Listen to Your Excuses

What excuse do you use the most to not do something that you know will move your business forward?  Time?  Money?  Energy?

Often times we let our excuses stop us from taking action on something.  However, if we take a moment to examine why we don't have what we feel we need to take action, we can evaluate what changes we may need to make in order to reclaim control over the things which feel like they are currently holding us back.

TIME:

Why don't we have enough time?
What are we prioritizing instead?
How are we setting up our schedule in a way that continually limits our time and makes it impossible to have time for improvements or exploring something more beneficial?
How can we improve our time management in order to gain more control over our time?

MONEY:
Why do we feel like there isn't enough money?
Where has our money been going instead?
How are we setting up our spending habits that restrict our ability to invest in business building opportunities or hiring help that would create more revenue?
How can we improve our financial management in order to gain more control?

ENERGY:
Why do we feel like we don't have enough energy?
Where are we directing most of our energy?
How are we setting ourselves up to feel drained of our energy so that there's no additional energy left to add anything else to our plate?
How can we improve our personal energy levels so that we can accomplish more?

Examine your excuses to identify where you need to make changes in the way you manage your life or your business.  The solution is often just within reach when we realize that we have the power to make the necessary changes by simply thinking ahead and identifying what habits need to be changed.

Anne Ruthmann helps creatives find smarter solutions to common business problems as a Creative Business Strategist and author of the Pricing Workbook for Creatives.  Her wisdom is steeped in the experience of managing her own creative businesses since 2004.  Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Asking the Right Offer Questions

Online groups are a great place to test an offer or get feedback on how to deliver an offer.  However, I often see people asking questions that won't be very helpful for getting good feedback, so I wanted to address one of the most common questions that gets asked, and what a better question to ask would be instead...

THE UNHELPFUL QUESTION: "How much should I charge?"

This is question will quickly deliver a variety of responses that may not be helpful.  It's often followed by comments like:

• Do you know what your expenses are?
• Have you done your numbers?
• What area are you in?
• My so-and-so charged this.
• I would pay this. 
• I've never bought that before, but I could afford this.

None of these are going to be as helpful to learning more about how to deliver an offer or identify an ideal client.  What they accomplish instead is just delivering a wide range of opinions that may not apply to you or what you're offering.

THE HELPFUL QUESTION: "I'm planning to offer a (product/service) photography package, for (estimated price) $950, in (specific location) Sedona, AZ and I'm curious what else you would need to know to help you make a decision about wanting this offer?"

This question delivers an example of an offer you'd like to test, and asks questions that help reveal the hidden fears, concerns, and questions that people need to have answered in order to move forward.  With this question, you can better understand the need-to-know factors that go into whether or not clients feel ready to take action on an offer.  The types of questions that follow are much more helpful for refining your offer or understanding client needs:

• How much time will it take?
• Can I see examples of previous work?
• How many images will I receive?
• Can you do it in a different location?
• What do I need to prepare in order to begin?
• Do you offer payment plans?

These questions reveal actionable and answerable items that can be delivered with your offer in order to bring client clarity to a product or service.  Try using this question the next time you want to test an offer in a local group or marketplace in order to get more helpful information that will ultimately make your offer easier to act on!

Anne Ruthmann helps creatives find smarter solutions to common business problems as a Creative Business Strategist and author of the Pricing Workbook for Creatives.  Her wisdom is steeped in the experience of managing her own creative businesses since 2004.  Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Managing Expectations & Deadlines for Creative Work

Establishing deadlines and expectations for a creative service or product keep both the client and the creative happy in their working arrangements.  Without clear deadlines or expectations, the creative can infinitely revise their own work, or the client can continually expect service without an end point.  Many contracts outline the basics of payment expectations and deliverables, but a great creative working relationship will make sure to outline the following considerations before working together...

When the work will begin:

Let's say you have 10 projects on your plate and you can't even think about the client's project until the end of the month.  Discuss this in advance with the client, and what they can do to prepare themselves before the working arrangement begins so they aren't expecting you to be on call with their project right out of the gate.

When online or in-person meetings will happen for progress updates:

If your project has multiple steps that require client feedback or updates, establish a calendar of when those updates and check-ins will happen up front.  Get the dates into your calendar and into the client's calendar.  This way, even if your schedule or the client's schedule changes over time, you can renegotiate the check-in dates and expectations for updates and feedback.  Just having regular check-ins on creative work can help put a client more at ease than having nothing.

