EP 126: A's to Five Very Common Photography Q's

The training is called "Planning For Profit: A Step by Step Guide to Organizing Your Products and Pricing for Holiday Sales Success". So we are going to be covering things that will hopefully directly impact your end of your income. So pricing, the products that you might want to consider adding even if you don't normally sell products, how you're going to manage those things, all that sort of stuff, we're going to be covering that. And the training is totally

free. You just have to register, which you can do at https://www.thiscantbethathard.com/register. I will link that in the show notes. And I hope to see you there. Welcome to this can't be that hard. My name is Annemie Tonken. And I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more

sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it. And I can show you how. So the first question that I want to talk about is one that comes up a lot. And actually I would say that it is coming up more and more frequently as time goes by. And that's not really surprising, because the issue that I'm talking about is

privacy. Now I if you have been listening to the podcast for a long time, you may remember that I actually did a whole podcast episode about client privacy and people who are reluctant to sign your model release. That was back in Episode 54

doing the same. So the issue at hand is you have a client who either before the session or sometimes after the session says to you "You know what, I'm not comfortable with you sharing these images online, I don't want to sign your model release". And let's assume that everyone is having their clients sign model releases as part of their contract. If you're not, pause this episode and go implement that in your business

right away. That is an extremely important legal measure that you need to take when you are working as a professional. But assuming that you are already doing that every once in a while, and for some of us more frequently than every once in a while, you are going to come across someone who doesn't want to sign your model release but still wants to work with you.

And the issue that I see coming up in the Facebook group pretty frequently is that people feel really bad photographers feel really bad about telling people like nope, you have to sign my model release they don't want to scare this potential client off and they don't want to cause if it's someone who they've already made photographs for they don't want to cause like a giant argument or you know, feelings of ill will by pushing back against their clients.

So number one, it is super important that you have this conversation with your clients before you work with them. You don't want to take their pictures and then enter into this conversation. So my number one best advice is to get out in front of the issue and make this something that you don't hide from or try to avoid because you know if and when it does come up that's only going to cause feelings of mistrust or, you know, ill will from your client if they feel like they haven't

been given full clarity. So what this means is that you need to have a pretty well spelled out plan and policy regarding privacy issues for your clients. Now again, if you want the details of how I do this, I would refer you back to Episode 54. I talk in there about how I structure this offer exactly. But the net net is that I actually charge people more if they want to keep their photos

offline. So if someone says, "I want you to make photos for my family, but I don't want you to post them anywhere", I actually charge extra money for that. And I explain that, as you know, "My images are my marketing tool, this is what I need in order to be able to go out and get more work. And although I absolutely respect your privacy, if you would like to keep your images private, that actually does have a financial impact on my business, and therefore I charge

more for it". I have gotten very comfortable with talking about that, because I truly see it as something that negatively impacts my ability to do business. And therefore that is something that you know, someone needs to compensate me for, if they don't want to work with me, based on that, that is certainly their prerogative, I do absolutely respect to their wish for privacy. And what I do is I talk them through all of the different steps that I take to protect their privacy, at no

additional cost. I don't use names, I don't tag people, I don't, you know, create any sort of identifiable thing other than their faces. But you know, I do recognize that there are people out there either because of their career, or their financial picture, or just their, you know, individual sense of privacy, they don't feel comfortable with their faces being online, totally fine. So I offer them a couple of options for levels of privacy, and I charge accordingly for those levels of privacy.

