[B]Business Day Thursday - 7 Really Easy Things To Sell To Add To Your Bottom Line

So many people enjoy photography as a hobby and say they want to be photographers and aspire into the profession. But the reality is that too few aspiring photographers really leverage the results of their skills - their photographs. These photographers' lack of client relationships regarding sales are barely ever exceeding more than a delivered CD of images and few prints for family and friends. What's happening here? Where are the finished albums? Where are the beautiful wall decor?

Folks, it about products, products, products and more products. What do the big guys do that sell to, as an example, supermarkets. They are always creating new products to take up more shelf space so you and I will purchase their numerous variety of products. I was in a supermarket recently, walked down the aisle looking for some baked beans for the July 4th picnic, and was blown away by the tremendous variety of such a rather mundane product. There was plain, smoked, barbecue, honey flavored, with bacon without bacon......on and on went the list of varieties. I settled for the "mesquite smoked, honey spiced, Southwest flavored". Do you get my drift?

We need to take that same kind of approach in our own photographic businesses. Start creating some different types of products that will give your clients a reason to take a second look even a third and fourth look and maybe, even make those additional purchases. OK, enough said on the point. Let me give you 7 really easy products/services to add to your product line up that could add $200-300 to the bottom line of every sale. Hit Read More... for my 7 easy product add-ons.

1. $50-$100 - How about offering a slide show at the wedding of the images you shot from the day. Just download the images onto your laptop, do a quick edit in Lightroom, hook up some inexpensive speakers, set it up on the bar area and let it run throughout the evening. Be sure you have your studio name listed at the beginning and at the end of the show. If you don't actually want to sell the service, then at least offer it as an incentive for your client to choose on one of your larger package coverages. Sell the slide show DVD later to family and friends for the additional $50-$100.

2. $100-$300 - Version 2 of the above - "A Through the Years" presentation at the wedding reception. Collect images of he bride and groom growing up, early dates, and combine that with some really cool images you do for them during the engagement session you have already sold them the $50-$100 or incentive for larger coverage. Make that presentation at the wedding reception. Don't forget your titling. This kind of stuff will make you "famous" in your community. It's what I used to build my business in the early years.

3. $100-$200 - Neil Enterprises sells some really reasonably priced 20 side self-stick books in various sizes. I like their 8x8 size. Fill it with some really reasonably priced images from your favorite lab like MPIX and you have a reasonably product that looks good, sells well, and has decent margin in it for you. This could maybe be an add on for those family shoots.

4. $50-$100 - Neil Enterprises again. Pick up some of the 10 page self-stick 4x6 albums. Now this is the cool part - pick yourself up an Epson PictureMate for about $100 and print 4x6's out at the wedding, put them in the book and deliver it to the client at the wedding reception. Need a name for the product - how about "Honeymoon Album."

5. $50 - One of my favorite web sites - Animoto.com now let's you download a hi-res show from their site for only $5 bucks. Burn it to a CD and offer it to your clients. Once they see it, they will want it for sure. Use this code - lmwrdzik - it's worth $5 off your All Access pass. Don't say I never gave you anything ;~)

6. $40-$50 - Sell an 8x10 photo collage. Include, say 4 images, and mark it up 2x over your regular 8x10 price. What a deal!! Your customer now gets 4 images for the price of 2. What a deal! Save the template in Photoshop or better yet in Lumapix collage software and then it's really easy to do the next one.

7. $100-$200 - Sell a mini Black and White collection of images as a wedding add-on. It's a great way for your client to feature their favorite images from their wedding day. There are several companies that offer attractive boxes to hold the collection. I use Epoch boxes and they are available locally from Alan Galleries.

Hey gang, add your own good ideas to the Comments section below. If we have at least 20 good suggestions, I'll send my 2-DVD set Digital WakeUp Call ($78.00 value) to the person submitting the idea I declare the best. So get those ideas posted so we can all benefit from everyone's creativity.