But, one of those surf sessions turned into one of the scariest moments of my life.  I had been tracking a monster swell for a few days and was geared up for some of the biggest surf of my life.  I woke up before dawn the day the big swell was supposed to hit and headed to a place called Hazard Canyon.  I know, the name should have clued me in, but I had surfed some amazing waves there a few weeks prior.

As I got to “Hazards” the coastal fog was rolling in and dawn was just barely breaking.  I was amped to try out my brand new board.  I walked down the canyon and out to the point to check the surf.  The fog was too thick and I couldn’t see the waves completely.  But I did notice that the waves were breaking all the way across the bay, which is normally as calm as a lake.

Trust me, this story is going somewhere.

Keep an eye on a fixed point of reference or get lost at sea

So, after pulling on my wetsuit and conjuring up some courage, I paddled into the bay.  My heart began to beat like a war drum as I realized how big the waves really were (it’s hard to tell when no one else is out and there’s nothing you can use for scale).  My goal was to paddle through the bay and out around next to the point.  I didn’t want to line up right at the point because I wanted to just survey the waves for a minute (from a distance) before committing myself.

The problem was, once I got out to the point, I could no longer see the shore.  The fog was now extra dense and I couldn’t see a thing.  Without the rocky shoreline as a point of reference, I had no idea where I was in relationship to the point.

As it turned out, I had unknowingly drifted right in front of the point when a huge set of waves came barreling down on me.  The first wave was the biggest wave I’d ever seen in my life and broke a few feet directly in front of me.  I was unable to dive deep enough to escape its violence.  I was dragged deep into the darkness of the Pacific and I was held down until my lungs burned.  When I finally surfaced, the next wave was already on top of me.  I grabbed my board to use for flotation and realized that it was broken.  Bummer.  But that was the least of my worries.  I was scared for my life.  Only during the traumatic birth of our second son have I ever prayed with more urgency.

Wave after wave pounded me and tested my will to fight.  Finally I washed up on the beach.  I laid there for quite some time catching my breath before I was able to gather my strength and my broken board and head back to the car.

The reason this surf session turned into a disaster is because I lost my point of reference.  I couldn’t see the shore and therefore was blindly paddling into the “impact zone”.

I’ve noticed that many photographers run their business without a clear point of reference.  They don’t have a fixed point to which their business is firmly tied.  They tend to wander aimlessly – wherever their latest job takes them.  Focus is sorely needed in most photography businesses.  You can’t be an expert commercial photographer, portrait photographer, food photographer, & nature photographer all at once.  Sure, you might be able to do all of those better than anyone else (unlikely).  But you can’t be everything to everyone.

Nail down what you do.  Claim it.  Slam a stake in it.  Own it.

Then, use it as your point of reference.  Never lose site of it.  As soon as you lose site of your point of reference, your guidepost, you’re putting yourself in the impact zone. Brace yourself.

But, if you stay true to your claim, your success will grow.  It probably won’t be overnight.  But, relentlessly pursuing your dream, while keeping your eye on your point of reference, will keep you safe and make you successful.

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1. My First Post – This isn’t my first blog post ever, but it’s my first post on this blog.  You Can’t Make Money As An Artist. Check it out.
2. The Post I Enjoyed Writing The Most – I enjoyed this one the most because I didn’t have to write much – it was a video.  And, I filmed it on the beach in Cancun!  Not bad.
3. A Post Which Had  Great Discussion – This post about creating effective photography websites spurred some good comments.
4. A Post On Another Site I Wish I’d Written – I’m a fan of Rosh Sillars.  He writes good stuff.  This one about your target market is great.  I even commented.
5. My Most Helpful Post – I think this post about killing the “weeds” in your photography business is one of the most helpful.  Many business owners have trouble with doing too much and not focusing on what’s important.  This post addresses the issue.
6. A Post With A Title I’m Proud Of – “How Much Do You Charge For A Wedding Shoot”.  I’m proud of this title because of the SEO value, not because of the creativity.  It’s not creative at all.  But I get a lot of search engine traffic from it.
7. A Post I Wish More People Had Read – Most photographers are really bad at systematic lead capture.  This post on squeeze pages is helps you know why & how to use them.  Read it.  Please.

That’s it.  If you took the 7 Link Challenge, post the link to your 7 Link post in the comments below.

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Yet, this goes against human nature.  We crave personal relationships.  We crave closeness.  We crave trust.  We crave intimacy.

