Jump Start your Boudoir Business by Valentines Day

 

Start your Valentine Boudoir Business from your Home Studio and Start Making Money NOW

Photography Schoolhouse introduces our new Three Part Webinar Series on Starting your  Valentine Boudoir business from your home studio.

Part One

 

 

Part 2

Part 3

 

January 25th update.

I have stopped the Facebook ad for now. Here is the final report on activity.

Facebook-ad-results-last

After almost 120 clicks through to the site, I only got one lead and they never responded to my email.

That tells me the landing page for the ad is not doing it's job of turning clicks into conversions. Back to the drawing board.

Keep in mind that these results are based on Cold Leads not Warm Leads as discussed in the Webinar. My next campaign will be to warm leads only. See below.

Women's show Jan. 24, 2015.

As you know from the last webinar I booked into a local women's show. I'll give the details as far as expense and results.

Show Expenses

Cost of booking in the show     $200 (Discounted from $399 advertised)

22 - 12x18 prints from Costco $150

100 - 4x6 promo offer prints   $ 20

2 - Blurb.com sample albums  $130

100 - Free draw tickets              $5

I had planned on taking my laptop and display monitor, but after spending hours on Friday to set up a show, the laptop dies on Saturday morning as I checked one last thing. And yes, it's a brand new laptop.

I also had a 11 page price list I designed as a pdf on my phone so I could text it directly to a client.

The final piece was a Sticky Album of my samples that I could text them as well.

Here is a sample (minus phone number) of the 100 4x6 promo cards we had printed at Costco for 20 bucks.

Sizzle-show-special-2015-sample

So basically it cost me $500 to enter this show. That's not a lot considering I'm used to spending more like $2500 for a major Bridal Show. Remember, the 12x18 prints and the albums still exist and will be ongoing display material.

The display itself was pretty scaled down. Unlike larger shows the booths were not separated by pipe and drape. There was simply a 10 ft wide space with a draped 8 ft table and two chairs. The chairs were right up against the wall, so there was no room to put display easels or anything in behind. You had the table and that was it.

Womens-showWomens-showWomens-show

Attendance was estimated to be about 300 and I'm sure we came close to that. Like I said, a small show, but there are a lot of reasons why that's good. It's not always about large numbers. It's more about quality conversations. The exhibits were only open for 4 hours from 5PM to 9PM.

I was very pleased with the quality of conversations we had with attendees. They expressed a lot of enthusiasm and seemed eager to have a session.  By the end of the night we'd gone through all but a few of our hand out promo cards, and I beamed (my smartphone to their smartphone or smart watches) my price list to several people that were very serious.

I'm not a very outgoing guy at a trade show, so it was necessary to bring my secret weapon - Mary Anne - the ninja warrior sales lady.

Any success we had was a result of her sales efforts. She WORKED the show, while I simply answered questions to the leads she brought in. If you're like me and not really outgoing, I highly recommend you get a Ninja Warrior Sales Lady - they're great.

By the end of the show I was very pleased with both the quality and the number of great potential clients we had at our table.

We encouraged people to fill out a ballot for a free boudoir session.

Womens-show

Notice how we are only interested in Name Phone and eMail. Who cares about a snail mail address anymore.

But with email you have to get permission before you can send, so we had to add that checkbox at the bottom of the ticket. Almost everybody who gave an email address checked it off.

Final count of ballots were: 34 with name and phone number only / 41 with email address.

But there's always a side benefit to exhibiting at the show, and that's making connections with the other vendors. Mary Anne the Ninja sales person went to every booth in the show to see what they had and chat them up. She came back with one outstanding lead from a fitness company that taught ladies how to pole dance. I talked to her and offered to put some samples up to decorate her studio and I offered to shoot some of her models doing pole exercises for her as well. She was very excited.

This is my belief.

I've always been a believer in trade shows and have paid a mountain of money over my career on attending them. They have always- always paid off in spades.

I know today everybody is about social marketing, and I get that to. But It's a mistake to put all your eggs in one basket. A trade show is the next best thing to referrals, and by far the best way to build a business up from scratch. Unfortunately many photographers are too cheap and too lazy to get it done. It is easier after all to sit in your office chair and do Face-booking.

You meet people face to face and establish a relationship with them. Now they know you and are far more receptive to your other advertising. In other words, the 75 leads we got are now "warm leads", and that sets us up for our next wave of marketing.

We did get one firm booking at the show, and tons more that said they would be in touch.

