This year is all about taking stock of how much we're spending so that we can run our businesses lean and mean. Here's how to run a photography business for less than $50/month.
As a note, this blog post infers that you already own your physical tools. The cameras, lights, lenses, etc. that you need. If that's not true, feel free to send me a note and I'll happily make a physical tool list a priority. Off the record, I switched to Fuji a couple of months ago after shooting Canon for 9 years, Nikon for a couple months, Sony for a few years, and it is by far the least expensive camera system setup that I have ever used. The files are huge, the lenses are sharp, I'm in love.
Anyway, every month there are things that are unavoidable in order to run a successful and organized photography business. This is across all categories, honestly. Boudoir, Wedding, Family, & Senior photographers all around need a handful of tools available on a consistent basis.
In this blog post we'll cover software that allows you to request contract signatures, invoicing, send questionnaires, edit your photos, back them up, and display your photos in an aesthetic way that allows for easy downloading. We're doing all that for $37.40/month plus tax.
First, you're going to want to hop on a discovery call. Get to know your clients, find out if you're a good fit for one another. You'll also need a scheduler to make it easy to find a time that works for you both.
Meeting scheduling| Tidycal ($29 one time fee)
You can always use Google Calendar for free. But I thought I'd introduce you to a very inexpensive alternative. Tidycal is one payment of $29. That's it. You can pay slightly more ($79) for an agency plan for a team with even more calendars, but even just the single license is incredible. There's some limited brand customization you can do and you can export different "events" to different calendars you're in charge of. It's perfect for me as I run multiple brands/studios.
video meetings | google meet (free or $8.40/month)
Google meet comes free with every account, but when you have a business account, you get more folks in your meetings, you can record them, have your account set up transcripts and meeting summaries for you and more. Tidy integrates with it nice and any meeting created can have a meeting link auto-generated at booking. My favorite feature over Zoom? it all runs in your browser. No additional software needed, no slowing things down. It just works.
Second, everyone needs to be able to send contracts and invoices. These keep you legit, protected, & paid.
Contracts & Signatures | Google Docs ($8.40/month)
Google Workspace allows E-signatures on any of their Google Workspace plans. Click here to read more about how to set this up. Then you can store them in Google Drive which is perfect with AT LEAST 30GBs of storage also provided by Google Workspace. Best thing is you can pair it with Google Drive to keep hold of all your client names as well.
Invoicing | Wave, Square, or Stripe (Free)
Free (or nearly free) invoicing is one of the easiest things to find. They make their money back with their processing fees and in turn you can build these fees into your pricing so you barely feel it. (Some states allow you to actually charge for processing CCs but not all. Check yours to make sure before you opt into that. No matter what, I will always recommend just raising your own prices because taxes.)
After your Ts are crossed and your Is have been dotted, you’ll want to gather information to provide the best experience. Here is where your questionnaires come in.
Forms + Questionnaires | Google Forms or Notion (Free+)
One again, Google to the rescue. Included in your subscription is also Google Forms. You can customize the forms with fonts, different kinds of form fields, and they get e-mailed straight to your inbox. If you are a Notion lover, you can also use their (new-ish) forms! Perfect for gathering information about your families, boudoir clients, etc. so that you go into every client interaction prepared as hell.
Okay, so you’ve sent over the boring paperwork, & you’ve mad your art. Now, you need to figure out how to perfect & deliver those images.
Image Delivery | Pic-Time (Free+)
A few gallery services let you deliver your images for free and have multiple uses besides image delivery. But for this, we’re only going to take the image delivery into account. Pic-Time allows approximately 3,000 images and 1GB of video storage for completely free. If you’re up front with your clients about their images only being available for x amount of days/weeks/months then you can rotate them out and stay with your free account as long as needed.
Image Editing | Adobe LR + Photoshop ($20/month)
Lightroom Classic + Photoshop are the perfect combination for editing. Lightroom for basic editing and Photoshop for more difficult things like intricate people removal and retouching. You can create your own presets for editing or spend a little more to find a style you love from someone who has done the hard work for you and apply it to your own work.
Some folks can build businesses that are all about word of mouth. Others use social media, but you don't need to pay to plan & schedule your posts.
Social media posting + planning | Meta (Free)
Meta may not come with some of the bells and whistles other apps do (like keyword planning), but the free scheduling it does provide works super well. Plus, you can even schedule stories. Something you can't do with 99% of other apps. Perfect for launches or sharing news while you sleep/work.
Finally, you’re definitely going to want to protect your clients images. For that, you’ll need backups.
Automatic Backups | Backblaze ($9/month)
Backblaze does an automatic backup of your computer (and additional drives if needed). They’ll ship you a hard drive with all of your information if needed, and everything is cloud hosted with encryption. It’s one of the easiest ways to make sure everything you need is right there.