When middle parts of the project are due:

Consider the wedding photography internal deadline like the client family who needs engagement photos to send newspapers, or a framed photo order they want to place before the wedding.  Consider the website design client who may have a deadline for a landing page before the full site is ready, or a deadline for a product logo before the rest of the work is completed.  By discussing project deadlines that need to happen in the middle of the project, the creative creates more clarity around the process and internal deadlines that the client is expecting to have ready in advance.

When client contributions are due:

How many times have projects been delayed because the creative was waiting on the client to deliver something necessary for the creative to move forward?  By establishing client deadlines and expectations for contributions - AS WELL AS late fees and late consequence expectations for not delivering on deadline - the client and creative have opportunities to discuss the importance of the client contribution in advance of working together and signing a contract.  This also gives the client an opportunity to be better prepared to contribute in advance.

What are the communication expectations (video, phone, or email?)
In the age of a million ways to communicate, we now have to address HOW we should expect people to communicate with us.  If your client is a phone person and you hate talking on the phone as a creative, is the Video Call the next best solution for both of you, or do you need the client to send emails only?  What should the expected turn around response time be before a client asks if you received their email?  These things actually need to be discussed in advance now so that the creative and the client can have the best understanding of what communication method they should expect to be the most effective for working together.

When updates should be expected:

By scheduling project updates into your creative work calendar, you can help regularly reassure clients, who do not understand what happens the creative process behind the scenes, that in the silent moments between the time they hear from you and the time they don't hear from you, you're still working on their project.  This also helps set appropriate expectations that help the client know how often they should expect to hear from you, so that they don't expect project updates to be sent just because they want to check in regularly.

When creative or client won't be available (in case of vacations):

If there are periods where you simply won't be available or the client won't be available for long stretches of time due to vacations scheduled in advance, those should be outlined in advance to set the expectation of when someone should not expect to hear from you.  By putting it in the contract or in an advance schedule, the client will have a reference document to turn to rather than asking the creative random questions about why they aren't getting in touch.

When the project or contract will be finished:

Establishing the deadline for when all work will be completed and provided helps make sure that clients and creatives are not wasting each other's time with additional requests above and beyond the contracted arrangements.  Setting both a deadline as a date, as well as a full outline of what will be provided by that date, means establishing expectations that both the client and the creative agree upon in advance before beginning the work.  This also creates a clear and clean cut-off as to when the work and the contract have ended, so that a new contract for work can be established, or so that the creative and client can walk clean and clear away from a working arrangement they don't want to have anymore.

Have any other deadlines or expectations you think need to be discussed up front?  Comment and let us know!

Anne Ruthmann helps creatives find smarter solutions to common business problems as a Creative Business Strategist and author of the Pricing Workbook for Creatives.  Her wisdom is steeped in the experience of managing her own creative businesses since 2004.  Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

4 Things Professional Photographers Need to Like

People often think being a professional photographer is just about taking great photos.  While great images are important if you're going to make professional photography your career, it's also important to like the four things below in order to enjoy running a business as a professional photographer:

1. Gear & Gadgets

The photo industry is full of gear and gadgets.  I am not a gear or gadget person.  I got along just fine on my minimal upgrade schedule by always having backups, but no matter how long I'd put off an upgrade (because I am not the early-adopter type),  it was still inevitable that my cameras, computers, and gadgets needed frequent replacing and upgrades just due to heavy professional usage.  So, a love of playing with new gear and gadgets all the time is very helpful if you're in the photography industry, because you will always need new gear and gadgets from one year to the next.

2. Post-Production

Even when I was able to get my images amazingly close to what I wanted in camera, I still always wanted to do some extra post-production on them.  It's also the biggest difference between what the camera sees and what the photographer envisions when taking an image.  I'm quite relaxed on how much post-production I like because I don't love staring at a screen for too long, but still can't really get away with not doing some post-production.  Even while post-production was my least favorite part of the job, I always had a hard time letting other people do it because I was still picky about it.  I only found a couple post-production people over the span of my career who could see color and brightness in the same way I did, and it was a dream when I could rely on them for client deadline work.  However, their paths all eventually diverged as they wanted to focus on other projects of their own and weren't available for post-production anymore.  If I loved post-production, I might have kept doing photography for a longer time, but I feel so much more free without needing to worry about finishing post-production on other people's deadlines anymore!