The next wave starts here:

So the Sunday morning after the show I started a follow up campaign. Going with the premise of starting a new business from scratch as we said in the three Webinar videos, I went to Mail Chimp and opened a new free account.

I entered all the email addresses and designed an email thank you for talking to us at the show. I had this all done and sent out by 9AM Sunday morning. I dare any other exhibitor to beat me :). I reminded them the show special would expire on Tuesday so they should book now.

email-shot

Follow up e-mail from Sunday morning

 

Update Jan 29, 2015

 

So the 40 or so eMails sent on Sunday was followed up with a second email on Tuesday. Here are the results.

Sunday Jan. 25     - 41 sent  - 25 opened the email - 4 clicked through to the site - no response

Tuesday Jan. 27    - 41 sent - 16 opened the email -  0 clicked through to the site - no response

Number of people who contacted us from the show:

1 person booked at the show

1 person called on the Monday to book.

Pretty much a flat response from the email. This illustrates what I've been seeing in eMail marketing. In spite of what marketers tell you, eMail isn't drawing like it has in the past.

I suppose there is something to be said about the Branding that results from people who open the email even though they didn't respond to it, but that's impossible to measure and I generally don't pay any attention to it. Branding happens over a long period of time and repetitive exposure.

With only 2 bookings it's not likely we'd recover the cost of the show. So I came up with a phone campaign to call each person that submitted a ballot.

My ninja sales person called for three hours on Tuesday and 3 more hours on Wednesday, and from that she booked four more sessions so far, with a number of leads still on the hot list.

So as of today we have 6 bookings locked in and a few leads that are likely to gel. I think we can safely say we will recover all show costs and make money to book.

I will track these sessions and report back what the total sale amounted to for each of them. Real numbers to the dollar.

What have we learned so far?

Ya gotta make sales the way sales get got.

 

The Facebook campaign did not result in a single lead and I stopped it after about $70

The email campaign did not result in a single lead

The only thing that worked was our physical presence at the show and the phone follow up.

People like the personal touch. They're bombarded by advertising all day long and are largely immune to it. If you want to reach them and get real results you have to meet/talk to them.

 

 Feb. 8, 2015 Update

 

We had six boudoir shoots as a result of the show this weekend (Fri-Sat-Sun)

We had one cancellation, but another booked so we stayed at 6.

The special deal again was $99 for a session including professional hair and makeup.

I paid $60 for the hair and makeup, and my studio assistant got $40, so I'm -$1 for each session. The deal is to make money on the print sales for me, and I knew that going in so things are right on schedule.

Here are the demographics from the booked clients.

Session #1 - 23 year old heavy set girl. Very pretty but also very shy about her weight. To be honest, it did pose some issues, but by the end of the session it was all very good.

Session #2 - A girlfriend of the first session came the same day. About the same age and weight. They each paid for a session, but we shot them at the same time.

Being that both my studio assistant and I have weight problems ourselves helped make them feel more comfortable.

Session #3 - 30 year old mother of three. Very pretty and petite. She was very good in front of the camera, but also very nervous. Her point of embarrassment was a lack of cleavage. She joked about it several times so we knew it was bothering her. By the end of the session she was super-excited and couldn't wait to see the images. She was still super excited the next day according to a mutual friend.

Session #4 - 21 year old model. She was a model and it was a great pleasure working with her. She's a natural, so posing came easy to her. But she'd never done a boudoir session for personal use before. It was a awesome session and we went the extra mile just because she was so innovative with her posing.

Session #5 - 69 year old grandmother. Shy, very thin, also not endowed, but a very funny lady and how great is it that she even wanted to try. It was a good session, but her natural shyness and posture made for some challenging posing.

Session #6 - 55 year old lady. While carrying a few pounds, she none the less had a great figure and was not shy. She was a lot of fun and easy to pose.

 

Now I've got to do the retouching and book sales sessions. I will not put the images online, I told each of them they have to come back to see the finished images. My plan is to fully retouch about 40 images per session. This means that even if the take the deluxe package they will have to cut 10 images or so out of the album.

I'll keep you posted and let you know how each sale session went.

Feb. 10,2015 Update

I started a new Facebook Campaign on the 9th, but this time aimed at men only. The idea is to sell Boudoir Gift Certificates that men can give to their sweethearts as a gift on Valentines ay.

As this ad will only run for a few days, I increased the budget to $10/day. We are getting substantially more click thru's than we did on the woman's campaign

39 click thrus yesterday and 23 so far today (2PM)

Here is the new ad:

Sizzle-show-special-2015-sample

A Special Valentine Gift

This year, give your sweetheart a gift you'll both love forever, a Boudoir photography session compete with hair and makeup for just $99 by International photographer Kerry Allan.

