5 Reasons You Should NOT Start a Photography Business

here are five reasons you should not start a photography business a lot of a lot of people are going to tell you you know uh starting a photography business may be a good idea you might watch some videos you might be thinking about starting a photography business and and researching and finding a lot of videos on here's how to start a photography business here's why you should start a photography business but uh today I'm going to talk to you about why you shouldn't start a photography business I'm going to be completely open and candid about about what's involved and maybe scare you off that's okay if this video is enough to scare you off you shouldn't start a photography business that's that's reason number zero so we'll start there first of all it's it's expensive it's incredibly expensive to run a photography business the equipment's expensive the camera bodies are expensive the lenses are expensive lights are expensive modifiers are expensive renting a studio is expensive all the software involved is expensive like having a computer that's powerful enough to process all your images is expensive everything is expensive like there is nothing inexpensive about running a photography business you can get equipment inexpensively you can buy used uh equipment but you still have to buy all this stuff you still have to use a lot of the stuff you have to have at least one camera body at least one lens at least you know not necessarily one light if you do a lot of things natural light or available light but you do have to invest a lot of money up front there's a lot of experimenting that goes into figuring out you know you could buy you could spend two three hundred dollars on a modifier and then figure out you don't like it you don't use it and it just takes up space in your closet you know every photographer has can tell you about equipment that they have that they've spent money on that they don't use and was a waste of money and they probably shouldn't have bought but the problem is unless you can connect with someone who has that piece of equipment you just don't know especially at the early stages of running your business they can be very difficult to afford so I always liked uh sort of the The Lean Startup ideology and methodology of building a business I use that with my improv company I use that this company I don't go into debt for anything I don't put anything on credit The Lean Startup ideology and methodology is like create a minimal viable product and you can do that with a nifty 50 and like an EOS Rebel body you can start a photography business but expenses only go up from there so it's really expensive that's reason number one foreign reason number two you're gonna need business skills if you don't have business skills that's that's primarily what you should do people ask me if they should go to school for photography and I say no you should go to school for business if you want to run a photography business you should go to school for business you can learn the photography on your own you can read a camera manual you can buy a book to teach you about things like the exposure triangle and and uh the inverse Square law of light and you can learn light and things like that on your own what you need are business skills 95 of my job as a photographer is admin and marketing it's sitting here on the damn computer working on a website to working on emails working on admin stuff you know writing copy um it's it's like there's so much not photography stuff in running a photography business in running any business but you think you're starting a photography business because you want to uh you love photography and you want to do photography but you're not you're starting a marketing company really you have to Market yourself and your services constantly you have to learn SEO you have to learn how to run Google ads you have to learn how to run ads on Facebook and Instagram maybe you have to learn how to build a website you there's there's all these other skills that you have to learn and constantly be doing and growing and developing and it's it's so much that is not photography so if you don't have those skills go to school for those skills because those are highly transferable skills photography is not a very highly transferable skill right now if you're doing content then then photography helps but videos are much more transferable skill everybody's moving in that direction but if you understand and learn to run a business and can run a business I can build a business or at least understand how to do business tasks if you start a photography business and it doesn't work out those skills are transferable and those are the skills that you're putting on your resume you might mention that you know how to take photos but that's not going to help you in a data data analytics position um knowing how to build a website will help you with that not only do you need to know how to be good at marketing you actually need to be better at it than your competition which is very difficult because that brings me to point number three photography is a highly highly competitive market there's so many good photographers out there that you are competing in a large pool of people who are good at photography there is some truth to the fact when when you take a good photo and your relatives say oh you might must have a great camera there's some truth to that someone with a good camera and fast lenses can take a good looking shot phones iPhones and and Google pixels Samsung Galaxies they can take photographs nowadays British photographer Greg Williams shoots a lot of his underwater stuff things that end up on covers of magazines using an iPhone so you know the the equipment you have really like the equipment that's in almost everybody's pocket is good enough to use to become a professional photographer and professional photographers do use that equipment in their workflow you not only have to be as good as you have to be possibly a better photographer but definitely a better marketer you have to be able to get your name and your services out there and provide something to potential clients that is going to be different and better than your competition the other thing is there's not a lot of like repeat business in photography and where there is in terms of like families or potential some corporate clients that need headshots on a regular basis it's it's infrequent you might have a great corporate client like a law firm that needs headshots every month or every couple of months and that's going help and sustain you but if you're a family photographer and you shoot maternities and newborns and family photos then it's not that often that you know people are needing new photos or wanting new photos certain people might want two shoots a year and that's great but that you really need to build up a large client base to sustain yourself