3. People

Most photography has some element of dealing with people on a personal basis.  If you're one of the lucky ones who makes money on fine art, landscapes, or nature - you probably still need to deal with the agents or gallery owners who sell your art or the clients who buy your art.  You have to like people if you're going to be a professional photographer, otherwise, you're going to end up turning down a lot of opportunities that could otherwise support you making a living.  If you don't like people, you could probably focus on post-production and retouching, and just mange inquiries and outcome online through email.  However, most photographers need to enjoy people to do their work.  Luckily, I like people- even people who probably don't deserve to be liked- so the people part of the job was always interesting to me.

4. Products & Sales

Photographers who understand how to sell their work, and how to sell products of their work, are far better off than photographers who don't know how to sell.  You can still get by without liking sales or doing a lot of sales, but you'll be much better off if you learn how to like sales.  Think about it- half the time you're selling something people might be able to get from a family member- so if you can't sell, than you're going to have a hard time positioning yourself as being more helpful than a friend or family member who can send digital files.  This is just the reality of public perception, and it makes understanding sales and how to sell a critical part of being a professional photographer who can sustain and grow their business for the long-haul.  I personally love selling and find it deeply satisfying to make sure a client is going to walk away with a physical representation of their images because of the products I was able to share with them and help them choose for their home and keepsakes.

What else do you think professional photographers need to like to do their work well?  Leave them in the comments and let's compare notes!

Anne Ruthmann helps creatives find smarter solutions to common business problems as a Creative Business Strategist and author of the Pricing Workbook for Creatives.  Her wisdom is steeped in the experience of managing her own creative businesses since 2004.  Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Toxic Email Replies that Hurt Your Business

Into every business, a series of problems will fall.  HOW business owners and service teams deal with problems when they arise is often MORE important than the problems and solutions themselves.  Let's look at some common creative business owner replies that lead to toxic client interactions, resentment, and lack of referrals for service businesses:

Client Email Example: "Hi, Just checking in on my project progress... can you give an update?"

In the client's mind, this is an innocent email that helps them understand where everything is in the process, what they may need to be aware of or how they may need to manage their schedule and expectations moving forward.  However, if a business owner is mired in stress, dealing with other difficulties, or feeling guilty about not making enough progress on a project, they may feel defensive and use one of the toxic email replies below that end up causing more harm to their client relationship, potential referrals, and future business success.

1. Business Owner Reply: "I'm sorry I was really busy on another project"

How client feels inside:
Well, thanks for letting me know you have another client who is more important and gets higher project priority than I do.  Glad to know my project is being put on the back burner while you deal with other people- not.
Client's actual email reply:
"I understand, thanks for letting me know.  When do you think we can sync up again?"

2. Business Owner Reply: "Life has been really hectic lately"

How client feels inside:
Uh oh, if life is so hectic that he needs to say something, does this mean my project is going to be delayed or given less attention?  Does he have the resources to manage life and business right now?
Client's actual email reply:
"I'm sorry to hear things aren't going well, I really hope things get better soon!"

3. Business Owner Reply: "A client/family member had an emergency"

How client feels inside:
I wonder what kind of emergency?  How long does it take to fix emergencies?  Is this going to delay my project?  Does this mean my project and deadlines are less important because they aren't emergencies?  What if I have an emergency?
Client's actual email reply:
"Oh no!  I hope everything is OK!  Let me know when you can chat again."

What's the BEST reply a business owner can give instead?

Best Business Owner Reply:
"Thank you for checking in!  I'd love to connect over the phone or zoom so we can make sure we're both on the same page for the timing ahead.  Which of the times below will work for you to sync up over the phone and talk about the next steps?
4/4  Monday 4pm
4/6 Wednesday 10am
4/7 Thursday  2pm"

The important ingredients of this reply are:

1. Gratitude that makes the client feel seen and acknowledges their desire for an update.
2. Affirmation of desire to work with client and move the project forward.
3. Specific, detailed, date and time calendar options that give the business owner control of when they can offer headspace and time to focus on communication with client, to help the client manage the time until they feel like they will have undivided attention.

