Today's guest blog post is by Rosh Sillars, a veteran photographer with a photojournalism background specializing in people, food and interiors. He earned his BFA in photography at the College of Creative Studies (CCS), Detroit. Rosh offers his services to traditional media, new media and corporate clients. He owns the creative representation firm The Rosh Group, Inc. and teaches photography at two universities and serves as a marketing and social media consultant for Synectics media. Rosh is also the coauthor of the book Linked Photographers guide to marketing and social media.Please visit his new project The Driven Business.

Is it really possible to increase dramatically your photography income?

Yes.

Photography has changed over the last 10 years. Digital cameras have made everyone a photographer; many of the basic point-and-shoot jobs have been lost. But, that doesn’t mean the opportunities are gone.

The truth is, there are more opportunities than ever. The secret is to make your competition irrelevant.

How?

Great photography and your creative ideas are the answer. Photography can be combined with writing, video, Photoshop, and other digital technologies to help you create unique offerings.

You must find your niche.

If you don’t have a good website, you are not in business. Make sure it is easy to use and well-optimized (If you don't know what that means, find out.) to attract the people who are searching for what you do. Don’t take search engine optimization lightly. Make sure you have a blog that is updated weekly with great images and text.

Get out of your home, office, or studio. Business is about people and developing relationships. Go to at least one networking event a week. Make sure you have business cards, portfolio cards, and your freshest images ready to share on your smart phone or tablet. Always have a portfolio available. You never know when opportunity will come knocking.

Follow up using the social web. Keep your new connections alive through social media. Develop new relationships using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Don’t sell to your followers, educate them. Teach them how to find leads for your business and you return the favor with opportunities and valuable introductions.

Create partnerships with companies that focus on the same target market. Develop packages and market your products in cooperation.

Don’t just sell your product. Sell the experience of working with you. You can’t hide behind your products. Photographers today need to understand that if they are going to be successful they are part of the product. Customers, in many cases, are buying the photographer more than the photography.

Make it easy for someone to do business with you. It is important to protect your copyrights. If copyrights were not important, people wouldn’t be working so hard to take them from you. Keeping your copyrights will increase your income by providing more opportunities to resell your images at the appropriate time. But, the issue of copyright, business practices, and contracts doesn’t have to be an us versus them battle. Keep it simple.

Unless you photograph events, you should be using the per-image-pricing model. Your rates should be based on the value of each image, not your time. It is much easier for customers to justify a few hundred dollars per commercial image than $1,500 a day for the photographer's time. This model can easily be adjusted and applied to portraits and family photography. Each image has value; never give away a valuable CD full of images.

Don't forget to follow up.

Communicate regularly with past clients. They are the best referral sources you have, so make sure you collect e-mails and addresses. Don’t let them forget what a great experience they had working with you. Keep them up-to-date with you newest images. Give them the tools and the opportunity to refer you.

The best marketing campaign you can participate in is to regularly send hand-written thank-you notes. People like to be appreciated. Your appreciation is often rewarded with additional income.

What strategies will you employ to grow your photography income? What are you trying now? Willing to share so that can learn from each other? Post your thoughts below!

As I mentioned a few days back, I had the honor of meeting both David Hobby and Joe McNally during their Flash Bus stop in Boston. Thanks to Adorama – The Photography People, I was able to interview them both. If you haven't seen the interview with David Hobby yet, please check it out now.

Here is the one with Joe McNally:

This wasn't the first time I met Joe. I was one of his students at his Dobbs Ferry workshops (highly recommend it, by the way) in June 2009.

I have two of his books – The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes and The Moment It Clicks: Photography secrets from one of the world's top shooters. His next book, Sketching Light, is due out soon and based on what he has just told me in the interview above, I just pre-ordered it.

If you have any of his books or you have attended Joe McNally's presentations in the past, please comment below.

Please thank Adorama again for making this interview possible. When they say they are the “Photography People,” I know they mean it. One way you can help Tiffinbox and yourself is by ordering all your photographic gear through them. Heck, if they are the go-to-store for Joe McNally's professional needs, why not for you?

*Yes there are affiliate links embedded in this blog post.

Most of you probably already know who David Hobby is. He is a photographer, teacher and founder of the Strobist Movement, which encourages photographers to use their flashes off-of their cameras. His website Strobist is the go-to place to learn about off-camera flash techniques. His new project is HOCO360 – A Visual Journal of Howard County, Maryland, where he lives.

When David and Joe McNally decided to embark on The Flash Bus tour through the United States, I had to go. Boston was the closest of locations for me and so on April 9, I drove up to listen and watch two masters at work at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf.

Both David and Joe graciously allowed me to speak with them for a few minutes. In this post, we hear from David. He talks about creating a community and his new project.

All of this was arranged by Jeffrey Snyder of Adorama. So I am very grateful to him and the company that is truly there for photographers worldwide. Adorama is where I buy all my camera gear. Customer service is great and the price is right.

Watch the video and post your comments!

The Flash Bus tour wraps up soon, with most of the cities already sold out. The presentation in Boston was house-full. These guys not only know their stuff, they also know how to entertain. The repartees between them kept us all laughing out loud often. Now, if you can't make it any of their last remaining presentations, please consider buying David's Lighting In Layers DVD and Joe's The Language of Light. You will get a sense of what it is like to be in the audience from these excellent resources. I bought them and will have a full on review here soon. [Both are affiliate links. Support this site, buy through the links please!]

Blogs began as personal journals – ones that were kept private or open to the world. Now they are so much more than diaries. They are a way of communicating with your clients. Call it “marketing” if you will, but it works. If you are in need of learning something specific, there is likely a blog that covers that niche.

