How to Outsource with Independent Contractors

In order to take your business to the next level and free up your pesonal time, you will at some point need to outsource part of your workload. You may need to contract the services of a second-shooter, editor, retoucher, graphic designer, or errand-runner but you won't want to pay their income taxes or social security benefits if they aren't your employee. You also won't want to do anything that could later be audited and determined as illegal. The solution? Two very simple tax forms. I know what you're thinking... simple + tax forms = oxymoron. It really is easier than you think, and it's totally worth it to keep your business legit.

First, you will want to collect a W-9 from whomever you pay for their work. It's as easy as printing out the form and making sure you have a completed copy from someone before you start paying them. Here's the form:
W-9: Request for Taxpayer Identification Form. If you are currently paying someone under the table, I would highly suggest asking them to fill out this form before they receive another dollar from you.

You should also make sure that the two of you have a signed agreement concerning the expectations or deadlines of the job as well as any individual or company privacy rights or protections. I may have samples of these for you at a later time, but for now I'm just focusing on making sure you're legit with the IRS.

All year long you should be keeping a record of how much you pay each individual. At the end of the year, if the total amount paid to one individual is more than $600 than you need to fill out a 1099 Miscellaneous Income Form for each individual and provide them with their own copy at the end of the year. (You need their Tax ID, which is why the W-9 form should be collected in advance of payment.) All of the instructions are included within the form and there's always additional help available directly from the IRS.gov website.

Why is it important to document this pay with the IRS? So that you can legally deduct the income you pay independent contractors, so that you don't end up paying income tax on money you never actually earned! Especially when you could put those extra tax dollars into your retirement fund!

There you have it! Two not-too-difficult forms and you've taken care of your responsibilities to Uncle Sam and relieved yourself of paying someone else's taxes! Why didn't anyone tell you how easy it was before? Now go out and get the extra help you need!!

*Special thanks to Carol Drake, CPA; and Nate Reynolds for their contributions to this topic.

Become a Google Business Rep

A few posts back I talked about listing your business locally online. Well Google has decided to take it to the next level by recruiting people and paying them ($10 per verified listing) to help build their online local business directories. This would be an interesting way to meet your local business neighbors as well as a chance to introduce yourself and your business! Check it out --->http://www.google.com/services/local-business-referrals/repfaq.html

Great Website Templates for Photographers

As a follow up to my post about the Golden Rules of Great Websites, I thought it would be valuable if I mentioned a few companies that are producing template based websites that make it super easy to create and maintain a great website. A great website is an investment in your business, and whether you choose to create a custom website, or something based on a template, a great website can make the best or worst first impression of your work. The following list are companies who have built their business around providing websites that are easy to update and manipulate, giving owners greater control over their presentation without requiring knowledge of web coding or programming.

• Big Folio - http://www.bigfolio.com
  
• BluDomain - http://www.bludomain.com
  
• Darkroom - http://www.intothedarkroom.com
  
• Flash Palette - http://www.flashpalette.com
  
• LiveBooks - http://www.livebooks.com
  
• Photobiz - http://www.photobiz.com
  
• Photoidentities - http://www.photoidentities.com
  
• Tafota - http://tafota.com
  
• Winklet - http://www.winkletwebdesign.com

Protect Your Rights when Giving Files

As it becomes more and more common for photographers to offer high resolution files and digital negatives, it also seems to become more common that photographers are willing to completely give up their rights to their own images! You should never give away your copyright to your own work - unless you're selling it for a very hefty price and it's work that you don't need to be recognized for (as is the case with some stock or commercial work). In the case of portrait and wedding work, which you may want to include on your website or in your portfolio, you need to maintain your copyright protection on your images if for no other reason than to prevent others from claiming your work as their own.

One of the easiest ways to protect your rights is to include a Creative Commons License on the disk with your images. There are several different levels of the creative commons license which are customizable for different situations. My preferred license looks like this: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. By providing this license instead of a full copyright release, I am able to protect my own rights to the image, while still allowing my clients the ability to print and display the images for personal use. As an added level of protection, you can easily embed your copyright information in the metadata for each image upon import or export with programs like Bridge or Lightroom.

While all original work is automatically protected by copyright laws upon creation, there may be times when it is necessary to register your copyright. For example, when submitting your work for publication, or when photographing a celebrity or historical event in which your work may end up being widely distributed or highly sought after.