By keeping the response simple, light, and free of outside drama or issues, the business retains a high service standard without causing their client any alarms or insecurities about the business owner's ability to do or complete the work.  When a business engages the client in drama by sharing personal or client issues that don't have anything to do with the client's project, it creates a sense of doubt and concern about whether or not a project will be completed.  This creates a snowball of more fears and concerns that span not just one client project, but all projects the business is currently managing, which can lead to even more drama and toxic gossip that ends up hurting a business in the long run.

So, even if you're experiencing drama or issues that feel out of control in your business or life, save as many business relationships as you can by not spreading the drama or problems around your business.  It may make the difference between one client relationship blowing up and ten client relationships blowing up.  Minimize the damage by minimizing the spread of drama.

Anne Ruthmann helps creatives find smarter solutions to common business problems as a Creative Business Strategist and author of the Pricing Workbook for Creatives.  Her wisdom is steeped in the experience of managing her own creative businesses since 2004.  Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Before They Were Famous

As I've been getting nostalgic about my time in the photography industry, I've been digging into my own blog archives and keep finding moments of GOLD (as well as blog posts I probably should have deleted) that help the next generation of photographers understand where and how digital photography careers exploded 13+ years ago!  Before Facebook, before Instagram- when our social outlets to connect online were through public blogs, RSS feeds, and member message boards that no longer exist.  Luckily some blogs are still on archived servers for your time-traveling pleasure.

Thanks to letting all of my own cringe-worthy-archives stay out in the open... I can go back in time through links to other photographers and see where they started out as well!  I think it's important to share archives so people don't think it all happened overnight.  I also think what you'll see in these various archives and journeys is that Photography can be a gateway drug to other forms of entrepreneurship...

Christine Tremoulet - 2000-2018
http://bigpinkcookie.com/2001/
Our very own PhotoLovecat author/editor was blogging before anyone else knew what the heck to do with a blog.  Blogger and perpetual web geek, turned photographer, and now business consultant.  I give Christine mad props for keeping all of her archives online this long.  I mean, her blog history is basically as old as a blogs themselves.  I think the only thing that came before her blogging was AOL and Netscape!

Jules Bianchi - 2005-2019
http://blog.julesbianchi.com/2005/06/
Jules has often flown under the radar in a lot of ways as far as the photography fame stuff goes, but I've always had a soft spot for her ability to be authentically quirky and offbeat.  She's moved her business a few times and shifted focus like many photographers do, but has maintained her blog archives all along to show how she has grown and changed over all these years, and that really helps others understand the journey doesn't happen overnight.

David Jay - 2005-2010
http://opensourcephoto.blogspot.com/2005/
David Jay has been an entrepreneur and tech geek from an early age.  He started out as a wedding photographer who developed community on OpenSourcePhoto as a place to have open conversations in the photography industry (a competitor to Digital Wedding Forum, which was a private paid forum, where OSP was free and open).  This also allowed him to engage in photography industry problems he could solve with tech solutions.  His presence has been controversial among the industry, but it's never stopped him from creating new businesses.  He developed ShowIT, PASS, Shoot & Share, and now Agree.

Corey Ann - 2007-2019
http://coreyann.com/blog/wedding/justin-jenny-122107
Another PhotoLovecat author and editor that has been in the industry and seen it all over the last decade!  Corey Ann has probably maintained one of the most consistent photography industry profiles I know of in the last decade.  Sustaining her presence as an Ohio wedding photographer and really only expanding to hold the line of justice and call people out against doing stupid things in the photography industry through the PhotoStealers blog.  She has dealt with some of the worst sociopaths the industry has seen and somehow continues to maintain a sense of humor about it all!

Christopher Becker aka [b]ecker - 2007-2018
http://blog.thebecker.com/index.cfm/index.cfm/catID/2/StartRow/500
Wedding photographer, photography teacher, and now Keto-Coach, Becker has had a journey that launched in SoCal and now resides in Missouri.  I think Becker himself would be wise enough to say that he didn't mind ruffling a few feathers along the way in the photo industry, and people either loved it or hated it.  What you can't disagree with is that he's hustled with a lot of heart, and often shared what he's learned with others along the way.

