It’s Wright Brothers Day. On December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville and Wilbur Wright made that first successful flight.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“I think piracy is a bit like drinking. You want to stay out all night doing it, you pay the price the next day.”
―
One of my most pirated books is Better Available Light Digital Photography that I coauthored with Barry Staver. When Barry discovered it was available as an illegal download, we informed the publisher who acted as if they could care less.
These days it seems like people expect to get everything for free, and to hell with the people who actually create something. Some people feel seem somehow affronted at being expected to actually pay for things.
There is no more powerful word in the English language than free but while everyone knows free stuff is good, photographers have to realize there’s no free lunch. If you get something for free, somebody somewhere has to pay for it.
One question I often hear from photographers competing against studios using freebies as inducements to attract new clients is “how can I compete with this?” You have two choices and I prefer the second:
- First, you can cave in and offer similar or better freebies to potential clients. This is a bad, bad idea because it starts an arms race with your competition that can only end after one of you goes broke.
- Second, you can emphasize that your rates are lower because you don’t offer “free gifts,” an oxymoron as incongruous as “congressional ethics.”
It’s a business fact of life that clients like to feel appreciated and it doesn’t cost a lot of money to say “thanks” to them from time to time, so don’t confuse freebies with expressions of appreciation to existing, supportive clients especially during the holidays. That’s why an important part of competing is knowing the costs of doing business. One of the things that Mary and I would do a couple of times a year was to visit clients and drop of small boxes (with our studio name on them) containing See’s truffles. It was a freebie that cost ous very little and was great marketing because more often than not we booked jobs just by being there.
When I hear photographers moaning about profitability, I’m reminded of an encounter between noted photographer, Charles Lewis and someone attending one of his seminars. This is something Mr. Lewis told me directly: A gentleman tells him, “I’m loosing $50 for every wedding that I shoot.” Mr. Lewis looks him in the eye and replies, “Then you know what you need to do, don’t you?” Excitedly, the man replies, “Yes, I need to do more of them.”
Most of the time, “free” doesn’t work as part of a business plan, and using freebies to get new customers breaks the most important of Farace’s Laws: It’s hard to make money when you give stuff away. This is just some food for thought…
Barry Staver and Joe Farace are co-authors of Better Available Light Digital Photography that may be an oldie but, I think anyway, that it’s a goodie. New copies are $21.49 with used copies starting around five bucks from Amazon. No Kindle version is available, sorry.