Photography is no different, though there are tons of photography blogs out there, including this one. What I've envisioned, of course, is to make this site truly community driven. That means hosting guest bloggers, entertaining opposing viewpoints in the comments section and being open to suggestions on making this site better for everyone.

To an extent, I have to be careful about what I publish and even promote. I am contacted virtually every week by a vendor looking to have her or his products and services mentioned here. And I am happy to promote them if (and it's a big IF) the products and services are truly helpful for other photographers.

There are times when I am sent review copies of magazines, books, scripts and Photoshop actions. Obviously, once these are sent to me, I get to keep them. If I am sent camera equipment to test, I do have to return those of course. While I am open to receiving these gifts and opportunities to review items, I am clear on one thing – if the items do not meet my standards or aren't going to be very helpful for other photographers – I reserve the right to not mention it here. Does that sound fair to you? There is little or no point in berating a product or service in public when we all know that we are all just trying to make a go of it. I do and have in the past emailed the vendor privately with my thoughts. So, please be sure that I do act as a filter, for your benefit.

The blog post about creating blog montages was clearly helpful to Richard Esposito, a Connecticut-based wedding photographer. Read his testimonial below:

“Thank you for the suggestion with using Storyboard! I used to do these collage type blogs in the past and it was way too time consuming. I just gave up. I write actions like this all the time, but I didn't have the time to even think this up. The Storyboard script for Photoshop is beyond just an action with all it's options. I purchased it and it will now be a big part of my blogging workflow. As you know, I'm a bit of a workflow junkie. Thank you Seshu and Storyboard! I'm loving the Tiffinbox blog.”

Or, this one by Stacey Doyle on Twitter just today:

I am loving @brandcampblog's Circus Circus to help me with my writing! Thank you @PicSeshu for your review! http://bit.ly/ewlClz

So, here is my question to you – Do you love the products and services mentioned here on Tiffinbox?

Was it an e-book like Ed Verosky's series on Taking Portraiture To The Next Level or Stuart Little's recent tutorial on creating rounded corners in Lightroom 3?

Tell me which blog posts you have found useful. Would you like to see more reviews, tutorials, or both? Email me at seshu at tiffinbox dot org. I look forward to hearing from you all. If you have suggestions on products and services that you feel photographers would find useful, please contact me as well. I am always open to learning about what is out there.

When it comes to business, Kristen Kalp doesn't clown around.

She is the author behind the outrageously astute BrandCamp Blog and also a photographer based in Philadelphia.

Circus Circus, her new offering in the form of a PDF, tackles the sometimes difficult task of communicating with one's potential business clients. It's more a workshop than an e-book, so come prepared to roll up your sleeves and get some elbow grease.

Circus Circus isn't just a bunch of copy that I've written so you can paste it into your website and hope for the best. That's like buying brownies from the bakery and eating 'em right up – eating brownies doesn't get you any closer to creating brownies.

In the 52-page book, Kalp, takes several irreverent swipes at conventional business writing books by presenting her material in both a concise and witty manner. She is comfortable engaging her audience from the get go. Just take a look at the table of contents:

Now, I don't know of anyone looking at that table of contents who will not want to read right through in one sitting. I did that, knowing full well that there might be parts where I would be asked to stop, write things down and then reflect.

The first challenging part of the book was coming up with a manifesto. To be honest, I am still not done with mine. Kalp says she took nearly five hours to complete her manifesto. What's so important about a manifesto? Well, it “establishes the sound of YOUR voice on your website or in your brochures.” That, in my opinion, is reason enough to keep chipping at it. I promise to share my manifesto when I feel it is ready for public consumption. What helps is Kalp's five-step process to craft that manifesto, each with vivid examples and a worksheet to practice on your own.

The part of Kalp's e-book that I found most fascinating was the “Fire-Breathing Show,” where words are used to convey features and benefits to clients. I know I struggle with this in my own copy, but this guide book shows you how to arrive at these personal and business characteristics, to help sell YOU to your clients.

Kalp also talks about offering your clients incentives (she calls them cotton-candy to stick to the circus metaphor), creating a one-line bio, how to respond to e-mails, crafting an elegant e-mail signature, writing a FAQ email, negotiating price objections and expressing yourself in blog posts.

And you can see that Kalp practices what she preaches. Take a look at her own photography website – Essential Imagery. Just about every part of it is eager to connect with the visitor. “Let's Have An Adventure! What kind?,” is an invitation to join her in something mysterious, yet cool. Her website exudes her down-to-earth, yet fun personality.

If you are a photographer, you can no longer just post great images on your site and expect your potential clients to be able to connect with you. You do have to write and express yourself. If you struggle with the written word, Kristen Kalp's Circus Circus is must-buy. She'll take you step by step (and it isn't in the least bit easy mind you) through the various parts of your site where you may want to tighten up your writing and engage your reader.

It's priced at $149 (and I bought my copy, by the way) so it isn't inexpensive. If you are looking to persuade your clients that you are worth what you charge for your services, then the value this e-book/guidebook/workbook is truly immense. Full disclosure, I get no financial commission for suggesting this book to you. If Kristen reads this review and feels like sharing a special promo code with us, I'll update this post so you can order the book within a specific time frame. Does that sound good to you?

Sound off below if you have already bought Circus Circus. What did you think of it? How far along are you on your manifesto? What portions of it have you already put into play for your business? Start the dialogue here. Let's talk!

Well, Kristen did respond to my request for a special promotional code to be used towards Circus Circus. At check out use “SESHU” and get $50 off. This is good only through April 5, 2011, so bust a move. Your final price will be $99. Nice!