So what I want to point out for the short version of the answer to this question is that yes, we do have to respect people's wishes for privacy. But respecting them does not mean that we have to do that for free. People pay more money for VIP type treatment all the time, whether it's you know, anything from getting the backstage, all access pass to something or you know, adding avocado to their sandwich, people do understand the nature of having to charge more when something costs a

business more. And the only other thing that I wanted to sort of toss out there, once you you know, if this is an issue that is relevant to you, and you want to go back and listen to Episode 54, I'll spell a lot more out there in terms of the language that I use, and how much I charge and all that sort of thing. But I did get some pushback after that episode where people were saying, I just feel like it's not in alignment with my you know how I feel to charge more for privacy. And I

gave that some thought. And what I wanted to recommend was that if that is the case for you, and you have a situation where that comes up relatively frequently, where it's actually impacting your business, because there are people who are in communities where that comes up a lot more

frequently. So if you are if you find yourself in that situation, what I would recommend that you do is actually add in additional money to your base offerings, make it something that is, you know, full privacy is included in what you offer. And then consider giving people the option to give you additional freedom to share their images

for a reduced cost. So in other words, what you're doing is you're kind of flipping the script from charging more for privacy, to where you include privacy, but give people the option to save a little money if they give you the ability to share their images on Instagram or your website or anything like that. And what I think you'll see is that, you know, lots of people are looking for a way to take a little bit of money off the top of what they have to

spend. But for those people for whom privacy is important, your website is going to rank pretty high because you get out there and address that upfront. Like you know, I respect your privacy, I don't share images. So that would be my suggestion for that. The second issue I want to talk for a minute about is the issue

of screenshotting. As computer monitors get bigger and resolutions get better There is a legitimate concern about your clients getting either still previews, you know, their their images, or even in the form of a slideshow, like we do with Simple Sales where they have access to that, they take a screenshot, and then they don't feel the need to purchase that

image. And I want to start this conversation by saying that although I recognize that that feels like a violation, it feels like a big deal, I strongly encourage you to consider not so much how it feels, but how it actually impacts your business. Because a lot of times what I see are photographers stressing about whether they are being stolen from which truly is what screenshotting your images is, when ultimately, either they have not set themselves up to avoid that problem in the first

place. Or it's happening, but it's maybe not impacting their bottom line. So I guess, you know, people talk about this being a big issue. But the first thing that I want to say is that it's not an issue, unless it's impacting your ability to make a living, that's really the differentiator between something that is annoying. And something that is a real problem. So if your bottom line is protected, are you getting frustrated about something just out of sort of an issue of pride, right?

In my own business, when I think about screenshotting, I know that ultimately, my bottom line is fine, it's possible that I do have some clients who are doing that I don't, you know, I don't have my head in the sand about the fact that that's a possibility. However, I also know that every single one of my clients, I mean, and this is going back years now I haven't had anybody flake on purchasing

a collection for me. And because my collections are priced at such a level where even if they buy the smallest collection, my time was profitable. I look at that as like, Okay, fine. I'm covering my costs, maybe somebody is taking a little something for me, but ultimately, I am getting what I need. And the fact of the matter is I sell my top collection that includes all the digital files probably around 70% of the time. So you know, even if they screenshotted their images,

like, What do I care? They're not it's not losing me any money at all. And then why would they use that? If they can download the image anyway. But part of the reason that I think that I have clients who are not abusing the screenshotting thing has to do with trust, right? I have the benefit of having been in business for a long time. I have

a lot of repeat clients. And so I know that at this point, the people that I'm working with, they are my bluebirds, we have great relationships, and they are not interested in screwing me. And I think that's the thing we really have to remember. Like, yes, if someone is given the opportunity to, let's say, download a movie for free, that they could, you know, that they would otherwise have to watch. They would have to pay to watch. There are on the outside, maybe 50% of people would be willing

to take the free route. But that's like, I think a lot of people have an easier time justifying that because it's like, oh, Hollywood, you know, I'm not taking money from an individual person. I'm taking money from a giant conglomeration or whatever. In the instance of, you know, our clients working with us as individual business owners, I think that it's a much smaller proportion of people who is willing to screenshot your work

than not by it. And so, you know, we do need to once again question like, is this actually a problem that's affecting my bottom line? And if it is, is that an issue where I am working with the wrong people where I am, you know, connecting with people who are in it at such a an aggressive need to save money that they're willing to steal from me and if that's the case, like maybe rather than worrying about watermarking you really need to go back and reconsider how you're doing your marketing.