 Feb. 16 Update

So the second Facebook promotion has ended. There were no sales attributed to either Facebook campaign, however the click thru rate on the 2nd promotion went through the roof. Remember the plan was to advertize to men that might buy a boudoir session as a gift for their wives. I can only surmise that the pretty girl in the ad caused a lot of click thrus, and the site was viewed thoroughly, however nothing would up as a sale.

As a reminder, here is the Ad results from the first (women only) campaign.

Last-1

And here are the stats for the second (men only) campaign.

Last-2

As you can see the men's campaign had a lot of clicks. Most days well over 100 as opposed to the women's campaign with topped out at about 14 clicks/day. You can see that a lot of people were reached, but still - no results.

It's always hard to analyze this kind of data. Why are there no results? Was the design of the offer not as good as it should be? Was the offer itself not compelling? Did the website fail to convert lookers into buyers? Or is it the market itself?

The only way to really answer these questions is to keep trying different things until you hit a formula that works. So far all that we've learned is this:

1) Armchair marketing doesn't bring in sales

2) Actual face to face selling gets immediate results

The simple 4 hours women's show we did brought in way more business for not much more money. My guess is that even if I doubled the Facebook ad budget that results would be no better.

So it begs the question, "Can you make a Facebook Ad work?"

I believe it can, and in the next part we'll try a different strategy for Facebook. Instead of spending money advertising to cold leads, we'll create a group of warm leads and advertise to them. More on that later on.

So far only one person has come in for their viewing. It was the 21 year old model from above. I had produced an Animoto slide show of her session and showed her that right off the bat. She was blown away. She loved them. We then went through the pictures one at a time (about 35) and she started to make her selections.

She wanted them all,  but she's on a tight budget. In fact I had no idea how she was going to pay for them at all and was pretty much ready to give up on the sale. In the end, she did buy the Smartphone album for $290. In fact it was all she really wanted. She expressed little to no interest in prints or albums at all. This is what we face as photographers moving forward. We have to think in digital only and make a business model that works in that reality. It's not hard to imagine how our business will change as this young mobile generation moves into the main stream.

 

Feb 21, 2015 Update

Two more clients have come in for a proofing session.

The first is client #6 from above.

She really liked a lot of the pictures, but started making excuses not to buy a lot. She made a point of saying she only bought 4 - 5x7 from her session done 20 years ago. It was obvious she wasn't out to spend big time. However, after some back and forth she finally chose a $329 package of 8 - 5x7 prints and 2 social media files.

 

The next client is #3 from above.

She was super excited right from the start, but was almost explosively excited when I showed the proofs. Some just blew her away.

She also started to talk about not spending money without her husband knowing because they always made financial decisions together. Trouble was this was a Valentine gift that he didn't know was coming. So that was her big issue. She love a lot of the pictures. Her first pass through the images got it down to 31. And a second critical pass got it down to 21.

In the end, she took a package that included all 21 - 5x7, and she declined the social media files as she doesn't have any use for them. I included the Animoto slide show of the proof set, and that cinched the deal. Her bill was $829.

 

March 3, 2015 Update

A 7th client booked and came in for a shoot a few days ago. She was mid thirties, mother of two. She was in very good shape, but had quite a number of stretch marks from childbirth. It took a bit of work but we avoided or retouched all of the photos and it worked out well.

She and her husband came in for the proofing session and initially bought $700 worth of product, but then emailed later that same night to buy another $300 for a total of $1000 ($998)

This makes total sales from this plan of $2126 with two more customers still to come in for proofing. This is the value of the orders only, and does not include the initial $99 promo fee they paid for the session.

I also booked into a 2nd women's show in town to take place in April. This is a much bigger show, with about 3 times the attendance expected Booth price with furniture rental is $400.

My plan is pretty much the same as the first show we did. So other than a few more samples there's not much to get ready.

March 4, 2015 Update

One of the remaining customers (#5 from above) came in to place their order. This was the 69 yr old lady. It was a bit more effort to work her images, but she loved them. I was honestly relieved as I'd never shot a boudoir of somebody of that age. But it all worked out. Her order came to $829.

Our total reorders so far stand at: $2955.00

I'll continue to let you know how the sales are going over the next few days.

March 9, 2015 Update

Marketing for more business continues daily. First I added more content to my boudoir Facebook page, then invested in a Facebook ad to buy likes, but aimed a a very selective area. This resulted in about 95 likes to my page.

