Posted by Jean Keeter on April 17, 2006 at 2:58 PM
Hi! My name is Jeannie and I am hoping to open a side-business doing freelance photography. I live down at the Jersey Shore and intend to take mostly nature/local happenings photographs.
An overview of my pursuit: looking to set-up a sole proprietorship, post a website, and try to sell/get photos published with local newspapers/periodicals/establishments.
Any advice on possible business names, web hosts, and words of experience on DBAs/sole proprietorships would be greatly appreciated!
Jeannie
Posted by larry palumbo on April 17, 2006 at 6:55 PM
set up as a sole proprieter. to me, business name is a personal preference. it seems in photography, most people just use their names.
i think i host my website on icd soft. maybe a google search will turn up their host site. i like it, but havent had experience anywhere else.
being a good photographer and making sellable images is actually the easiest part of the process from my experience. marketing yourself and getting the sales is where you make or break as a photographer.
I agree, making saleable images and getting the skills to make photographs worthy of sales is easy. Getting the photos in front of buyers and the content of photos to match what buyers want is the hard part. Marketing is 90% of the job. Your best bet to get published is to offer package deals of photos with text. If you can write, you will have a leg up on 90% of your competitors! Make photo/text packages geared to the local market and you will have more work than you can handle. As for name, I would market yourself, name recognition is everything
A couple of books that will help you with your freelance operation (photographers market 2007) should be out soon. The British equal (the freelance photographer's market handbook) 2006 0r 2007 will help you get your photos and packages the way companis want to receive and review them.
I agree about the small market opportunities, and in fact that leads to my second and very important point: Looking at the very long term and our own experience, I would not name the business after yourself.
We've been very successful in building our business over the last 15 years, to the point that it is now much more than a box of camera gear and a cabinet of slides. It includes real estate (we own the commercial building housing our studio), an established name and long client list with high repeat rate, a substantial annual income, vehicles, and name recognition. All of those things contribute greatly to the value of the business over and above the (depreciated) value of our camera gear and image collection.
In short, it is an established enterprise which has value in and of itself, over and above the value of the equipment and photos. We can sell it for consirably more as a package including real estate, name, clientelle, equipment and vehicles. But the consarned thing is named after us!! Now what do we do?
We've been careful to copyright all images in our own names rather than the business and will keep them in the event we sell off the business, but there's still the thorny problem of the name. We're facing a name change for the business, then another two or three years of sales to establish the new name before we could sell. Not that we plan to sell any time soon, but we are most certainly belaboring the search for a new name in order to accomodate an eventual sale. Plus the expense of new signage, logos, mastheads, promo items, etc, etc, etc.
Don't name your business for yourself if you hope it will eventually be successful enough to sell as an independent and established business! You probably don't want a successive owner shooting under your name any more than they would want to do so. You also might like to use your own name again in starting up a subsequent business, since you were so successful the first time around!
Discussion
4 repliesAn overview of my pursuit: looking to set-up a sole proprietorship, post a website, and try to sell/get photos published with local newspapers/periodicals/establishments.
Any advice on possible business names, web hosts, and words of experience on DBAs/sole proprietorships would be greatly appreciated!
Jeannie
i think i host my website on icd soft. maybe a google search will turn up their host site. i like it, but havent had experience anywhere else.
being a good photographer and making sellable images is actually the easiest part of the process from my experience. marketing yourself and getting the sales is where you make or break as a photographer.
good luck to you.
larry
www.coyotemagicphotography.com
I use prohosting.com and am very happy with them
Darwin
www.darwinwiggett.com
A couple of books that will help you with your freelance operation (photographers market 2007) should be out soon. The British equal (the freelance photographer's market handbook) 2006 0r 2007 will help you get your photos and packages the way companis want to receive and review them.
William
We've been very successful in building our business over the last 15 years, to the point that it is now much more than a box of camera gear and a cabinet of slides. It includes real estate (we own the commercial building housing our studio), an established name and long client list with high repeat rate, a substantial annual income, vehicles, and name recognition. All of those things contribute greatly to the value of the business over and above the (depreciated) value of our camera gear and image collection.
In short, it is an established enterprise which has value in and of itself, over and above the value of the equipment and photos. We can sell it for consirably more as a package including real estate, name, clientelle, equipment and vehicles. But the consarned thing is named after us!! Now what do we do?
We've been careful to copyright all images in our own names rather than the business and will keep them in the event we sell off the business, but there's still the thorny problem of the name. We're facing a name change for the business, then another two or three years of sales to establish the new name before we could sell. Not that we plan to sell any time soon, but we are most certainly belaboring the search for a new name in order to accomodate an eventual sale. Plus the expense of new signage, logos, mastheads, promo items, etc, etc, etc.
Don't name your business for yourself if you hope it will eventually be successful enough to sell as an independent and established business! You probably don't want a successive owner shooting under your name any more than they would want to do so. You also might like to use your own name again in starting up a subsequent business, since you were so successful the first time around!