Jessica Claire - 2008(?)-2019(?)
http://www.jessicaclaire.net/blog/7165/jessicaclaireartcom-launches
Jessica has hidden the actual dates on her blog and done a very good job of curating her archival content that remains on her current blog, however, based on the context of some early blog posts, I'm guessing the content in this blog started circa 2007/2008, but she also eludes to having another blog prior to this that is no longer available online.  Jessica went from wedding photographer to ShootSac lens bag creator, and now she has the bug for wedding photography again.  Welcome back, Jessica!

Jasmine Star - 2006-2007
http://jasminestarphotography.blogspot.com/2006/02/
Jasmine Star got her first round of fame in the photography industry after David Jay photographed her wedding and Mike Colon started using her as a workshop model for his workshops (perhaps someone else can figure out the order of events on this based on the archives in her blog and David Jay's blog).  She then caught the photography bug herself, attended a lot of workshops, started teaching workshops, made some public social media mistakes, but has continued pushing forward and sharing everything along the way.  She now teaches online courses focused on boosting social media presence.

BluDomain - 2006-2007
https://bludomain.typepad.com/blus_daily_blog/2006/10/index.html
BluDomain was one of the early photography portfolio website providers to crank out a lot of affordable website templates full of good design and solid navigation tools.  They blogged about a lot of "popular" people in the photography industry at the time in order to raise their own profile.  It worked and they secured a lot of photography industry clients in a few short years.  What they've left behind on this archival blog is the treasure chest of where people were and what they were doing in 2006-2007!  Check out their archives to see a lot of familiar names, faces, and photos from 13 years ago!

Are there some archival blogs out there that you think should be added to this list?  Add them to the comments and let's have a nice walk down memory lane together...

Anne Ruthmann helps creatives find smarter solutions to common business problems as a Creative Business Strategist and author of the Pricing Workbook for Creatives.  Her wisdom is steeped in the experience of managing her own creative businesses since 2004.  Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Why It's Hard to Talk Pricing Publicly

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm happy to talk pricing and pricing strategy.  I love digging into profit strategies with small business owners during consultations.  It's like digging for hidden nuggets of gold within their business.  Unfortunately, it's not as easy to do this in public forums.  A strategy that works really well for one person may be a complete waste of time for another person based on who they are, what they sell, and what kind of people are valuing their work- which is why it's really difficult to talk pricing publicly.

Each individual has their own unique world-view of what ideal creative pricing looks like to them in the scope of their experience:

• One person may need to support a 5 person family on their creative income, and have a stay at home partner who can provide a lot of household or business support.
• One person may have a full time job for income and only be doing creative work on the side.
• One person may say that they only take projects for $10,000 or more, however they may also mean that every project they do requires a team of 10 people who are all working overtime to turn a project around in an amount of time that is usually unheard of to an individual doing it all on a solo basis.
• One person may say their rates are $150 a project, which might seem unfathomably low for your costs and overhead, but what they may not be saying is that they do 6 of those projects in one day and then do extended sales sessions or additional licensing from those projects that add an additional $1350 in profit after each project.
• One person may say they give away all files in a $3000 package, but they may not say that those files are only good for viewing on the web and not printing larger than 4x6 or putting in an album.
• One person may say they only include 20 album pages $3000 package and files are extra, but they may not say that they'll include the files if someone enough pages to their album.
• One person may say they include all the RAW files in a $3000 package, but they may not say that the editing of those files is extra or only included when they order an album.

All of these are examples of why discussing pricing is so difficult in open forums or even privately among other creative professionals.  

What works well for one person may be a terrible idea for another person's way of working.  Someone who hates sales would quickly fail by setting up their pricing in a way that requires them to do more sales and someone who hates working solo would total fail by setting up their pricing in a way that requires them to work solo.

We can never assume that the way someone else has set up their pricing is the same way we would or should set up our own pricing.  Which is also why you can never judge another professional based on their pricing alone- because you have no idea what goes into their pricing or what each term means in the way they define it.

This is also why the "what should I price this at" question is a terrible question to ask in forums.  You can get 10 different answers all based on how different people work and live, and none of those answers may even be applicable to you and your situation!  Super frustrating, and it doesn't lead to more clarity, only more confusion.

