From Andy at photographers.co.uk
In the main I get approached by people looking for ideas as to how they can start a photography business and by people whose business is struggling and could do with a lift. The people I rarely hear from are the people sat in the middle with a business that is rolling along nicely.
An article that caught my eye recently covered businesses that appear to be doing just that, but have actually hit a plateau without the owner realising it. One phrase that struck a chord was that when something is green it grows. When something is ripe it rots! In many ways it doesn’t seem fair. You put so much effort into getting started and growing your business yet as soon as it is established and you ease up to give yourself a pat on the back it starts to rot.
My own online businesses have been running for a round 10 years and this is something I can identify with. There was a time when one site I run was performing extremely well. I thought I just needed to carry on doing what I was doing and everything would be fine. I learnt the hard way that no matter how well everything appears to be going you need to keep coming up with new ideas to make your business continue to grow.
How often do you change your products or inject new ideas into your marketing?
Your Website Design is Now Even More Important
Google have been making changes to their search pages. If you change your search settings you can now see a small image of a website before you click through to it.
This means that the better your website looks the more people are likely to click through to it from the search pages. So how your website looks is even more important now.
On the subject of Google and your website I have been told that Google will soon be placing more emphasis on how long your website takes to load. This could be of great significance to photographers. Many of the websites I visit often take a while to load up the first page.
If you are considering having your website redesigned in the near future it may be worth your while to consider this when talking to web designers.
Fast load times are not only great for visitors, but soon they may also give you a leg up in the search engines.
How Far can you Go on your Own?
The majority of photographers I speak to who make a very good living from photography have a team of people behind them. Not every one wants the hassle of employing staff, but if you want to grow your business it makes sense to plan early on areas that you can delegate to either your own staff or outsource to other companies.
There are reasons why delegating early can help. The longer you leave it the more you get used to the way things currently work. The longer you leave it the more knowledge you need to pass over when the time comes. It also makes it harder to let go.
With so many people setting up their own small companies outsourcing is certainly an option you may find worth considering over employing your own team.
Talking to people in various industries it seems that one successful method is to identify long term tasks that someone else can do. This could be accountancy, sales, SEO or retouching. It appears that people find outsourcing runs more smoothly where you can go back to the same person with little, but often tasks where you can build a working relationship over a period of time.
