Over the next 3 weeks I want to use my years of experience in the Professional Photography business to help you become even more successful than you already are. Each week I will give you 3 or 4 main ideas that you should be asking before you choose a website/shopping cart provider.
This week I want to focus on the first 3.
- Who controls the money? With credit card merchant accounts being much cheaper than before there is no reason not to take your own money! Either way you are going to pay for it. If you have someone else collect the money it will not be cheaper. Plus cash flow is one of the biggest reasons companies fail, you need to get the money now!
- Think twice before signing up with a percentage plan!
They may sound good at first, because you think you won’t have to pay any money during your slow times. The problem with this is that you could pay more money during your busiest month then the other service would cost for the whole year on a non-commission rate. Do the math. If you are paying, let’s say 15% commission, and you have a good month of sales at $2,000.00, you would have a commission to the host of $300 dollars just that month. Or lower the percent to 7%, it would still cost you $140 dollars for that 1 month.
- Do not be the mislead by companies telling you can have unlimited image hosting! We recommend to not post events for more than 2 to 6 weeks, and the six week range is only for weddings. Some professional photographers think that if they leave them up longer they will sell more! This could not be any further from the truth. During our extensive testing we actually found we received 20% more orders from events posted only 30 days verses 60 days. Let’s do a little math again, say you average only $500.00 a month when you leave events up for 60 days. Since our testing
shows a 20% decrease that is a loss of $100 a month compared to 30 days. At $2,000 a month, posting still for the 60 days, you are losing $400.00 a month in income. We recommend most events post for two weeks or less and give a discount if an order is placed the first couple of days. When testing we raised the cost 20% and offered a 20% discount the first week as an example. We also received another 12% increase in sales. Try it yourself as a test, you may be pleasantly surprised.
I hope you have found these 3 suggestions helpful for your professional photography business. Next week we will go through 3 or 4 more ideas. Tell me what you think. Any suggestions are always appreciated and we look forward to hearing from you. And of course, for more info, go to MorePhotos.com. See you next week!
