Hey, how’s it going? I’m Andy Jones and this is episode 110 of the Photography Side Hustle podcast.
This week's episode comes to you courtesy of David Synder of Down in the Dirt Photography. There are two issues he needs to solve. First, he was shooting for a Real Estate company that was started by a photographer. They supplied him with a 17-40mm f4 lens and when he left that job he had to return the lens. He still wants to shoot real estate and has just purchased a 17-40 f4 lens.
So let's answer this one first.
Apparently, the job was a baptism of fire. He had to learn how to use his camera a Canon 6D as well as Lightroom and Photoshop in 3 months.
From here on in he doesn’t need to “get a job”, he needs to offer his services to all the realtors in his area. Offer some discounted shoots so you can build a portfolio.
Pricing
This is simply a case of checking out all the local photographers that shoot real estate. Most of them have prices on their website. If they don’t just ask a realtor, be honest about your situation, and offer them a free shoot if they can give you the information.
I don’t think it will come to that though. Ok, let’s look at the second issue.
The other genre he shoots is mountain bike racing. He read my article “Standing out from the Competition” and said
“Andy, if I don’t sell digital photos I’d never make any money. Like zero. I do a lot of mountain bike races, I don’t have the order of the racers, and I don’t have their names, I ride the shuttle truck up and set up In a couple of cool spots on the trail and shoot throughout the day. All the while directing folks to my Instagram and website. If I’ve set up in a good spot and have gotten exposure to a racer and he can find me, they’ll buy 1-5 pictures, but the most I’ve made after an 8+ hr day then 5-6hrs editing is like $300. There’s gotta be a better model than that right?
Yes, there is a better model than that. So let’s start with your approach.
Approach
All events have someone in charge, an organizer. He needs to contact that person or people in charge and make them an offer. Your offer needs to make their decision a no-brainer.
Asking them if you can shoot the event might get them to say yes, but if you offer them an incentive they will promote you.
Offer them a 10% cut of everything you earn from that event. Clubs are always looking to raise money and will snap your hand off with an offer like that.
If you approach them early enough they can include your details in the forms they give to the competitors. Better still make a letter-sized sheet showing examples of your work and contact information, that they can put in their handouts.
I have to say if the competitors are adults you are not going to make the sales you would if they were kids. Adults don’t tend to buy photos of themselves doing sports. Parents will buy any photo of their kid doing a sport.
When I was shooting my ideal subjects were kids and dogs. Because parents record every step of their kid's growth, the same goes for dog owners, they treat them like furry kids.
So next we need to address only offering digital files.
Products & Pricing
Don’t do it. You are undervaluing your work if the only thing you offer is the files. Now if you are shooting Headshots or Real Estate the customer needs the files, that’s ok, but sports events customers don’t.
Make yourself some custom posters, start with 8x10 prints with the kid's name and event logo on them. Then offer a magazine cover, and different-sized posters up to say 24x36.
Don’t offer the files, or offer them if they spend a high dollar amount, say $100. Then they can buy them for $35.
I only mention those prices as an example. I’m just trying to emphasize how important those digital files are. The reason customers need them is so they can use them in any way they want.
Any business that has a product that customers desperately need, sells that product for a premium price. So you should too.
Setup
If you are the official photographer the organizers need to let the parents know, but don’t leave it to chance. Take a pile of business cards and hand them out to as many people as possible. I used to put posters up in rinks, cover my car in prints, and do anything to let people know.
When you are getting ready for a sports event, find out how many competitors there are.
If there are 100 kids you can easily hope to sell to 25% of the parents at say $50 for each sale. So 25 x $50 is $1250, that's not too bad. After a few events, you’ll be able to make an educated guess on how much money you will make.
But the aim is to sell the big 24x36 posters at $100+ each. If the parents at this event haven’t ever had the opportunity to get a poster of their kid, they will jump at it. Throw in the digital files to sweeten the deal.
If you can get the average sale to $75, you could be making $1875. At a lot of these kid's events, you can get way more than 25% of the parents buying. I’ve done figure skating events with 250 skaters and way over 50% bought.
The best way to cover an event is to have a helper that can take orders on the day, and have them sitting at a table with examples of your work. But in Davids's case, there is no way of getting the photos down the mountain to the helper. So he needs to use online galleries.
Next, you need a way to let the parents know where and when they can view the photos from the event. You need to get them posted within 12 hours, the quicker the better. The longer you leave it the fewer parents will take the time to look at them. All the photos need is a quick edit and get them posted into a gallery. The only time you do a full edit on an image is when someone orders a poster or print.
Event photos have a very short lifespan. The majority of your online orders will come in within 48 hours of posting them. So you need to make as much money from them as possible. Offer discounts on cheaper products if they buy the biggest poster, and try to make spending an extra $20 or $30 easy for them.
Photographing events can be a lot of fun, especially if you enjoy the sport. Just don’t put hours of your time into it without people knowing you have photos for sale.
Ok, that is my take on shooting sports events. If you are looking to shoot sports I hope you find it helpful.