Next, I started with a new post on my Boudoir Facebook page. Here is the post. Remember this is a post not an ad.

March-Naughty sale-4x6

 

While the post will have some organic reach on it's own, I paid $20 for a four day "Boost Post" campaign. This would go out to all the people who liked the page, and all of their friends. This made the reach much higher. Today, it's only half way done and I've reached about 2500 people and had two inquiries and one paid booking. It will run for two more days.

I also followed up on a lead we got from the ladies show we did and came up with a co-promotion for her Pole-Dance fitness studio. We set a date in April where we'll offer pole dance portraits in her studio complete with pro hair and makeup for just $99. The makeup and hair will cost me $60 of that and I told the owner just to keep the balance for herself. Obviously I need to show and sell at the session in order to make any money for myself, but any orders are just gravy. The real reason to do this is to promo the Boudoir photography. I also offered to make some display prints for her studio from the shoot.

I found a lady on Facebook who does makeup parties. I msg'd her and asked if she would like me to put up a door prize of a free boudoir session. She loved the idea. I've printed up a bunch of samples for her to show (8x10), some hand out promo cards (4x6) and a gift certificate for the prize. I'm meeting her tonight to hand over the material.

I've also decided I want to approach other fitness studios in my area to do promotions with. Trouble is I don't really have "fitness" samples. So I posted an ad in a local Facebook modeling page for both male and female models to do a TFP session. Within minuets I had two males and a female booked for this coming Saturday.

I'll go out of my way to do a bang up job and get a good start on a fitness portfolio.

I'm working hard to get new promo designed, and signage made for our display at the other women's show I booked into. The first show was pretty good, so I also don't want to break something that isn't broken.

I'm also currently researching an idea to hold our own parties based on a makeup or lingerie party theme. I know some people in this area do lingerie home parties, I just need to find them :).

So like the song says - "Everyday I'm Hustling, Hustling, Hustling"

 March 12, 2015 Update

The Facebook "bump your Post" ad ran out. remember, it has a $20 budget.

To date, just over 5100 people viewed the post, 110 clicked through to the website, 5 people liked the page, and 49 people liked the Post.

One one person book and paid a sitting so far, but two more are supposed to be calling in. A few people inquired, but didn't proceed because they didn't want to pay for pictures above the sitting fee. They thought it was all inclusive.

I've decided to run another $20 worth to bump the same post and measure if the results taper off, or build.

The makeup party lady just held her first event with about 15 ladies present. She told me there was good interest, and gave one free session away. The winner has not contacted me yet.

March 31 Update

So far Facebook advertising has brought us two paying customers. Their recorders totaled $1100 for a grand total so far of $4100 including the previous 6.

One of the contact we made at the January show was the Pole Dance Fitness Studio. We have that whole day event coming up April. 12 and then the next Womens show on April 18. I'll update you as we go.

April 1, 2015 Update

Launched a new Facebook campaign for April. Basically the same as the March promotion with a new graphic and a slightly better package. I added an 8x10 and 2 5x7's from a single pose to the package. Here is the new graphic:

April-naughty-sale

April 14, 2015

We finished an all day shoot at the pole dance fitness studio and what a great time, but totally exhausting.

In all we did nine shoots. Each paid a $100 sitting fee, half of which went to the makeup artist and the other half to the fitness studio for hosting. So basically, I'm there for free and paying my assistant out of my own pocket. So now it's all about the up-sell if I hope to get any reward at all.

The first makeup session started at 8AM, so we were set up and ready to shoot by nine. Each shoot was at least 30-40 min, at which time we downloaded the cards to the laptop and my assistant sat with the client and took their order simply by showing the raw files. I got ready for the next shoot.

We went all day without a break, not even a bathroom break. By 7PM we finished with the last customer, and packed to go home.

Everybody ordered something. The smallest orders were for a few 5x7's, and the largest for a 7x7 album and smart phone album. The range was from $150-$500 with an average order of about $260. The day's total was about $2500 plus nine new happy clients to add to our list bringing our total new clients to 17.

I had created a special price list just for this event. I made some strategic errors in that planning, but I'll be better prepared for next time. Here is the price list:

Event Price List-2015-sm

 

So here are the mistakes. The idea of a package of prints was wrong. It may work for graduations, but not for this. Nobody bought a picture package. In fact, the only thing that saved our day was the Digital Smart phone album. People loved that idea and I had a sample on my phone I could show them.