Create: Relationships (image credit: toddhigginsdesigns on Flickr)

Success in your business will depend greatly on your ability to create personal relationships with your customers, your prospects, even your online friends & followers.

Here are some tips on creating relationships online:

1. Open Up & Let Go – Many of us like to be very private.  The Internet affords us the ability to do a lot from the privacy of our own homes.  Many of use don’t like to share deeply personal things with the word.  But, if you want people to connect with you, they need to get to know you.  You don’t need to share your deep dark secrets, but you do need to open yourself up and be a little vulnerable.  Before a person can make a judgment on whether or not they like you, they need to have some information to base that judgment on.  Use your blog and your social media accounts to help people get to know you.
2. Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously – Yes, you’re in business.  But, people want to do business with people, not businesses.  Your business should be an extension of who you are as a person.  Lighten up a little, let your hair down, and let people get to know the real you.
3. Interact – Your online relationships, just like offline relationships, cannot be one-sided.  And, they take time.  Dedicate some time each day to respond and comment on your friends’ & followers’ posts.  Let them know you care.  Show them that you’re interested in them as people, not just as clients.
4. Use Email Wisely – Although social media is growing like wildfire, and that’s where a lot of online interaction now takes place, email is still people’s inner sanctum.  If someone is willing to give you their email address, they trust you.  Or at least, they’re wanting to trust you.  Use email wisely as a tool to inform, connect, and respond.  If you abuse email, you’ll lose that trust.
5. Be Consistent – I’ve made the mistake in the past of going dormant with my online activities for a while.  When you do that, relationships dwindle quickly.  Stay consistent in your efforts and in your communication with those you have relationships with.  Don’t give up hope when you feel like you’ve blogged your last blog, you’ve posted your last update, you’re tired and worn, and no one online seems to care.  Keep it up and eventually it will pay off.

What are you doing to build & maintain relationships with your clients?  Share in the comments below.

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So, as a marketer, ask yourself how you can create defensibility.  What can you do better than anyone else?  What’s your specialty?  Once you define your defensible position, make it a core part of your marketing message.  It should be part of your Unique Selling Proposition.

Recently I caught a Regal Horned Lizard.  Horned lizards amazingly have 3 defensibility tactics.

Spike - Our defensible Regal Horned Lizard

1. Dangerous Spikes – The spikes on the lizard’s head and on his body can be dangerous to animals trying to eat it.  The horned lizard will actually jerk his head in a backwards motion to inflict injury upon an attacker
2. Playing Dead – The horned lizard is similar to a puffer fish.  It will occasionally puff itself up and stick all of it’s spines out – then he’ll stay in that position.  The other night, “Spike”, as my kids named him, stayed in that frozen position all during dinner.
3. Squirting Blood – When horned lizards get very defensive, they’ll squirt blood from their eyes.  They can squirt blood up to 5 feet away.  The purpose is to deter mammalian attackers – the blood tastes extremely foul.

No wonder these prehistoric looking animals have roamed the earth for centuries!

What can you do to create defensibility in your business?  What will you do to ensure that your photography business is around for the long haul?

P.S.  We let Spike go today.  The boys were sad, but we had to do it because Spike wasn’t eating.

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Check out the picture below:

This is what I found when I came home from work a couple of weeks before Father’s Day.  My wife and kids had left that same day to go spend some time away from the Arizona heat and visit our families in California.  They were going to be gone for Father’s Day.  So, they left me a surprise.

It’s a simple thing, but they created anticipation without even knowing it.  I knew there was something in there that I’d probably like, but I had to wait.  We live in a world of impatience.  If you make people wait just a little bit for something they want, their anticipation and desire tends to increase.  It’s not about overcoming the impatience.  It’s about baiting people along, giving them little bits of tantalizing stuff piece by piece until you hit them with the big whammy.

Let me continue the story.  When Father’s Day finally came, I was excited to open the envelope and find out what was inside.  What I found inside was not my gift.  Instead it was a clue to where the gift was.  I followed the clue and found another clue and another and another until finally I found the present they had wrapped and hidden in a closet.

To them it was fun.  To me it was a lesson in creating anticipation.  Each time I found a clue, my anticipation for the present grew.

You too can create anticipation in your business and get your clients salivating for what you offer.

Try it and let me know how it goes.

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So, here’s a quick tip on how to use Flickr to post slideshows on your blog (just like I did here).

