Earning Second-money is easier than the first. This concept is taken from the psychology of closing sales, such as adding on “extras” to the initial package (like extra hours of coverage for a photoshoot), only now it’s applied to selling prints.
Photographers need to motivate clients to purchase upgrades and other add-ons to generate more revenue. One great sale moment that cannot be overlooked is in the online photo gallery. This is when clients will walk through their treasured memory for the first time. Here are several tips for photographers who want to run a long-term and profitable photography business with an online photo gallery.
Show Your Best Photos to Your Clients
Photography is a luxury business. It’s important to build an environment for clients to feel a connection and special. In the process of working with clients, photographers need a means to share their images. It’s one thing to store a collection of photos in something like a Dropbox folder and share a link, but doing so this way leaves plenty to be desired in terms of presentation. It also doesn’t offer important functions like proofing or sales features. For those reasons, it is necessary for photographers to create a custom branded and exclusive online photo gallery that reflects style, is professional in appearance, in addition to being easy to use for clients.
Give Clients Positive Hints to Upgrades
Don’t stop introducing photos after providing clients with their online photo gallery link. Guide them to mark favorite images and help them picture how their album will turn out. For example.
- Select one of their favorite images to use on the album cover.
- Suggest what images to enlarge as spreads in the album.
- Custom text to print alongside the images to make it personal.
Plus, leave comments for the images they favorited. This will help product design later, and it can also give clients something to look forward to when seeing the images.
When clients hire a photographer, they already have in mind the prints they want to see from the shoot and expectations of cost. This will also help you understand what they’re looking for in terms of imagery or shots they value. By being able to convey and deliver images they expect and love, clients are more likely to purchase additional prints, wall arts and other print products.
Let Your Clients See and Select Products Themselves
Upselling techniques work by satisfying the needs of the customer completely – or exceeding them. A practical technique is to give a client the limited time offer. Explain why taking advantage of this offer is beneficial. But in order to entice clients to book more sessions in the future, creating a sense of urgency is not enough.
Successful photographers work also as a mentor to their clients, by guiding them to better understand what to values, or may come to value. For example, the photographer may praise that the photo is beautiful and will look especially good and memorable. But they won’t emphasize the necessity of upselling like a salesman.
How to use this kind of implicit guidance and avoid potentially leaving a lot of money on the table? This is where an online store is invaluable because it allows the client to preview the print product themselves at their own comfort without the expectation of a sales pitch. They will let their guard down to fully appreciate the photos. The client can see what the products are rather than only hear about them and therefore, be open to make additional purchases.
With an easy-to-use solution like Zno Estore™, the online print store for photographers natively built into Zno Gallery™, there is no reason to give it a try especially when it is free.
In Zno Estore™, client’s photos are displayed onto the print products. It also includes an easy-to-use designer for clients to change options like size and cover or frame so that they can play and preview how the resulting print product will look like when printed.
Select Popular Products for Second-Money
Which print products should you offer in your online print store? Should you keep it minimal or offer every print product available?
The answer will vary, of course, but somewhere in between is a good starting point. Consider your target market, their taste and their budget. Then provide a printing solution that interests them which may include popular products from different print labs.
With Zno Gallery™, you can enjoy the benefit of printing products directly from Zno Cloud or by manual fulfillment with other print labs all through the Zno Estore™.
Zno Estore™ is natively built into Zno Gallery™. It allows you to set price lists on a wide range of popular print products with a simple click, including lay-flat photo albums, framed prints, wall arts, table top print products and more.
Master Your Cost to Earn More Profit
In the photography industry, reducing costs can start from reducing labor costs and reducing goods costs.
The tools in this online photo gallery helps you save time and money while also making it easier than ever to earn second-money through print sales. If you’re worried about adding more work to your workflow, don’t be. Once your Zno Estore™ is set up, there’s little else for you to do in terms of operating the store. Here is how it works.
- Upload your client’s photos to Zno Gallery™.
- Invite your client to view their online photo gallery via email.
- You can set up templates in advance with your style and studio branding so you only need to enter their name, email address and a custom message if preferred.
- Your client will click on the email link you sent and view their photos in a professionally designed online photo gallery on an unbranded website.
- Request your client to select their favorite photos.
- In the online photo gallery, your client can purchase print products of their photos. Zno Estore™ includes a wide range of products, including prints, professional photo albums, wall art.
- Collect client’s payment based on the margins that you set up in advance when setting up Zno Estore™. Zno Estore™ is 0% commission, Zno Cloud doesn’t take a penny out of your sales.
With the Automatic or Self-Fulfillment feature, less time is needed to communicate and follow-up orders. Automatic fulfillment works in exactly the way it sounds. When your clients submit an order, the order is automatically transferred to the print lab after your approval where it is made and shipped to client. With Self-Fulfillment, you are responsible for fulfilling the order with another print lab and ship to client.
While there are a good number of online client galleries for you to choose from, it’s important to note all features each online photo gallery offers and how they can work for you. The best thing about Zno Gallery™ is how easy it is to use and sell your prints, albums, and wall art with 0% commission. Save you time and earn second-money with Zno Gallery™ now!