We also sold our popular 7x7 - 20 image softcover album for $399 and if they ordered a smart phone album as well the paid $499.

A few people just ordered a few prints, but again, zero interest in the packages.

But there's an important lesson here in semantics. So let me change an old sales story I've told many times to:

Q: A Customer walks into a photo studio and demands the digital images on CD. What is it the customer really wants?

A: Images for their social media. Even when they don't come on a CD. By adding the word "Digital" into the product name, the customer is totally satisfied. So hence, our price list says "Digital Smart Phone App".

This was a "BIG" day with some reasonable money. But two side benefits can't be forgotten:

1) We forged a relationship with another vendor that we can continue to work with

2) We have nine new clients that have a high probability to continue doing business with us.

We have, and will continue to give free material to our host for her website and social media. I do this happily, and would do it again a hundred times over. In fact I'm going to edit an Animoto show just for her site, branded with her studio name. After all, I want to be invited back.

April 20, 2015 Update

Yesterday we had another all day woman's show. Much larger than the show we did in January. However, the results were not what we expected.

The nature of this show was very different. I could see just by the other exhibitors that the visitors would not likely be as interested as the other show. The reason is simply this was more of a "mother bring your daughters" show. The January show was adults only.

It was also 9AM to 11PM. Very long day. We noticed right from the beginning that we would have a tough time of it. Women did have their daughters with them. The daughters were very young. Ages 4-15. So boudoir photography was not what they were expecting to see. The booth next to us was a "Tween Spa". That's a services aimed at your girls age 6-15. They had a huge show and did great business. But moms would leave that booth and give us a wide birth.

In the entire show we generated fewer leads than the January show, and the leads were much colder. In fact we booked nothing from the show at all. Nor did we get a single call in the days following the show as we did before.

The cost of this show ran about $1000. It looks like a total lose at this point. So I had to make a decision on how to run the show follow up to at least recover our costs. I emailed everybody who left an email on our draw tickets the next day, and again got no response at all.

I felt that calling about boudoir was going to be a no-go, so we started a phone campaign based on giving everybody a free in studio photo session with free 8x10 enlargement. Not for boudoir, but for families, couples, or singles. The hope is that we'll sell enough upgrades from the free sessions to save the day.

To date, We have had 22 paying customers.

8 From the first womens show

9 from the pole dance studio promo

3 from a Groupon offer we started

2 from referrals

April 21, 2015 Update

Launched our first Facebook contest today. Just a post on our page, but I'll pay to boost the post in a couple of days.

The idea is to get women 19+ to enter selfies and have people "Like" them. In fact the more of their friends and relatives visit our page to vote, the better it is for us.

On May first we'll see who has the most likes and award them with a free session.

Here is the copy for the contest:

 

May 6, 2015 Update

Wow- What a result 🙂

Take a look at the stats from the contest:

facebook-contest

 

So I spent $20 with Facebook, and gave away a session that will cost me $100, But I got remarkable results from it. Way more than I expected. Just look at the engagement my page got from this simple promo:

facebook-contest-1

 

That bump in the middle? Yep - that's the contest. Far more effective than paid advertising on Facebook.

Now lets check Google Analytics for the same time period:

Facebook contest-2

It's clear to see a bump on web activity for the same time frame as the contest. From May 1 onward, is the activity from another promo I started for Mother's Day. More on that in a moment.

The trick now, is to boost Facebook engagement with all of those girls who entered the contest and didn't win. I will be giving them all a free headshot session with digital file. It's important I do this inside of the Facebook interface so as the interact with me it builds my engagement stats.

But the hits on the site can't be ignored. 261 people came to the site of which 82% of them were all new visitors. I'm happy with that.

I'll do more contests, but I think one at the end of each month is frequent enough.

On May 1, we also started a one week Facebook "boosted post" campaign for $20 in time for mothers' day (May 10,2015).

Here was the ad.

mothers-day-2

Add a little Sizzle with our Sizzleicious Boudoir Session complete with:
3 outfit changes
2 set changes
Professional Hair and Makeup
Up to 2 hours of studio time
12 Image Pocket Size Accordion Brag Book
For just $189 (reg. $349)
Visit sizzle.photography for details

 

So we changed up the offer, and added a pocket size accordion album. But the price had to go up accordingly. Lots of interest, and a few phone calls, but no actual bookings yet.

My plan with Facebook boosted posts is to go 4 days on and 4 days off all month. Each round will cost me $20. That's well within budget.

