It’s time to move away from your humble beginnings and start to position yourself as the expert you are. You have the knowledge, the dedication and the vision to be bigger than just a local photographer who takes nice photos.

What exactly is an expert? Experts answer complicated questions with ease. Experts produce inspiring work. Experts are known by name in their industries. Interested? Here are three ways that you can become known as a photography expert.

Option 1: Teach A Photography Class

You’re probably thinking, “Ugh, teach?” But, yes! You can inspire students and share your knowledge. Take your enthusiasm for photography and spread it to a class of eager and excited students. You teach, they learn and you become the expert. They will ask you questions about what camera is the best on the market and how to use the settings on a DSLR…what is a DSLR?! Questions you most likely already answer, since you are a respected professional photographer.

Don’t reject the idea of teaching due to your objection of writing a curriculum. Teaching a photography class isn’t as big and scary as it may seem. Magazine Mama sells ready-made, pre-written teaching plans for photography classes.

Start with the basics – regardless of students’ age. No one is coming to your class as an expert (that’s your roll)! A common question that beginning photographers who purchase a DSLR camera will have is about manual mode. How do you do shoot on manual and what are the benefits? Photography curricula on Magazine Mama start with these exact topics. Photography basics like understanding exposure, shutter speed, aperture and ISO.

The key to teaching kids is to start even smaller. Save technical features like aperture, shutter speed and ISO for later on in the course or at an advanced class. Kids are visual. They want to learn something that they can show someone, like the crayon drawing hanging on the fridge. A good place to start is to show them different shooting modes. It’s simple. This exercise shows kids what each mode is by using a picture:

• head = portrait mode
• mountain = landscape mode
• flower = macro mode
• person running = action mode
• a star in the background = nighttime mode

They choose the mode based on one of the subjects from above. After they get the hang of it, you can add in more modes like M, AV, TV and P.

Starting with the basics will never let you down. Build a solid foundation first and then add more complex topics later. Tailor your curriculum to the intended audience. Kids, adults and moms all have custom teaching plans at Magazine Mama. The hard work is done for you. Add your logo and press print. Curricula come in editable .psd formats. Instructions are included.

Option 2: Custom Magazine With Client Articles

Content in a custom magazine shows your clients your expertise. They accomplish two of the three things experts do: inspire and educate. Lead with inspiration for others. Fill the magazine template with your best work. The work that even you admitted was amazing. These are the photos that will inspire others to take action and distinguish you as an expert.

Marry your artsy self with a client focused business model. Go ahead and let your artistic voice shine in your studio welcome guide alongside your professional client-focused business persona. As we discussed earlier, to be known for something is to share expert knowledge. Show potential clients that you have the experience, eye and knowledge to do the job well and that they don’t need anyone else.

Clients read blogs and pin hundreds of photos to Pinterest before they make final decisions. Whoever they get this information from – they will see as the expert. Give them all of this information in a sleek, creative and informative welcome guide and be THE expert.

Sharing knowledge helps you help them help you. Magazine Mama has customizable magazine templates with pre-written articles. Topics like “what to wear”, “professional headshots and your business”, and “tips to rock your senior session” are included. These topics help you:

* Answer frequently asked questions
* Educate clients with answers to questions they didn’t know to ask
* Inspire clients to help you take epic photos

Option 3: Go Get Published

Don’t hide your work in a dark, cobwebby corner of your website. It should be front and center. If you want to be known in the photography field amongst the other billion photographers – you need to get your name out there.

The best (and easiest) way to get out there – is to get published. Magazines receive a lot of submissions every day from ambitious and talented photographers like you! And because of that – they are picky. Which means not everyone can bask in the warm glow of a magazine spread. What better way to obtain expert status than by having your images published in a highly respected and widely read industry publication? But, expert status isn’t the only reason to pitch your latest photo-shoot to an editor, it will also help you drive traffic to your website and blog and will give you a boost in sales.

Use code tiffinbox10 and get 10% off your order at Magazine Mama [aff]

Is your photography business fully protected? No, I am not talking about buying liability insurance (which I hope you also have). I am referring to things like having rock-solid contracts with your clients, being the right business entity and copyrighting your images.

While we spend a great deal of time and money on learning creative techniques, we rarely get our legal homework done. To understand some of the quagmires photographers have found themselves in, all you have to do is to switch on the evening news. Whether it is a disgruntled client or a duplicitous photographer, the media serves up stories often enough to make me worry.