Slideshows are a great way to show off your work because they don’t make people scroll down long pages of images. Also, they can be viewed in fullscreen mode (you definitely want your potential clients looking at your images at a higher resolution than your typical 400 x 300 blog image).

Try it out by clicking the button in the slideshow above.

Here’s how you create your own:

So, the step #1 is to create a Flickr account if you don’t already have one. Yes, Flickr can be a great tool for professional photographers.

Step #2 is to edit your settings to ensure you retain all rights on your images and people can’t use them without your permission. Just click on your username once you’re logged in. Then go to Privacy and Permissions.

Step #3 Click on Organize & Create in the main menu, then click on Sets. Sets are basically albums, groups of pictures that go together. Create a set for your first group of images.

Step #4 Upload your images into the set you created. You can upload them on the Flickr site – they have a great web-based upload tool. Or, you can use any of the many desktop applications that upload to Flickr.

Step #5 Enter a title, description, and tags for each picture. You can do this as a batch if you’d like. This is important for Flickr searches. You WANT people to find your images.

Step #6 Click on your photostream. Then click on the set you created (it should be listed on the right hand side). Once your set is loaded, click on the slideshow link in the upper right hand side of the screen. That will take you to the slideshow.

Step #7 Click on the Share link and it will give you a direct link to your slideshow as well as code you can embed into your site. Copy the code.

Step #8 Paste the code right into a blog post or page on your site.

That’s it.  Don’t shy away from Flickr.  It can be a great way to get found as a photographer.

P.S. After looking through my pictures again I realized I’ve got some work to do to get my horizon lines straight.

P.P.S. I’m not the only one who thinks Flickr is great for pro photograhers: Check out what LightStalking has to say.

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Photo credit: pylypenko on Flickr

Clients: To make money, you need clients who are willing to pay you for your work.

Leads: To get clients, you need leads – people who are interested in possibly paying you for your work.

Traffic: To get leads, you need targeted traffic – people that are interested in what you do.

Don’t be fooled by the simplicity.  It really is that simple.  Your social media efforts drive traffic, you turn that traffic into leads, you follow up with the leads and close sales.

At least, that’s how most people attempt to do it.  But, there are two more crucial pieces to the puzzle that many people leave out:

Your blog: Your social media efforts should drive people to your blog.  A blog is a social media tool of sorts.  Its much easier to drive social media traffic from one social media source to another.  People respond to “go check out my blog” much better than “go check out my site”.  Blog feels much less salesy.

Lead Capture: This is the key (the secret key, if there ever was one).  Your blog must capture the traffic you send as leads.  It must be a traffic conversion machine that hands you tons of leads.  How’s this done?  Offer some compelling info, free report, ebook, etc. in the sidebar of your blog.  It should be present on every page.  That will help.  But the most effective way to do it, is to actually put the web form inside your blog post.  You’re much more likely to capture leads in your post than in your sidebar.

Now, lets put the pieces together.

Here’s how it works.

First you write a blog post.  The post must have content that is relevant to your target market.  If its not relevant to people who are likely to buy your products/services, you’ll drive untargeted traffic.  That won’t do you any good except waste your time.  So, write some good, juicy content that your customers would love.  At the bottom of the post, insert a webform (preferably created by your email marketing program).  Tell your readers that if they’d like to get more great content, like the post they just read, all they have to do is fill out the form below to join your list (then, of course, you just need to use your email marketing program to follow up and send them good stuff).

Once you have your post with lead capture form ready to go, you take it to social media outlets where your target market hangs out.  Take it to twitter or Facebook and post your link with a short description of what you wrote about.  Here you’re providing value to the community.  You’re telling them about some content that you created just for them, and they can get it for free.  Give them the link and send them to your post.

Once they get to your blog post and fill out the form, you’ll have leads to follow up with.  At that point, its up to how well you can convert leads to sales.

The process really is simple and it really does work.  I’ve seen it work in my business and in other countless times (I’m even doing it right now).

I just shared with you the basics of the formula.  The actual formula is a little more complex and involves calculating the actual expenses, revenues, and profits you will have from your social media efforts.  I go into great detail about this formula and how to leverage it in my Over[Exposure] course.  If you’d like to get on my list to find out more about Over[Exposure], just fill out the form below.  (see, its easy)  I’ll send you some info about Over[Exposure] and of course I’ll send you occasional free tips on how to grow your photography business (about one every 8-10 days).  I won’t sell your email address and you can opt-out at any time.