It is far better to figure out the numbers based on your business and understand how to price your service and products based on your actual costs, products, delivery, and costs of doing business so that you aren't jumping on a bandwagon that will send your business off a cliff!

Anne Ruthmann is a retired professional photographer in New York City. With over 13 years of success as a full-time photographer in weddings, portraits, editorial, architecture and interiors. She loves to travel the work and spend any extra time she has helping others find smart solutions to business problems. Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

Do I Need To Run Online Ads?

Do you have a product or service that requires you to show up in person?  If so, your best advertising focus may be an OFFLINE advertising strategy in a local area.

Do you have a product or service that can be purchased and delivered online, without any in-person interaction needed?  If so, than you definitely benefit from an ONLINE advertising strategy.

Too often people get stuck in the idea that they need to do everything and anything to promote their business, which is a great way to throw money down the drain and waste time on marketing or advertising strategies that are not going to be as effective.

If what you do requires you and a client to be in the same location when you provide your product or service, than you will miss an entire population of people who aren't checking the online market with any frequency to make a difference for your business, but who may be walking right by you every day in your cafe or local retail shops.

A local business needs to focus on local strategy to reach its ideal clients where they already are.
An online service or product based business needs to focus on online strategy to meet clients online.

Are you aware of all the ways you can market offline?  Check out this Annual Marketing Evaluation to see how many strategies are out there for marketing your business and which ones you may be missing out on if you're a local business!

Anne Ruthmann is a retired professional photographer in New York City. With over 13 years of success as a full-time photographer in weddings, portraits, editorial, architecture, and interiors. She now spends any extra time she has helping others find smart solutions to business problems. Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

How Many Clients Do You Need?

I used to think I needed as many clients as I could get, but that was a fast recipe for disaster until I had systems in place that allowed me to take on more work than I could personally handle.  Many people only learn what their limits are when they actually go beyond their limits.  This is a natural learning curve for new entrepreneurs and businesses, and hopefully you learn it early enough to benefit from finding your creative work boundaries early as well.

Once my client list got too big to personally handle, I started to outsource, insource, and run a team of more people to help behind the scenes.  The more distance I had from my own work and serving clients directly, the more I came to realize how much I missed being personally involved and having a part in each step of the process for clients so that I could assure great communication and quality imagery at every step.  I also realized how much more time and administrative function was needed to manage a team of people rather than operating as a boutique customized personal service business.

The grass is often greener, until you have to actually mow the lawn.

Some people get into business to grow profits and then sell-off or exit the business.  However, providing a creative product or service offers the opportunity to be more boutique, more custom, and more hands-on in a business, which is often what I love most about being in business at all - getting to help people directly.

Reaching the point of having too many clients to handle, and then experiencing what it was like to move from artist to manager in order to serve so many more clients, taught me exactly how many clients I could take on while still giving the boutique level of one-on-one service I preferred.  It also forced me to realize that in order to provide that boutique level of high touch and personal service, I also needed to have the appropriate price for that much intensive client care.

In order to deliver very personalized service to each wedding client, I maxed out at 30 clients and felt best at 20 clients.  In order to deliver very personalized service to each architecture & design client who had multiple projects over the course of a year, I maxed out at 25 clients and felt comfortable at 20 clients.  Some clients took 20% of my time and some clients only took 2% of my time, but together they all kept me busy as a full time photographer, and my pricing was designed to help me support this high-touch level of one-on-one service for each client.

When you think about how you want to grow or expand your business in the future - consider how growth may also change the type of work you do and how involved you want to be with clients versus your team of contractors or employees.  If you hate dealing with client issues and would rather deal with a team you've hand-selected, than expanding your team and training your staff is going to be your sweet slice of pie!  If you love working directly with your clients, you may want to focus on the boutique business model and use outsourcing & contractors supporting you behind the scenes.

When you look into the future of your business, what feels right for you?

Once you know what feels right for you- you can then decide if what you're focusing on going forward is to bring in fewer clients who value your work at a very high level, or focusing on more volume with value-minded clients who will help you support more staff that you can mentor and rely on to grow the business together.

