographics, the competition, who’s going to use your service, etc. Pore over your plan and make adjustments until it makes sense. Search the Web for business plan templates.

Step 4: Follow the Money“A lot of women entrepreneurs will come to me and I see passion, enthusiasm and a great idea, but I see no monetary plan. And you just don’t have a business if you don’t have a way your site will make money. Period,” she says. “Today’s companies need to have at least two, if not three or four revenue streams, given the economy: e-commerce, subscriptions, advertising and lead generation.”

Step 5: Use Your Bootstraps“Start off scrappy,” Genevieve says. You need to learn to do a lot with a little. “I launched Sittercity during the last recession and I went to a number of venture capitalists because I thought I needed investments. I talked to a bunch of 60- or 70-year-old men who laughed me out of the room and said it was a babysitters club. One of them said, ‘My wife handles that.’ Undaunted, I hired two of my college friends to build Sittercity—program and design it. I literally sketched it on pieces of paper on their floor. Then I went to Kinko’s and printed 20,000 flyers that said, “Want to be a babysitter and earn $10–$15 an hour?” I literally mapped out the top 20 colleges in the city, and the top 20 dorms in each one. I walked through every single dorm top to bottom and put a flyer on each door. By the end of it, I had a database of 600 babysitters in Boston, which was worth its weight in gold. I had built something.” Once you build something, you’ve got leverage, and you are ready to seek investors.

Step 6: Spread the WordMarket your site through all means possible—write press releases and send them to your local news organizations, talk up your idea with everyone you know. “Viral marketing is really powerful for women, so I took 30 moms I had been babysitting for and dumped them onto my site for free and they began to talk—it was an explosion from there,” says Genevieve. “I also spoke to moms’ groups and chased down moms in supermarkets. I would stand in the frozen foods section and wait for a mom with a stroller and find a way to tell her about it.” One more thing: Keep it small at the beginning. “You’ve got to test your idea in a controlled, contained area before you go nationwide,” Genevieve says.

Step 7: Hit the Big TimeOnce you’ve kept it contained and proved your business on a smaller scale, go to investors—either friends and family; angel investment, which is usually anywhere from $25,000 to $500,000; or venture capitalists, who normally do deals that are around $1 million and higher. “I almost always recommend to women, if they can get friends and family, do that first. And if you can get an angel, do that second,” says Genevieve.

Genevieve’s last bit of advice: “Life is short. If you’re going to go for it, just go for it.”