It would also be nice if we, as a community of photographers, could agree on some common language when referring to these different types of files made available to the client. In an effort to establish some kind of consistency, here are my proposed definitions along with some benefits and drawbacks to offering each to your clients:

Digital Negatives - these files are straight-from-camera files, exactly as they were captured, with no color correction, editing, or cropping. If files were captured in RAW, they are delivered in RAW. If files were captured in JPG, they are the original files as captured in sequence. By providing this type of file to your client, you are providing an unfinished work which can be both good and bad. On one hand, a client may realize that they are unable to process and print the images on their own (as could be the case with RAW files) and will need your assistance before creating any prints, on the other hand a client may take your unprocessed images and present them to others as a final work, which may in turn degrade the overall perception of your work.

High Resolution Files - generally considered to be at or above a resolution of 1200x1800 pixels, these files may be color-corrected, toned, cropped, etc. and are saved in a print-ready format such as JPG, GIF, or TIFF. Since these images are print-ready, there's a lesser chance of them being altered in an unfavorable way, however you still cannot control the calibration of the monitors or printers that your client is using to view or print the images.

If you're going to offer either of the above options to your clients, it is very important to educate your customers about the differences that can result when printing from uncalibrated monitors and printers, as well as the difference in quality between the products you provide and the products that they may purchase on their own. I highly suggest making sure that your clients are receiving finished prints or an album BEFORE receiving their files. This ensures that you've had a chance to print a product to your expectations before your client produces something on their own that may be a substandard product. You work hard to create your art and it is up to you to make sure it is being presented in the best possible way.

Build a Referral Network

Are you taking advantage of the referral network in your area? Are you linked into other photographers who are sharing their leads?

Every job that I can't take, I give to someone who can. About 50% of the clients who contact me are actually referred to another photographer because I'm already booked. I feel like I've disappointed a client by telling them I'm not available, so I want to make sure that I'm referring them to someone who IS available. Going out of my way to provide this extra service to clients insures that they will be taken care of and that their future referrals will stay in my referral network.

I wanted an easy way to know who was available. In the past, I had to visit several different websites or email photographers just to make sure I wasn't sending the client to a dead end. How depressing for a client to be rejected twice in a row! But now all I have to do is check my calendar online and I can see the availability of many different photographers all at once! I can easily see who is and isn't potentially available, making it quick and easy for me to send a referral onto the client. I'm 10 time more likely to refer someone who is linked to my calendar over someone who's not linking their calendar to mine. The important part of sharing calendars online is that it is quick and easy to make a referral.

This is a win-win-win situation. The client wins because they get great service from me and they find another great photographer to work with who will take care of them. The other photographer wins because they get a highly qualified lead that has a greater chance of hiring them based on personal referral and a new urgency to book soon. I win because I have just kept a potential client in my network of friends, knowing that future referrals from that client may come directly back to me! This is why your biggest competitor should also be your best friend- especially if their style is most similar to your own. The more people you connect with, the more you will see that there's plenty of work for everyone.

If you're already part of a local photographer's group, than you already have a great group of people to help you start a shared calendar network. If you don't have a local photographer's group, or would like to start sharing with another photographer in your area whom you've never met, I suggest making your first contact with that photographer a request to send business to them. You have to be willing to give referrals, not just receive them, in order to have a strong network. If they aren't sure about the idea, send them the link to this post. ;-) While most referrals will be shared with people who have a similar style and pricing, it never hurts to link with people who are above or below your price or who have a different style in the event that the client would be much better suited to someone different from you.

I've tried several different calendar sharing solutions and I've found Google Calendar to be the easiest cross-platform solution to use, with options for syncing to your cell phone, ipod, outlook, and ical. It also has an incredible amount of privacy protection allowing you to show full details or just availability, and to make it public or only available to those you invite to view it. To link into other photographers already using this network, first set up your calendar.google.com by importing your photography calendar from a program you already use, or by entering the information manually. Once you're ready to make your calendar available to others, simply add their email to your shared calendars list! Then, to keep your google calendar update without any effort on your part, use Spanning Sync to update it for you whenever you change your ical.

I hope that you find this useful - maybe in the future I'll add a video tutorial on using google calendar, but for now I really just wanted you to start setting up a referral network with the other photographers in your area!! This is a great time to get started since your 2008 calendar is likely to still be young in its development!

Also posted on: OSP & DWF