How to start an online landscape photography business
Many landscape photographers dream about starting their own business. To start a business is not complicated but making the business profitable is a different story. When you start an online landscape photography business is crucial to understand the mechanisms behind how money is made.
5 ways to grow a profitable online landscape photography business
With a validated product, people are willing to give you money for, you basically have two main strategies to make MORE money. You can increase the price or sell more products to new and existing customers.
But many landscape photographers with online businesses seem to do the opposite. When the sale is low, they reduce their prices and offer huge discounts, hoping to attract customers this way.
If you start an online landscape photography business based on these misconceptions, your business will never be profitable.
In the rest of this article, I will discuss five better ways to grow a profitable landscape photography business.
#1 Increase the profit
If you use discounts in the attempt to sell more, your profit will suffer.
If you think the solution is to sell more products with low-profit margins, you're making a big mistake.
There is a huge difference between revenue and profit, and you must consider this when you price your products and services.
Price competition
If you jump on the price war wagon, you’re off to a race to the bottom. In the end, this is a lose-lose situation - both for you and the customers.
There is no strategic advantage of being the second lowest-priced offer. If you can’t be the cheapest, try to be among the more expensive.
It takes the same efforts to sell expensive products as selling cheaper products. You just attract a different audience.
#2 Solve bigger problems
There is a direct correlation between the amount of money you make and how important the problems you are solving for your customers are.
When you solve bigger problems, you can charge higher prices.
Getting the pricing right is very important when you start an online landscape photography business.
A simple example is a photographer that buys your Lightroom course because it is on sale at an 80% discount. He buys it because it’s a steal. But how committed is this customer to start and finish your course and get results? Will he be happy and buy from you again?
Compare this to another photographer who wants to learn Lightroom. This photographer buys the course because post-processing is an essential part of her day job. She finds Photoshop to be too time-consuming when working with many images every day. How likely is it she is willing to pay more and actually finish the course?
Perceived value
Whereas the first customer got a great deal, the latter customer got a bigger problem solved, saving her hours going forward.
For these two customers, the perceived value of the course is different. You could possibly have charged a higher price, and the last customer would still have bought your course.
Remember, you are not your customer. The price you are willing to pay doesn’t mean someone else is unwilling to pay more for the same offer.
#3 Sell to the right audience
This is another big mistake many online landscape photography business owners make. They try to sell to the wrong audience.
If you’re targeting the wrong person, he will not buy, no matter how cheap you sell your products. Of course, you will get occasional sales because it’s cheap. But are these sales even making you any profit?
Every product solves a specific problem
Every product solves a specific problem. If it doesn’t, it’s impossible to have someone pay you money for it.
If your business model is to sell prints, your main target customers are unlikely to be other photographers. Despite this, many landscape photographers try to sell their images by hanging out in forums and groups with basically only other photographers.
The only way to succeed with a landscape photography business online is to do research and find out where to connect with your ideal audience.
#4 Sell fewer products
Earlier in this blog post, I mentioned that selling more products is one way to make more money. So this headline might sound counterintuitive.
Let me explain.
The more products you sell, the more you make, no doubt.
But the key is to sell products that are a fit for the same type of customers.
If you create products that are not aimed at the same audience, you constantly have to hunt for the next lead and the next customer. This is a costly and time-consuming way to do business.
Watch the full video to learn about the "Value Ladder" and how you can build a product portfolio that serves both you and your customers.
Targeted marketing
The other disadvantage of having too many different products is, that you complicate your marketing. Your marketing must be targeted to the specific audience you try to reach with a particular product.
With many products or types of customers, you have to tailor the marketing to each of them: more work and more hustle.
If you are in this situation, it might be time to reconsider and find out which of your offers are the most profitable and put your focus and efforts there.
Ideally, you should offer products that follow the natural path or the next step in the progress of your ideal customer.
#5 Sell digital products
There are basically two types of products you can sell, physical and digital.
Physical products are generally more expensive to create, and there are costs involved when shipping them to your customers.
Landscape photographers tend to start their online photography business selling prints. You can sell photos in both physical and digital versions.
The physical version, often framed, have a higher perceived value, and you can charge more. But you must count in the expenses to create and ship them.
You can sell the same print as a digital file. The advantage is you create it once, and you can sell it over and over many times. Shipping costs are zero as you send them over the Internet. The drawback with digital print is they are priced lower, and the competition is high.
Advantages of selling digital products when you start an online landscape photography business.
- easier to create
- less expensive to make
- more profitable
- scalable
- startup costs are small
- easier to market effectively
Conclusion
Running a landscape photography business is different from a typical service-based photography business like wedding or portrait photography. Few landscape photographers can make a living from print sales as the only revenue stream.
Wedding and portrait photographers book their clients first and sell the photos to the client. These images have no value to other people than the client. Selling the prints is a much easier task.
Landscape photographers take the photos first and then try to find customers later. This is a much more challenging task. It’s tough because potential customers for a landscape print are not a homogenous group, and they can be difficult to identify properly.
Since the introduction of digital cameras, the number of photographers that offer print for sale has increased. This has driven the prices down over the last decade.
This is why most successful online landscape photography businesses offer other products (workshops and digital products) in addition to print sales.