as a photographer and cover all the costs associated with being photographer with a client base that's doing at least one shoot a year hopefully multiple shoots a year spring minis fall minis cherry blossom minis Mother's Day shoots you know uh Christmas Shoes Easter Bunny shoot whatever it is you know you really have to work constantly and then you have to take all those shoots and you have to constantly Market them so you gotta that goes back to the marketing you have to be a really good marketer the competition is fierce there's so many photographers out there and good photographers with half decent equipment that does a really great job and can make their photos look really great so you have to be able to stand out and separate yourself from the competition and one of the things that's really key to that is doing something that's different it's not good enough to be good enough you have to be different to set yourself apart you have to shoot images and have a style and do work that is like and that's the style I want that makes you separate you from everybody else shooting engagement photos at um a conservation area and building a reputation is going to take Years it'll take years the fourth reason is the income in photography is incredibly inconsistent here in Canada if you're a wedding photographer you know it is very seasonal you are tending to shoot April maybe April May through October maybe November the winter not a lot of weddings happening when I was shooting weddings I actually have a couple coming up even though I just stopped doing because I have a cousin's wedding and I'm going to Costa Rica to shoot a destination wedding but one of the reasons I got my Irish citizenship was so that I could have an EU passport so that in the winters I could photograph destination weddings in Europe and so that I could live and work there without needing a Visa which which I can do but I no longer am doing weddings professionally only for friends and family so there's seasonal work the the work and the income is inconsistent and there when you were bills come due in January or you're trying to buy Christmas presents but you don't have the income to cover it maybe you need to cover your studio rent you need to cover your mortgage you need to cover your apartment rent that you you have to bank a way to be able to support you should do that or you need to be able to shoot multiple different genres to be able to support you through the different seasonal changes that's not going to be the same for season seasons are different all over the world here in Canada we have four seasons we have winter spring summer fall when it comes to weddings we have wedding season and we have the off season other parts of the world they view seasons in terms of like monsoon season or dry season rainy season dry season things like that in California it's like it's a normal season and it's the Santa anas it's windy here so seasons are different and they will impact you and your market and your business in in very different ways so that's something that you need to take into consideration and because of that your income is going to be inconsistent unless you're doing something like food photography product photography still Photography in which everything is shot in a in a controlled environment you know portrait photography can be like that but then again portrait photography is determined by holidays and can very differently throughout the year so you have to learn to save you have to learn to Market yep there's so much that you need to do finding new clients can be time consuming when you're trying to compete with all these other people and in a good business 80 of your income will come from 20 of your clients but in a photography business about 98 of your income comes from new clients and maybe two percent comes from repeat clients I suspect maybe the margins are a little bit different than that I might be a little hyperbolic but repeat clients are very rare to find in a photography business because people are typically looking for something specific at a specific point in time once and that's it so the other clients are are gold when you find them but you are competing with a lot of other people to get that gold the fifth and final reason you should not start a photography business is because you are passionate about photography the worst advice that I ever hear is you know Follow Your Passion pursue your passion start of photography business if you're passionate about photography you absolutely should not if you are passionate about photography just be passionate about it be an amateur be an amateur who becomes like a great photographer just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you need to turn it into a business doesn't mean can turn it into a business you could be a brilliant photographer a once in a generation photographer and not have the skills to run a proper business and then you end up hating photography and then don't shoot anymore just because you like something as a hobby doesn't mean you have the skills to be able to translate that into a business if you don't have the business skills don't even consider it I would love to be an amateur photographer the original definition of amateur is someone who does something because they love it it's not someone who's inexperienced the difference between an amateur and a professional is do you do something out of love or do you do something as a process of bringing in money it has nothing to do with skill level there are a lot of professional photographers who are not good photographers there are a lot of amateur photographers who are brilliant photographers what I will say what I will leave you with is if none of these feel like a deterrent then maybe you should consider starting a photography business I'm not trying to gatekeep I'm not trying to prevent you from getting into this to keep the competition down I just wish this was advice that I was given 10 years ago when I decided to become a professional photographer and take my amateur skills and start generating an income from them I didn't really have a choice I had shut down one company and I'd put myself out of work and then I happen a body of work a photography that was good was good enough to be able to Market but I also had been running a business so I had the business skills to be able to convert that amateur body of work into a professional body of work and grow from there and I had been doing SEO I've been doing SEO now for almost 20 years I knew I had some skills that could help Propel me forward that's it for this video I'm gonna make a video about five reasons why you should start a photography business as well once that's made yeah you'll find it right here and you can click on that and watch that next until then just click on and watch whatever videos there thanks for watching please subscribe to this channel for more videos take care thank you