Anne Ruthmann is a retired professional photographer in New York City. With over 13 years of success as a full-time photographer in weddings, portraits, editorial, architecture, and interiors.  She now spends any extra time she has helping others find smart solutions to business problems.  Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

PhotoShelter Review from a Commercial Photographer

Before deciding to use PhotoShelter in 2016 for my Commercial Architecture & Interior Design Photography business in New York City, I had been a long-time user of Pictage for my Professional Wedding & Portrait Photography business while living in Massachusetts, Indiana, and Michigan from 2005-2015.  Before I had settled on either of these solutions for my photography business, I had investigated a lot of other solutions first.  I mention this just to provide some context and background for my time and experience with professional image vendors in the photography industry.

BEFORE USING PHOTOSHELTER:

When Pictage closed in 2015, I had to scramble to find a way to transfer my 10 years of professional image archives out of that solution and into a new solution.  The quickest answer that I could manage online at the time was to FTP all client image archives from Pictage into Dropbox.  This wasn't the best solution, but it was the solution I had time to manage, along with the help of a virtual assistant that I had hired to make sure the task was completed properly.

My NYC Real Estate, Rental, Architecture, & Interior Design Photography clients had very different needs than my Wedding & Portrait Clients.  Wedding & Portrait clients needed some print fulfillment options for greeting cards, wall prints, framing, sharing images with guests, selecting how private their images would be based on who was looking at them, and album proofing, printing, and binding to help them pull together family and wedding albums.  Commercial clients needed no professional print fulfillment from me, just digital solutions.

Commercial & Residential Real Estate, Rental, Architecture, & Interior Design Photography clients needed to be able to share the images with multiple vendors, have a variety of image licensing options, have a variety of downloading sizes and file types (TIF, JPG, PDF), and have a sense of privacy and control over who could see and access the images. I also needed to be able to store some RAW files to collaborate with retouchers and post-production specialists who were based in other states or cities and give them access to download those files easily.  The total file size needs were not in giga-bytes, but in tera-bytes, so I needed an unlimited image storage solution that could deliver fast uploads and downloads.

In my scramble to find an interim solution, I found that Dropbox was awful for images.  Color accuracy was atrocious, which ruined all the careful white balancing I'd done for commercial architecture and interior clients who spent hours picking out the right colors for their projects and relied on me to nail that color accuracy in photos.  The colors were fine after they were downloaded, or if they were being viewed offline, but online- terrible.  I almost lost some clients over this issue, so I really needed to find another solution other than Dropbox for my commercial clients.

I shopped around comparing various industry photo hosting and storage vendors, and found that many of them were mainly focused on catering to the needs of wedding & portrait photographers.  Which is, after all, one of the largest photography industry markets, so I get it.  Many fewer businesses need professional photography than number of people getting married or having families.

MY FIRST IMPRESSION OF PHOTOSHELTER:

Photoshelter appeared somewhat small in terms of photography market share of users.  They had been slowly and steadily building their platform and it appeared that they were focusing on users that came out of the New York market of clients.  Photojournalists, Fine Art Photographers, and Commercial Photographers dominate the New York photography landscape.  Professional Real Estate and Rental Photography has only exploded in the last 5 years.  Interior Design & Architecture will always remain a very small niche market of photography mainly focused in the top cities of the world.  So the question came down to whether or not Photoshelter had everything I needed as a commercial photographer?  The following is a run-down of what I've found to be good and what can be improved after using PhotoShelter for a couple years.

UNLIMITED STORAGE: *****

Initially, they didn't have an unlimited storage option, so it was tough for me to sign up right away, knowing that I would have limits on the number of files I'd be able to manage on their platform without incurring extra upcharge fees that might be unpredictable.  Luckily, they started offering an unlimited option under $50/mo shortly after I started considering them, which made it much easier for me to bring all of my commercial image needs onto their servers.  I had been paying Pictage $100/mo for unlimited image proofing & storage, but they also provided many other services I needed as well.  I had been paying Dropbox $50/mo for shitty image proofing & storage of only 500GB, so PhotoShelter was a much better choice simply on the unlimited storage to cost ratio and the fact that I could integrate several other things into the same online service.