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I spent 4 days listening to these guys speak and I learned a ton, things that I’ll be able to use for the rest of my life.  The point of this post is to urge you to ask yourself if you’re surrounding yourself with the right people.  If you’re not constantly talking to and working with people that are smarter than you and better than you in different areas of your business (marketing, finance, lighting, post-processing, etc), then how are you ever going to get better.

Make a list today of the people you want to work with.  Post that list at your desk.  Work every day to make the connections you need to make to get to those people and form relationships with them.  It’ll pay off in leaps and bounds.

Oh, and here’s a picture of my two older boys in Key West:

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What’s funny is that both missed the most common analogy between marketing/sales and dating.  They’re both right, by the way, but both missed the main point.

So, what’s the purpose of marketing?

The purpose of every marketing piece should be to set up the sale.  Not everyone is ready to buy right now, so marketing takes on different forms.

• Educational Marketing – some prospects don’t even know they need your product/service.  So, in this case your marketing has to educate them on what they’re missing, what their problem is, etc.
• Nurture Marketing – a huge part of marketing is all about creating and developing a relationship.  Just as in any relationship, it needs to be nurtured.  A good follow-up campaign that continues to add value for the prospect will do wonders in any business.
• Desire Marketing – to get people to actually act and buy, marketing MUST create and capitalize on desire.  If not, your marketing is in vain.

Marketing must happen in that order.  Your prospects will be found along a continuum between the need for education and a state of desire.  Its a relationship continuum.  That’s why marketing and sales are often compared to dating.  If you try and take someone who is in need of education and SELL them on the spot, they’ll be turned off (this is the equivalent of asking for marriage on the first date).  But, once they’ve moved along the continuum, they’ve been nurtured and the desire is there, the sale is naturally the next step (the same way that marriage is the natural next step after an appropriate dating period – its expected).

Look at your marketing closely.  Does it take people along the continuum of education -> nurturing -> creating desire?  If so, your return on your marketing investment will be much better.  AND, don’t forget to ask for the business once someone has reached the end of that continuum.  Capitalize on the desire that you’ve created.

Photo Credit: Daniel E Bruce

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1. You must be a marketer. If you haven’t defined your target market & created a marketing message specific for them, you’re missing out.  Most photographers are horrible marketers.  Hone these skills and you’ll be much better off.
2. You need passion. Scott mentioned this one regarding passion about getting THE shot.  I totally agree.  And, I’d add that you need similar passion for GROWING your business.
3. Tenacity. Some people will beat you down.  Others will ask what your REAL job is.  If you don’t have the tenacity to charge forward no matter what, eventually, they will be right.
4. You need be organized. Creative people are often disorganized.  Use a system that doesn’t rely on you keeping everything organized.  There are plenty of online customer database systems that will keep you more organized.
5. You must follow up. If you don’t follow up consistently with every lead and every past customer, you’re throwing money down the drain.  Its one of the hardest things to do, but pays the biggest dividends.  Again, use a system to help you with this.
6. You must not hesitate to sell. You’ve got to feel comfortable asking for the business.  If you don’t, chances are you won’t get it.
7. You need to be willing to get help. You’re the master of your work.  That’s fine.  But get help running the business.  Hire someone to help you with the books, with organization, with follow up.  The longer you leave all that up to you, the more it takes away from you shooting great stuff & making money.
8. You need disciplined focus. Many photographers go out and try to do everything – wedding photography, portrait photography, commercial photography, photojournalism, etc.  You may be the best in the world for all of those, but if you’re everything to everybody, then you’re nothing to nobody.  You need to be disciplined about your target market & your niche.  Focus on a specific market and dominate it.
9. You need humility. In other words, you need to realize that you can’t do it all on your own.  Get some good partners that can help promote your business and you can help promote theirs.  Getting into a win-win situation like that can do wonders.
10. You must be a relationship master. Whether you like it or not, people want to do business with those they like.  If they don’t like you, they’re not going to buy from you.  It all comes down to relationship.  Luckily, the web has enabled many reserved people to have great relationships online that they wouldn’t feel comfortable with in person.  If you’re already great at relationship building, leverage that.  If not, work on it.  Hard.

I think that’s a solid list.  I’d love to hear your ideas about what helps a photographer make money.

Photo credit: James Jordan

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