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The Service Focused Photography Business Plan
To be perfectly honest this is more of a business model than a business plan but because of the nature of photography as a business I'm pretty sure that it's a business model that you might be looking for. What's the difference? Well a business model is how a business is structured, a business plan is how a business' financial future is predicted. If you are looking to start a photography business this model will explain how you should structure your pricing to focus on photography as a service for your primary profit point.
In a service focused photography business all of the profit is generated by charging for the photography as a service. There is very little profit produced by product sales and the goal of the business is to produce a profit assuming that there will be no further interaction with the client after the shoot is completed.
One great thing about this business model is if there are any product sales after the shoot they are an additional profit above what is expected for the shoot, although it is not typical due to the higher cost of the initial photography service.
With the service focused photography business delivery of the images as digital files is normal. It is almost encouraged for the clients to obtain products on their own using other services because the primary product of the photography business is the experience of the shoot and the resulting high quality images.
In this business plan it is in your best interest to keep the price of any products that you do offer low to encourage additional spending from your clients. It is also a good idea to make your service appear to be low or even free by calling the fee a credit where the credit can be used to purchase products including the images as digital files.
The benefit to this photography business model is that there is no pressure to sell products after a shoot is completed. Once the initial service fee is paid there is no reason to worry about the subsequent product sale to produce a profit for the business. Also, because the primary product of the business is the digital file produced durring the shoot all marketing for this business can be done without taking time away from product sales.