Reading Time: 2 minutes

These are some business tips for the freelancer to grow their business. You will need to do things as simple as contacting people through email and more this year.

Here is one blog post for those who have yet to take the plunge – 9 things you need to do before going freelance full-time.

Some tips will link you to past blog posts to help you explore each piece of information more in-depth.

• Solve a problem, and then start the business – Your business is to solve a problem for another company. Ask yourself what business problems I am solving for my clients.
• Photographer, are you Liked or Loved – You need table food and soul food. The best way to get both is the personal project that shows your business solution through a photo project, for example, that shows how you solved this problem for someone.
• How much can you make as a photographer? – You need a good understanding of the cost of doing business. One key element is your family budget as well. If you don’t know your bills, how much you bring in, and the difference, you will probably fail in business.
• When it comes to marketing: Act like a first-year student and not a senior – No one knows you, or what you do, so you will have to tell them and communicate how your services will benefit their bottom line.
• Create a calendar with actions for you to do. Here are some things that should be on your list:
  1. People to contact by phone [weekly] – These are your clients and prospects.
  2. Targeted marketing campaign – this is where you write a letter that targets people in your database in a particular industry.
     1. Education Market
     2. Editorial Market
     3. Sports
     4. Medical
  3. Blog – this is where you share something that continues to build your reputation as an expert. I recommend three times a week.
  4.  E-Newsletter – I send one out monthly to my clients. The newsletter is just a way to reconnect with your audience. Remember to consider why they want to get this, not that you want them to hire you.
  5. Snail mail – you can send handwritten thank you cards to all your recently hired clients. Do this after each job. Maybe create a postcard or some other mailing. Remember, they have to physically touch this before it goes in the mail, whereas emails will get automatically deleted and never seen.
• Networking events – You need to be out and meeting new people. I call this fishing with a big net.
• Workshops – You need to continue to grow in knowledge, so plan to attend meetings throughout the year to help you expand your skills.

You may think of more things, but be sure you have a plan and are working on it.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

As we start a new year, many are making resolutions. This is because we want to start on a good foot in the future.

I want to recommend to any photographer thinking of doing freelance to make it a goal of yours to manage the business side of photography as well, if not better than the photography side of the business.

fotoBiz X is the best way to manage your business in combination with Quickbooks, which I recommend. I recommend it highly because of a few things someone is starting needs more than anyone. It costs $299 and is worth the investment.

Probably the number one best-selling aspect of the software is the templates that are built into the software. No problem if you don’t know how to write a contract; there are some boilerplate templates. All of these templates have explanations and help support built into the software. Then if this isn’t enough, all those who use the software can also go to the online community forum to ask those unique questions and see if others have had experience.

The software helps you manage your contacts with your clients and prospects. I think the email templates are one of the best modules of the program.

When starting, you have no idea how to write a cover letter for anything you may need to do with your business. You can find an email template letter, and then after reading the letter, you will get a better handle on the topics you need to address. Then after reading the letter, the software lets you edit it and then save it as a template that you use going forward.

The wording in these letters is so professional and will help you get paid on time, thus improving your business’s cash flow.

Their series of collection letters helps you navigate the steps to getting paid from a bad client. Too many young photographers make mistakes of taking a collection to a level five threatening letter when a gentle reminder is sometimes all that is needed.

It also comes with fotoQuote, which will help you understand licensing of images and how to price them.

Using fotoQuote with Quickbooks is a great combination. Here is the explanation for the integration:

The difference between QuickBooks and fotoBiz is that fotoBiz is explicitly written for the independent freelance photographer and handles your business and image management in ways specific to the industry. 

With fotoBiz, your invoicing includes language protecting your intellectual property rights, which a generic program like QuickBooks doesn’t do. While fotoBiz helps you to track and run many types of sales reports, it is not intended to be a bookkeeping program. FotoBiz X is designed to be used in conjunction with QuickBooks. You can export a group of invoices (for example, by invoice date) or export individual invoice data. The export will create a file in a .iif format for import into QuickBooks.

I can honestly say that my biggest mistake running my freelance business for so many years was not buying this software earlier. I am positive that had I bought this and then dedicated some time to studying all that it can do, I would have been much more profitable earlier in my career.

Here are a few videos explaining the software that I recommend you watch.

fotoBiz X Overview

Duplicating Documents in fotoBiz X

Image License Tracking in fotoBiz X