So that was a bit of a tangent. But I will say that, it you know, if people are screenshotting and you are losing money, by all means, go ahead and add watermarks, add watermarks to your photos, add watermarks to your slideshows. If you're using Pic-Time, which is the gallery software that I use, they do give you the ability to watermark everything. And then when someone purchases, let's say a digital file or obviously a print The watermark

disappears for them. So it's not as though you have to go in and manually control all of that stuff, which is a nice feature. But I also want you to consider that you need to if that is an ongoing problem for you, you need to be thinking about your ideal client and where you're getting your clients. And or you need to be doing some additional educating about it. Because let's give people the benefit of the doubt. If they are stealing from us, it's possible that they don't really recognize that

that's what they're doing. a screenshot is not exactly walking into a store, and like taking something off the shelf and sticking it in your purse, right? Even though ultimately it helped, you know, it forces us as small business people to lose money the same way, that may not

be the way they see it. So I always try to approach all of my interactions with clients or even potential clients with trust at the front, I am giving them I am extending them trust until they prove to me that they are not trustworthy, and then giving them all the tools and information that they need in order to kind of get there. And I do think that the Simple Sales System really helps with this because there is so much education built in. So you know, I know I'm always talking about

it. But if you don't know what the Simple Sales System is, if you don't know the details, definitely go to https://www.thiscantbethathard.com/simple. And watch the masterclass to learn about how all those steps work together. Because even if you're not interested in using it, if you're having issues with things like client education, that masterclass is going to be helpful for you. The third issue that I want to chat with you about today is clients asking for additional

and or extensive edits. So a lot of times on the Facebook group, people will come with, you know, a frustrating client who's like, great, we love our pictures, I want you to go through my husband shirt was wrinkled, and in every single image, I want you to Photoshop the wrinkles out of his, you know, plaid shirt, something that's going to take you tons of time, and there is like this, oh, what am I supposed to do, it's gonna take me, you know, all this time, or it's gonna cost me all this

money, but I don't have anything in my contract. So step number one, when it comes to additional edits, I want you to today look at your contract and see what is written in there, you need a detailed explanation of what you do and do not include in your pricing. So for me, I include I talk about the fact that I include basic retouching and light editing to all of my

images. And then I say, if you would like more extensive edits, or retouching and I believe that relatively open ended, there is a fee and I talk about exactly what my fee structure is for that I charge on an hourly basis, I do not make that inexpensive, you know, think the same amount of money that I would charge hourly, if I were showing up to shoot somewhere is around what I'm charging for my retouching hourly rate. So it's

in there. And you know, we all know that not everybody reads contracts, but it's there in case I need to lean on it later. So what happens for me is if somebody comes back to me and says, Hey, we love our pictures, so that, you know, I have flyaway hairs that I want taken out on this one image, no problem, what I will do is I will point out to them, like, Hey, you know, I'm sure you know, per the contract, usually charge for retouching beyond the

basics. But I tell you what, I'm more than happy to take the flyaway hairs off of this one image for free. And what that does is that reminds them that there is a fee for that kind of retouching, but I go in and I do it just for free because that small edit is only going to take me a few minutes. I don't need to outsource it. It's no big deal. And I want to sort of give them that small win. However, it lays the groundwork where if they then start asking for more, I have no difficulty being like

"Yep, sure. You know, as we discussed, there is a fee. This is what it'll cost." What you don't want to do in this situation is establish a precedent that you then don't want to stick to I think there's you know, there was that thing going around recently where and they did it I heard about it for like chicken in your Chipotle, a

burrito or ice cream. You know, if you go for ice cream, you tell them like oh, I just want one scoop of ice cream and so they give you like a big scoop of ice cream and then you say, oh actually I'll have a double because then they've established the precedent of like the big ice cream scoop so they have to give you a big second scoop versus sometimes if you go in In the beginning, and you say I want to double scoop, they give you two small scoops. So this is a way to like, avoid that is