VARIETY OF IMAGE FILE TYPES: *****

Since I provide different types of image files to different types of clients, I really needed a solution that could handle a variety of image files from RAW to TIF to JPG... and even PDF... and I was happy to find that PhotoShelter was able to manage all of these file types and provide color-accurate online previews of the files no matter what type they were being stored and offered in.  This made my clients happy to see such great color accuracy and quality detail on their images, and it made me happy to not have to explain to every new client that the color and quality would be better on download.  My clients purchased more images because they looked great- which is super important when you enter a realm where images can be licensed one by one for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

PRIVACY & CONTROL OPTIONS: *****

One of the other important factors in commercial work was being able to control who could access the images, who could download the images, what file size and type they could download, as well as how long they would have access to those downloads.  I was happy to see that PhotoShelter had built-in options for offering different file sizes from one original download, as well as giving me the ability to limit who would be able to download based on email or password, and how long they would be able to download, based on expiration date or a one-time download link that lasted a few days.

PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT: *****

I wasn't really expecting to get a portfolio included with my online image hosting & proofing provider, but with PhotoShelter I did, and it was so easy to drag and drop images from the unlisted proofing side of the website to the listed and visible website portfolio side of the website.  There are also some built-in image SEO tools, watermarking options, and website layouts that make setting up and revising your portfolio as easy as just dragging and dropping from your latest projects.

COMMISSIONS & ONLINE SALES: ***

For photographers who want to keep their money where their images are, PhotoShelter is OK, but it takes a bigger cut of your sales than other solutions.  So, I had to make a decision about whether I was going to run my client invoices and sales through PhotoShelter or continue using other options that I'd already started using after Pictage closed.  Unfortunately the commission and online sales structure through PhotoShelter took too much of a percentage for my tastes.  I'm not giving up 8% of my commercial client invoices, sorry guys.  It might be great for someone occasionally selling fine art, who is comparing another online gallery ownership take of 15-50%, but I came from using a business solution that took no more than 3%, so the 8% commission option on the pro plan was a killer for wanting to use their sales engine for commercial work or invoicing.  I just chose to avoid that entire part of their services completely, since I already had another solution that worked better and gave me more profit from my sales.

CUSTOMER SERVICE: **

I had a very close relationship with Pictage when I was using their service.  They had tiers of customer service response based on how heavily you were invested with them, so pro users and members had no issues talking to someone right away with their pro client concierge service.  They had round tables where they would discuss improvement ideas with power users, so improvement ideas were valued when they came from the community of users.  It was a level of service that feels rare in the online marketplace now.  Anyway, that's what I'm comparing to when I talk about customer service.

Photoshelter has OK customer service.  It exists at a minimum level.  It's still better than Dropbox.  It's still better than a platform solution you need to install and manage yourself.  Even though I've been a pro-member of PhotoShelter for a couple years, the two occasions I reached out for help didn't yield that much help.  If I were a first time online proofing solution user, this might be a problem.  Luckily, their system is mostly streamlined and works quite well in general, so you may not need much customer support.  Just know that it may be limited if you do need that support.  

The Photoshelter office is literally up the street from me, and I've been several times for their community events, so I asked about sitting down with the team to talk about some issues my clients were expressing with regarding to downloading their images.  I knew that these comments could create some great UX improvements, but the support team pretty much came back to me with the comment "we're always working to improve" but no follow-up to actually hear about the ways it could be improved.  They were looking at the system through their experienced eyes and seeing no problems, rather than taking some time to look over the shoulders of some people who weren't photographers or UX designers and who hadn't used their system before and were clicking the wrong buttons at the wrong time and getting the wrong results because of the UX design.  I digress.  It's an area they can improve upon, and I hope they do improve upon it.

At the end of the day, their UX for proofing and downloading images still gave my clients fewer headaches than using Dropbox as an interim solution, so it didn't stop me from using the service.  My design and commercial clients were just mildly frustrated that they kept making the same mistakes when downloading their images because of the way the site was designed.

OVERALL: ****

It is still one of the more robust online proofing & delivery options for commercial photographers.  So yes, I'd recommend it and I think it's a solid solution for professional photographers.  Just go into it knowing that you may need to hand-hold your photography clients through some mild confusion if they miss some steps in the proofing & downloading workflow.

Anne Ruthmann is a retired professional photographer in New York City. With over 13 years of success as a full-time photographer in weddings, portraits, editorial, architecture, and interiors, she spends any extra time she has helping others find smart solutions to business problems. Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.