Follow up to April Show Promo

The phone follow up campaign we started after the April 18, trade show has worked well. We have about 20 people booked for family sessions, and we also are getting boudoir bookings as well. We haven't shot them all at this point, but it's looking good!

July Follow up 

We have continued shooting boudoir sessions, but now they're coming mostly from Facebook promotions. There are no more women's shows until the fall, so Word of mouth and Facebook have been it so far.

We have also shot a number of free family shot promos from the April show as well, and that's brought in some income.

My Facebook strategy is to grow the number of likes to our page by doing a monthly "Selfie" contest. I started this in April, and it's grown every single month so far and built our page likes to almost 500. Then, I hold a monthly boudoir promo that I pay to promote using the "Boost Post" feature. This goes to all people that have liked the page and their friends. This has been the most successful part of our current sales strategy.

I've also started an affiliation marketing campaign. We've approached two privately owned lingerie shops in town and arranged deals with them. We created special 12x18 posters for their dressing rooms, and a beautiful session certificate they can sell for $149.00. For every one they sell, they keep $49 for themselves. So we have a Point of Sale display with a poster, cards, and a sample boudoir album for their counter. The paid certificates they keep under the counter. This program has just begun this week, so I have no reports for you yet.

It's been about six months since we started this business. Remember, we started in a new community from scratch. No pre-existing business at all, and honestly, while sales are still thin, I could live off what's happening so far if I needed to.

All the fears I had in starting this have proved to be false. Am I too old, will, girls come to a male boudoir photographer, is the market saturated, is my photo style up to date. You know what, That was all bullshit. Everything is just fine and I'm doing some of the best boudoir photography I've ever done. Don't let your fears hold you back.

I've always been fond of this saying from Pope John XXIII. " Consult not your fears but your hopes and dreams." I'm not Catholic, but it's good advice anyway 🙂

Keep going.

I have many more plans for this follow up campaign and I'll continue to update this page every few weeks so you can live and learn by my mistakes (or successes).

Oct. Follow Up

I'm happy to say that things have continued well. July was a strong boudoir month, but I have to admit it slowed down in August and Sept.

I started a fall boudoir promotion I called "Dark Angel" and promoted it as a Halloween theme. Here's a sample shot from our test session.

dark-angel-boudoir-session

I posted this to our Facebook page, and interest has been - luke warm. To be honest, I expected more. So the next two weeks I'll switch to a more regular promo.

I did buy the black angel wings off eBay, and we had some other small accessories along the Halloween theme.

This was designed as an add-on set to our base set. The idea was that nobody would want an entire session based on just this, so they would get everything we normally do with the "Dark Angel" set added on.

I expect boudoir to be slower for the fall, and ramp up again after the new year. So most of my marketing efforts now are on Families. I'm doing this with Facebook and with Linked-In using a special program I designed called the "Pumper-Program.

The Pumper Program is an intensive way to build business when you have none. It's a lot of work, but it produces results without having to spend a pile of money. Well, in fact, no money at all. Just time.

Nov-Dec. Follow Up

Well I thought the fall would be slow, but I conceived a end of year promotion to finish the year off strongly. It was the "Santa Baby" promotion and it was the strongest promotion of the year.

santa-baby-boudoir-photography-sale

This certainly captured the imagination of our clients and bookings were very nice.

The deal was a session with hair and makeup for $99, and we planned to deliver by Christmas as long as they booked fast.

They also had to pay the sitting in advance and only on the website. Most just used the PayPal button we provided, but some send e-transfers instead. It was fine. Nobody that inquired declined the deal because they had to pay in advance. And it reduced our cancellations and no shows to nothing!

We shot 4 sessions in time for the holidays, and two more that booked for January as they just didn't have time to come in. So they made it a Valentine Boudoir instead.

Combined with the family portraits we shot late fall, this  helped us to a strong financial finish to the year.

We also launched out Valentine 2016 campaign the last week of December and it too is showing some strong interest and a couple of bookings.

It's been a strong year for this brand new startup business. Would it be enough to support you as a full time income? No. But yes, there was profit, and yes, it laid the foundation for a strong 2nd year.

I've always believed in testing marketing theory's rather than just telling other people to do them. This was a brand new startup and you've followed us the entire year with cold hard facts, no guesses. Our successes - our failures - all provide us with valuable experiences for the future.

Thanks for joining us on this journey 🙂

Kerry Allan

Photography Schoolhouse

P.S. - I'll be doing a upcoming presentation called "Get your first 100 Customers for free using our Sales Pumper Program". Watch for that coming up soon.

Thanks again and keep shootin'

Kerry