I read about a marketing strategy that I'm going to somewhat employ. Don't charge a session fee. To start, offer a free photo session and up to five web versions of the images in exchange for a couple business cards and referrals. Immediately after the shoot, schedule a viewing and give them options for full-charge prints. If they're happy enough to print one or more, I'm charging $20 base w/one free print + printing costs w/markup for additional prints.
I got about 25 responses on a post to a Facebook group! It was, um, a little (or a lot) overwhelming. I had to shut off the comments! haha. After booking as many as those as possible, I'm raising the base price to $50 for five "web optimized" images, marketed on my website as half off, so I can eventually charge a $100 base fee.
.. so yeah find a local Facebook or other group, be upfront about your beginner status, and only charge when someone wants prints until you have the money to upgrade to professional equipment. When you build a strong portfolio and steady clientele, start charging for digital copies. You have good enough equipment and skill to make some side cash to stash away for pro-quality gear now.
People clearly want cheap photos and it's mostly for social media purposes (or maybe I'm dealing with a particularly vain group lol) so I think it's a great market, even if it seems you're working for free. It's working for me so far, though, because I have two photography gigs every day for two weeks, and get to hand out all of the business cards that I had to rush order. :-D
Most important for me would be how you get the perfect angle or scene and the perfect lighting that can be achieved through the perfect equipment and to end it better the perfect editing or post-processing.
Personally I need to improve, or upgrade, my equipment and find new places/subjects to photograph.
I read about a marketing strategy that I'm going to somewhat employ. Don't charge a session fee. To start, offer a free photo session and up to five web versions of the images in exchange for a couple business cards and referrals. Immediately after the shoot, schedule a viewing and give them options for full-charge prints. If they're happy enough to print one or more, I'm charging $20 base w/one free print + printing costs w/markup for additional prints.
I got about 25 responses on a post to a Facebook group! It was, um, a little (or a lot) overwhelming. I had to shut off the comments! haha. After booking as many as those as possible, I'm raising the base price to $50 for five "web optimized" images, marketed on my website as half off, so I can eventually charge a $100 base fee.
Wow!
.. so yeah find a local Facebook or other group, be upfront about your beginner status, and only charge when someone wants prints until you have the money to upgrade to professional equipment. When you build a strong portfolio and steady clientele, start charging for digital copies. You have good enough equipment and skill to make some side cash to stash away for pro-quality gear now.
People clearly want cheap photos and it's mostly for social media purposes (or maybe I'm dealing with a particularly vain group lol) so I think it's a great market, even if it seems you're working for free. It's working for me so far, though, because I have two photography gigs every day for two weeks, and get to hand out all of the business cards that I had to rush order. :-D
For me both technical and post processing (they're very similar in my opinion)
Most important for me would be how you get the perfect angle or scene and the perfect lighting that can be achieved through the perfect equipment and to end it better the perfect editing or post-processing.