like a little life hack. I feel like we paint ourselves into a corner, when we do something for our clients for free without pointing out to them that you are giving them something for free. If you do that, then they expect that that's free, they have no idea that that's

supposed to cost more. So you always need to make sure that when you are giving somebody like a little bonus, and you don't have to be obnoxious about it just be like yeah, you know, I norm I'm sure you noticed in my contract, I typically charged for that, I'll give you this one for free. But that way, as you go forward, you can charge for it without having any sort of like awkward conversation. And for those of you who don't know about it,

it, they'll redo it. And their turnaround time is usually really fast. So if you've never used that service before, it is a good one to put on your bookmarks. The fourth question I want to talk about is following up with clients who ghost you. And this could be a client that has you know, booked with you, it could be somebody who has just reached out to find out about pricing, but you you know, respond to them. And then they don't respond, and then you reach out

again and they don't respond. So how long do we keep that up? Before we just like give up and call it a day. So number one, I want to remind you what the goal is, when it comes to following up with a client. Ultimately, the goal is to get an answer from them. a yes or a no. So let's take the instance of someone who has just reached out like first contact kind of thing saying like, Hey, I'm interested in potentially setting up a

session. Can you send me some information and you either send them some information or you say, hey, let's set up a phone call and a couple days goes by and you never hear anything and maybe you follow up and you still don't hear anything back? And I think a lot of photographers at that point just say well, they're not interested and they give up and leave. And I've talked about this before but I am a huge believer in like, what's the pro/con benefit

here? At the very worst, if you follow up three or four or even more times, someone is going to perceive you as annoying. Okay, like that's the that is the worst that could happen if you are being professional and light and not like getting all Swingers-style like repeat phone call in the middle of the night being like please, please call me back. I know you're not doing

that. So assuming you're not doing that like the worst that they're going to say to themselves is like this person is way too aggressive in following up. That is not really a big deal if they weren't gonna hire you anyway and they feel like you're persistent. That's not that's not a terrible thing right.

On the positive side I am here to tell you that persistence can pay off in the form of actual money I have had plenty of clients who have reached out and I have followed up 1, 2, 3 or even more times and I usually send my final you know if somebody really isn't responding four is my like max number of times that I'll reach out to somebody and that's only if they've said like hey I'm we have a mutual friend or something like that where I feel like it's a really very warm

lead. I will send that final email and be like final offer or final reminder or this is the last time I'm reaching out that'll be the subject line. Because I don't know 50-60% of the time I actually get a response to that email where someone says "Oh, I am so grateful that you've been so persistent. I have been crazy this week" or like you know, "The whole family got sick this week and I'm kept meaning to reach out to you but like blah

blah blah" whatever. The fact is that people are busy It is our job as the professional to be kind of the point person on that to take control. As soon as they volley the ball to me, I see it as like the ball is in my court. And I am going to reach back out to them until they say no or until it is like such an absurd imbalance that I'm like okay. I'll let it go. So Again, every time that you start to doubt, like I've contacted them too much. Number one, consider the

pro/con benefit. What's your what's the worst that can happen? If you do reach out again? Number two is that there is no reason that you need to be, you know, sending them, like heavy, why-haven't-you-reached-back-out-to-me kind of emails, you can be absolutely light and like, "hey, just wanted to touch base again, I know how crazy life can get, feel free to respond to this email or just drop me a line, here's my number", you know, something as simple as that.

The other thing is, it doesn't have to be email after email after email. I very much encourage you if your contact form collects somebody's phone number or their Instagram account, you know, text them, dm them, even pick up the phone and give them a call, chances are they're not going to necessarily

answer the phone. But you can just leave them a voicemail, some people are really good about checking email, and other people have you know, inbox 20 million, and your emails are just getting buried in there somewhere. I always like to use the tactic where my second follow up is a text message and I say "hey, I sent you an email and hadn't heard back, I just wanted to make sure I didn't end