And when you are worried, you aren't really creating your best work. At least, I know if I am distracted by any loose ends, I am not focused on the work at hand. Perhaps you are the same way. So, as a working photographer, getting my legal ducks in a row is a top priority. I want to be able to arrive at my client's home and know that both of us are protected by a set of standards and an agreement that will hold up in a court of law.

But going to a lawyer and having a variety of these documents all created could cost a pretty penny. That's when I stumbled across Small Business Bodyguard, about a year or so ago. Rachel Rodgers who founded Small Business Bodyguard also happens to be an attorney.

According to the Small Business Bodyguard site, it is:

For anyone starting a business.
Selling something online.
Selling something offline.
Running a website.
Pitching services.
Writing eBooks.
Launching products.
Hiring web designers / copywriters / VAs / interns / contractors.
Collaborating with others.
And selling anything to anybody.

If you need such a comprehensive collection of templates, ones that will walk you through a variety of scenario, then Small Business Bodyguard is for you. But at $595, it is a little expensive (compared to the thousands you could spend face-to-face with a lawyer, though, it is still a bargain).

To cater to the specific needs of the photography industry, Rachel just launched Legal Nunchucks: For Photographers [aff].

At $197, it is definitely affordable. But now through Friday, you can actually buy it for $97. Here's what you get:

50+ pages of digestible, fun content so you can learn about the legal precautions you need to take to make your business thrive PLUS the action and how-to to actually do it.

Client Service Agreement for Photographers Template

Model Release Template

Legal Checklist for Photographers

To find out more about Legal Nunchucks: For Photographers, check out my conversation with Rachel Rodgers about how and why having legal contracts is actually a good thing for both you and your clients:

Like all legal documents, if you use Small Business Bodyguard, Legal Nunchucks: For Photographers or anything else you download from the Internet, I implore you to still have it all looked over by a local (in-state) attorney. The resources mentioned above are, in in my opinion, a great way to get a head start into lining up those pesky ducks!

First, Here’s The Bad News:

Professional photography is a lousy industry. According to the US Department of Labor, median photographer earnings in 2013 was $29,280.

What makes the industry so bad? Take your pick:

Zero scalability: With a photography business you are simply trading your time for dollars, and you have a finite amount of time. Compare this with a retail store that can sell more items, or open up more stores. An online business like Google has nearly limitless capacity. A manufacturing business like Apple can open up sales to more and more markets/countries around the world and build more/different products. You, on the other hand, can only shoot a limited amount before you run out of time or drop dead from exhaustion.

Zero barriers to entry: Every day you probably see a dozen new photography businesses open up in your area. Photography businesses are ridiculously easy to start. Since just about 100% of new professional photographers started out as hobbyists, they already have the gear, Photoshop and a computer. And photography web design companies make it cheap and easy to start a website. How about a beautiful website design, free domain name, blog and hosting for $8 a month?

Zero equity building: Most entrepreneurs start a business with an exit strategy in mind. How are they going to cash in on their hard work? It may be an initial public offering, it may be getting acquired, but in one way or another the entire point of the exercise is to build a valuable property that can be monetized. Now let’s look at Sally Smith Wedding Photography. On the day she decides to call it quits, what exactly is there to cash in? Nothing. Maybe she can get a few thousand dollars by selling her gear, but that’s about it. There’s no business to sell.

Now, How About Some Good News:

You can still run a great business, even in a lousy industry.

It’s hard to imagine an industry worse than professional photography, but if I had to name one, I’d pick the airline industry. The airline industry sucks for a few reasons:

Extremely high capital expenditures. A single Boeing 737 (one of the most common planes in the industry) costs anywhere between $52 million and $87 million.
Extremely high labor costs. Skilled pilots, mechanics, ground crew and air crew are expensive and labor disputes are common.
Extremely high fuel costs. Not only does fuel cost a lot, the price is always varying, making it hard to plan and/or expensive to hedge.
Extremely high vulnerability to exogenous events. Weather, air traffic control delays, terrorism, you name it. A big negative event in any of these things can cause millions of dollars in added costs and/or lost revenue.

