It’s time again for the Clickin moms affiliate contest which means discount codes for you! If you use the code FRIEND when you sign up for your membership by clicking the banner above or using this link: Clickin’ Moms then you’ll save 20% on your membership!

As you can see the website’s been through some changes and I’ve been working my caboose off to get some products out there and really get this show on the road. I’m also throwing in some shameless plugs for the other services I offer so, uh, beware!?

The wordpress make over was done by me and it is one of the services I offer through www.bigsitelittlebiz.com. There will be a free wordpress setup week coming soon so watch out for it. There’s also finally a logo and I do have to say I’m quite proud of it.

In other news….

There’s now an Ambitious Photographer Facebook page – check out the awesome welcome page If you’re looking for a page of your own and a twitter background to match let me know – I’m looking for guinea pigs for my new social media package.

And if you ‘like’ the facebook page you’ll be the first to know when the new Wall Guides come out! I am so insanely excited to be creating these not only for other photographers but for my own use. I’ll be writing a separate post with more details on these guides later this week along with getting some of the things I already have created for sale (or free) here.

Look forward to:

• Wall Guides
• Crop Guide
• Copyright CD Case
• Cheat Cards
• Paper Packs
• Collage & Storyboard Templates
• Actions
• Watermark Brushes
• More, more and more.

I wish I could give you a step by step guide… just follow the steps and you’ll be pulling in 100K + a year… but I can’t.

I can however give you some tips, resources and other information that should point you in the right direction to making your photography business profitable.

First and foremost please make sure that you know your camera, the basics of photography and how to take a good photograph. It’s important to make sure you have the skill set it takes to do the job you’re charging someone for otherwise you should be doing it as a learning experience and not charging what those with experience charge.

Be upfront with people when they ask what you can and can’t do, most people will appreciate when you let them know that while you don’t have experience in a particular area you’re willing to give it a try and them a discount. Otherwise you may end up under delivering and one bad experience can lead to lots of bad word of mouth. You don’t want to have to try to counteract that later in your business career. Okay so there’s a side lesson there – happy customers equals good publicity – more on that later.

Okay there’s one other thing that is a slight pet peeve of mine, if you’re going to charge people and act like you have a business then you have to do ALL the parts. You need to pay taxes on money you collect on the upside that also means you can claim deductions for your expenses. You should also have business insurance, a tax ID number and any other important stuff your state requires of a business, while this doesn’t sound fun it really is the right way to do things. Also set up separate accounts for your business and personal money, yes when you’re just starting out you’ll be putting some personal $ into that business account but this is the easiest way to keep your stuff separate.

Oh yes back to the subject – making money. Making money (or I should say profit) requires that you know how much you’re spending.

I wrote this page about pricing and how to keep it easy, go read it please!!

Basically what it tells you is to add up all your yearly expenses (not things that are associated to sessions only) and figure out what you want to make a year. Add those together and multiply by about 1.35 so you can figure out what you need to make a year to pay your taxes and still take home the amount you want as profit. From there you can determine how much you want to work and therefore how much you’ll have to charge.

Okay so now that you’re back from reading the page about pricing and downloading the spreadsheet to help you figure out your product costs we’re going to talk about client relationships very quickly.

Happy clients = repeat clients. Period.

Under promise, over deliver. If you say that you guarantee 20-30 images in a gallery for viewing then feel free to throw in 35 – now don’t take this too far and give them 75 so they get overwhelmed. When a client purchases one of your packages throw in 8 extra wallets. Help your clients make decisions about wall art with take home materials.

I think you get the idea – I can’t give away all my secrets

Hope this has been helpful feel free to leave other ideas you have in the comments below!

Okay here’s a post jam packed with things you can win that will help you out enormously as a photographer:

Into working with Newborns? How about a posing guide?

http://4theloveoffocus.com/blog/new-vendor-win-a-newborn-posing-guide/

There’s a contest over at MCP where you can win a Shootsac – Oh how I want one – and a collection of actions from MCP

http://www.mcpactions.com/blog/2010/04/21/win-mcp-actions-shootsac/

And this one ends today – so hop to it! There’s a giveaway and a promo code to willette designs over at all things baby.

http://www.allthingsbaby.biz/?p=727

I’m writing this post because I’m in the process of trying to decide what my next purchase should be. I’m contemplating between a few different lenses that each have their own uses in my business. They all each come with their own price tag as well.

I’ve narrowed it down to two different lenses each filling an entirely different need in my business and now before I go and spend more money in one day on camera equipment than I think I have in the last 5 years on clothes I am going to borrow the lenses to play with them before I decide which ones to purchase.

But where will I find some unsuspecting stranger to let me play with their equipment before I fork over the money for it? Easy, there are actually quite a few places that rent lenses, bodies, lighting equipment and various other photographic paraphernalia. I’ve compiled a list for you below.

Now this will be my first adventure into the land of borrowing equipment so I have no reviews on these places or prior experience and can’t really offer you anything but their websites, however, once I have completely the process  I fully intend to tell you how it went and let you know which lens I end up purchasing.

http://www.borrowlenses.com/

http://cameralensrentals.com

http://lensprotogo.com/

http://www.lensrentals.com/

http://prophotorental.com

http://www.rentglass.com/

http://tryandbuylens.com/

http://www.ziplens.com/

Happy renting!

If you have any experience with the places listed above, or know of any that I’ve missed, please feel free to chime in!

The internet is full of photography information, marketing information, blog/website information and much much more. You can easily spend hours cruising around drinking it in, I know I have. So I made it my goal to put everything I found interesting and that has helped me along the way in one place where you could come and find it all. I’ve also got a few projects in the works to provide professional photographers with design + marketing elements and other free resources.

For now though this site serves mainly as a place to compile information so I do all the searching for you. Enjoy and stop back often as I tend to spend a lot of time on the internet and I’m sure I’ll be adding things on a weekly basis.

-Jessica