up in your spam folder." And that way, you know, it gives someone sort of an out where they don't have to apologize for the fact that they didn't immediately respond to your email. I also would say that the amount of follow up that I give someone does depend on where they are in the process of working with me. So we've been talking about that first contact when someone has

not spent any money with me. And I typically send three emails or I do three points of contact and kind of give them those three chances to respond two via email and one on the phone or in their, like if they happen to reach out to me via social media, I will use that as my point of getting back in touch with them. But if we have some sort of closer connection, I might add a fourth. After we've spoken so you guys know I do a phone call as my first point of

contact with someone. So once we've had that phone call, and I've sent them like their booking information, if they ghost me, then the clock resets on those three. So I do three follow ups that are like, "hey, it was so great to chat with

you. Based on our conversation, I just wanted to make sure that you know, maybe you've had a chance to chat with your husband" or whatever the case may be usually those emails, the first three that I send are very much templated emails, these that I send after I've had a chance to talk to somebody I'll go in and kind of tweak them and make them a little more personal because we have had a personal

connection. And the truth is that at that stage, I usually do get a yes or no answer that is not commonly like a full ghosting situation. And then the third situation is that someone has actually booked me and I have gotten money from them, but they still are disappearing. And at that point, I just assume that like, this is not something they're good at, they're not good at following up, they have a to do list 20

million points long. So I just take that on as part of my job, they have paid me they obviously want to work with me, I am going to continue to -in a light fun manner- and using all my different you know methods of contacting them. So I'll text them one day, and I'll email them another day, I will continue to reach out. And the truth is I do have those clients who can like kind of fall off the face of the earth. But that's okay, they have already made that commitment to work

with me. And as annoying as it is I do continue to follow up with them no matter if it's three times or 30 times. Which leads me to point number five, the question that I get a fair amount. And this one is specific to Simple Sales. Although I suppose it could be true for anybody who does, like client-driven purchasing after a session. So the scenario here is that someone has for Simple Sales, they've seen their slideshow, they've seen their

preview of their images. And it's time for them to purchase a collection and they kind of fall off the face of the earth. So again, we're going to take the same approach where we are going to vary up how we get in touch with them. We are and in this case, I absolutely utilize the telephone. I've already worked with them. I've already photographed them, we know each other. So I don't feel like that's overstepping my bounds at

all. So you know, if they don't respond to a couple of emails, I'll pick up the phone and be like, "Hey, I just want to make sure you love your photos". And I don't say it in an accusatory way I am coming to that from a perspective of customer service. I want to make sure that I am helping you as much as you need help. And remember, you know, in this situation, it is so easy to get in our heads and tell ourselves like the reason they're not reaching out is because they hate their photos.

Or the reason that they haven't purchased a collection is because they're, you know, they've screenshotted everything and they're not going to purchase anything at all. I want to encourage you to not make assumptions. Remember, these people want what you're offering they signed up to purchase, what you're offering, what you need to do is you just need to help

them bridge that divide. So be a professional, pick up the phone, get on your email, put it on your calendar, so you're not like letting long stretches of time go by. And if it really does get to a point where like you're not hearing from them, and it's two weeks, three weeks, four weeks on, just put it on auto like send them a weekly email that could say exactly the same thing every week, like, "hey, still haven't heard from you just checking in. I would love to know that you're doing

okay". and go from there. Chances are extremely high that at some point they are going to resurface, purchase their collection and everyone will be happy. So I said it was going to be a short episode. And it turns out it really wasn't because I can talk for a long time when I'm answering these kinds of questions. Like I said in the beginning, if you're not part of the private Facebook group, come join us if you search this can't be that hard in Facebook, you

will find it. I'd love to have you be part of the conversation there so that I know what questions you have and can talk about them here. Hope you guys have a great week. Well that's it for this week's episode of this can't be that hard. I'll be back Same time, same place next week. In the meantime, you can find more information about this episode along with all the relevant links, notes and downloads at this can't be that hard.com slash learn. If you like the podcast, be sure to hit the

subscribe button. Even better, share the love by leaving a review in iTunes. And as always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.