The result? It’s hard to name an airline that hasn’t gone bankrupt. Let’s just look at a few of the big names that have gone bankrupt in the past 20 years:

Continental Airlines
Frontier Airlines
Eastern Airlines
Pan American World Airways
America West Airlines
TWA (Trans World Airlines)
US Airways
United Airlines
Air Canada
Aloha Airlines
Northwest Airlines
Delta Airlines
Frontier Airlines
American Airlines

So just about every single airline that you’ve ever heard of has gone through bankruptcy. Some reorganized and re­emerged, others simply disappeared.

The bottom line ­ the airline industry sucks rotten eggs.

And yet, there’s Southwest Airlines.

If you invested $10,000 in Southwest Airlines in 1990, your investment would now be worth $508,667.

How did they do it? Why have they thrived while almost every other competitor has gone bankrupt? There have been many, many articles written about the success of Southwest, so I’ll just give you some highlights:

They treat their customers well. How about “bags fly free?” The last time I flew Southwest, the pilot announced that our flight saved $3,300 in fees by not charging for checked bags. Flight changes are easy and relatively painless. And they move fast.

Efficiency. Southwest turns its planes around faster than any other airline, which allows them to fly nearly one extra flight per day per plane compared to their competitors. Everything is standardized ­ they use a single plane (the 737) on all their routes. This saves on maintenance time and training. Their simple point­-to-­point routes means that they have the fewest percentage of lost bags in the industry,

Happy employees. Southwest has never had a strike, despite being the most heavily unionized company in the industry (87%). The employees are on a mission to provide excellent customer service. You’ll never see an airline employee smile more than you do with Southwest. Happy employees make happy customers.

By doing simple things: running efficient operations and treating their customers and employees well ­ Southwest has managed to thrive in a lousy industry.

It sounds simple ­yet it’s easy to lose sight of. You can succeed, even in a lousy industry.

Now, getting back to your photography business. Is business not what you hoped it would be? Are you struggling competing with all the newbies in your market? Phone not ringing? Running any business is hard, but trying to succeed in a lousy industry is even harder.

If you’re doing great ­ that’s awesome, you’re probably doing the right things! If you’re not, what are you going to do about it? Complain? Spend a few hours today online reading camera reviews and lens-sharpness charts?

You’re going to have to reinvent yourself. Learn from Southwest Airlines and do what your competitors aren’t doing. Kick yourself in the butt.

Phone isn’t ringing? Then get on the phone and make some calls! When was the last time you met a wedding planner for coffee? When was the last time you got together with some other photographers to talk about cross-­referrals? When was the last time you met with a realtor who could give out some of your gift cards to families who just purchased a new home in your area? Get off the internet and get on the phone! I guarantee you your competitors aren’t doing this.

No shoots because it’s the slow season? Then start shooting! How about collaborating with a local wedding gown designer or bridal shop to set up some awesome winter bridal fashion shoots? Split the cost of hair/makeup with the designer. Make it a production that turns into an epic blog post and portfolio material.

Influential bloggers in your area? When was the last time you called them and offered a free headshot session?

Still have a 2008­era website? You know, one of those Flash­-based template sites that don’t work on an iPad or iPhone? Get going now on making a new, awesome site that’s also optimized for mobile.

Only write one blog post a month? Or less? Writing blog posts is one of the best ways for customers to find you. Get going.

Sitting alone at your desk all day without talking to anyone? Call some other vendors (florists, planners, DJs, caterers, cake bakers etc.) and put together your own Mastermind group.

Do you know most of the financial planners in your area? Why not? Have you called them to meet for coffee (yeah, I know, I’m big on coffee)? They have the same target customer base that you do ­ affluent clients. They’re always looking for gifts for their clients, but gifts are expensive (e.g. $75 for a fruit & cheese basket). Why not see if they’ll offer one of your portrait photography gift cards to any client that opens a college savings plan?

How about you try to stop asking for stuff, and instead start giving. Grow your circle and find ways to help them. Why not do a photo shoot of one of the caterers in your circle? Make it magazine­-worthy. Blog about them with links to their site. Shoot portraits of them and their food. Help them put together a blog post for their own blog linking to your site, of course). Make them look like the best caterer in town. When you help others it will all come back to you.

The new year is always a good time to kick yourself in the butt. Stop moping. Stop wishing. Stop wasting time. Be the photographer that makes a great income despite being in a lousy industry. Just get out there and start making things happen!