Are you wondering what photography products for clients will sell and earn you money? – learn what products to offer, top selling photo products and the best portrait photography products.
Choosing what to sell to your photography clients is an important part of your business. It’s what your clients show off from their session with you to their friends and family. What they buy from you will be around for many generations to come. How cool is that?!
So how do you go about choosing what to sell to your clients? Choosing products and then pricing for those products is fun but can be tricky. There’s no one perfect product line. Your photography business is so different than anyone else’s. Your clients are different. Your market is different.
So let’s talk about choosing products for your photography business!
Photography Products to Sell
- Define what you want to sell.
What makes you happy to create for your clients? If you hate creating something you have 2 choices
- Don’t offer it.
OR
- Find a way to love creating it either through outsource or simplifying your workflow.
Here’s an example, ALBUMS! I loved seeing the final product of an album from my newborn sessions. At first I hated how much time it took me to create but they were a best seller and my heart sang when they came in the mail. So I found a way to love creating them. Instead of using templates in Photoshop (SO time consuming and tedious), I found Album Stomp which cut down my creation time into a fraction of what it took me in Photoshop. Now the happiness of selling albums to my clients was effortless because I loved creating them AND seeing the final product. If I wouldn’t have been able to simplify my workflow, I could have outsourced. But I didn’t want to cut it from my product line because they were a best seller.
Photography Products for Clients
- Define what they want.
What your clients want to buy is just as important as what you want to sell. Get laser focused on getting to know what your ideal clients wants to buy from you. If your sales are lower than you’d like them to be, it might be because you don’t offer what they are really looking for. If you’re not sure, just ask them. Maybe they like the albums ok but they’d really like to the option of an image box with all the images as a 4×6. You could add that to your product line and still make sure there’s a great profit margin for you too! No matter what you do, the next step is most important.
- Keep it simple!
When I first started my studio, I was so excited to offer a ton of products with every finishing, sizing, add-on option possible. Just thinking about it all makes my head hurt. And that’s exactly how my clients felt too.
There were too many options and my clients instantly felt overwhelmed with choices. So guess what most of them did? Not much! My sales were really low even though my clients had the money and wanted to spend it on custom products. I was making it too complicated.
But something magical started to happen when I only offered 7 different kinds of products – prints, storyboards, canvas, mini album, regular album, image box and digitals and 1 package option – with no extra decision making needed. My sales went through the roof! They didn’t feel overwhelmed with choices so they were able to purchase what they really wanted.
SO keep it simple. Keep your product line and menu easy to digest and make choices. Instead of offering a 5×5, 8×8 and 10×10, just offer the 10×10 album with a set number of pages at a premium prices. Your album sells will thank me for that!
4. Keep track
Another piece of advice I have is keep track of what you sell. As you make sales, keep track of the number of each kind of product you sell. At the end of the year, look to see what your most popular products are and what are your least popular products are. If you have some products that are selling a ton, that means the demand is high and you can probably increase your prices a bit there. If you have some that aren’t selling that well you can either cut them from your product line to simplify even more or you can increase your marketing around those products if you really think it’s something that increases your client experience.
5. Tweak
When you’re choosing your product line and pricing, stay tuned into what you want for your business and your clients and not what you see your competition doing. The way to stand out and create a photography business you love is to do what works best for YOU, not everyone else! Tweak what you offer with each season of growth or with time when you’ve tracked what sells best and what doesn’t!
There are a plethora of products you can offer so my first recommendation is to gather a list of product ideas. Then begin to price them out, see what your profit will be and what products best fit you and your brand. Then begin to get samples of those products and show them off to your photography clients!
Photography products can really be a lot of fun to incorporate into your photography business.
HOW TO START A PHOTOGRAPHY BUSINESS :
Part 1: How to Build Your Portfolio When Starting a Photography Business
Part 2: 7 Ways to Find New Photography Clients
Part 3: 5 Proven Strategies for a Successful Photography Blog
Part 4: How to Raise Prices in Your Photography Business
Part 5: What Photography Products to Sell to Your Clients
Part 6: Using Social Media Wisely for your Photography Business
GUEST BLOGGER:
Brittany Griggs of Simply for Creatives
The numbers girl for creative small businesses on a mission to make numbers a walk in the park so you can get back to what you love most.
Samantha says
Hi, I cannot get the link for ‘how to lay out your product line worksheet’ to download from your ‘what photography products to sell to your clients’ post.
I would really apprecuate it if you could email me the worksheet.
Alyssa @ Aly Dawn says
Those images are so precious! Great advice.
Charlotte says
I, too, would like that worksheet, but the link is not working. Also, what professional printer do you use that provides those options. I’m a former Mississippian and am pleased to find your blog and work!
Sixth-Bloom says
Charlotte! Let me check into that link. I highly recommend mpix.com as they are for any consumer. If you are looking for something that is professional quality that is a great start. You can look into Millers lab which or whcc.com as well although they are a bit more to set up an account. Yippee – for a fellow southern Mississippi gal!
Kelly says
I too would also appreciate a copy of the Product Line Worksheet. The link still appears to not be working. Is it possible to be emailed a copy, please?