Running a small business is no easy task. It's messy and thrilling, and terrifying all at the same time. But no matter what, it's definitely a journey worth taking. As a mom of two littles, I know the daily struggles, and I'm here to walk this journey with you. If you're ready to feel empowered, encouraged and on fire for the things you truly love, then you're in the right place. I'm Rebecca Rice, a pizza loving hot chocolate drinking family photographer and educator. And this is the business Journey podcast.
Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of the business Journey podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca rice. And I'm really excited to jump into today's topic. It's one that I actually don't talk about that often. But I probably should. And that is tips for selling prints to your clients, I get tons of questions from you guys about selling prints. And so today, my hope is to answer some of those and just help you get to a place where you're increasing your revenue by selling those beautiful prints to your clients. And before we jump into that, I did want to let you know about a free class that I have for you guys. And it's all about posing. Right now if you're listening to this episode, as it airs, we are still you know, in the thick of busy season for family photography, and we probably have about a month left of it. And so now is the perfect time to learn some tricks about posing. In my free class, I give you the six keys to effective family posing so that you can say goodbye to awkward and stiff forever. And the best part is that you're able to take the things that you learn because you guys know I am a no fluff teacher. So in this class, you're able to take the things that you learn and apply it in your very next session. That is the beauty of learning about posing, because the things that I teach, you can literally take into your very next session and see a difference which it's been so fun, so many of our students have, let me know, you know, they've shared in our Facebook community and all the things they've let me know that they let me know that they applied the posing tips that I taught in our free class, and they loved it. And they saw an automatic difference in their very next session. So I know that can be the case for you. So it's linked below in the show notes. Or if you want to type it in, it's Rebecca rice photo.com/posing-class. So you can go and give that a watch. And I know it'll be helpful for you. Okay, so let's get into some tips for selling prints to your clients. Like I mentioned, I get a ton of questions about this. And so my hope is to be able to answer some of those and help you make more money in this busy season with selling those prints. So the first tip that I have for selling prints to your clients is it sounds kind of obvious, but to make them available. And what I mean by that is pretty much every gallery delivery system that I know of has a shopping cart feature where you can set it up. And it's got auto fulfillment for prints, which means that your clients can select what prints they want. And then the system, the gallery delivery system places the order with the printing lab, you know, it ships to the client white label so that the client like doesn't see who you're shipping from, but they still receive their prints. And all of that can happen automatically. So you don't have to worry about it. And it happens through the shopping cart. And so if you are wanting to start selling prints to your clients, the very first thing you need to do is make the prints available, open up that shopping cart to set up, you know your pricing sheet and I'll get to pricing in a second. Get it all set up and started and just make it available as an option. Because if all you're offering is Digital's then of course, they're not going to buy any prints because they have no idea that they can buy prints through you. So make it available, check out whatever gallery delivery system you're using and set up that shopping cart because you never know even if you never say a word about it, you may still get a few orders trickle in just because it's there at their fingertips ready to be used. Now the next tip for selling prints to your clients is to educate your clients on why they should print their photos. This is one of those pieces that it's like you don't know what you don't know. And clients don't instinctively know that they should print their images. You know, we live in a very digital age and most clients their priority is to post these on social media.
Right, they want to post them on their Facebook, they want to post them on Instagram so that all their friends and family and random people that follow them, they don't know can see the beautiful photos of their family. But it's our job as the experts as the photographers to educate our clients on why printing photos is so important. And that begins with just casting vision for them. I have a friend of mine, Sean Gordon, who is the CEO of Kiss books, they are an album company, he is one of the greatest people I've ever seen do this, he is so great at telling a story about why prints are vital. And of course, he should be good at it because his livelihood is printing albums. But the way that he describes printing your photos is just so beautiful, you know, he lays out a story of Imagine you are this 85 year old person and your grandkids are circled around. And you are able to pull out a beautiful heirloom album of family photos from when their parents were their age. And you're able to flip through and they can see the photos. And it's something that they can hold. And they can touch whether it's an actual, you know, binded album, or even you know, prints on the wall, there's just something so beautiful about people seeing those kinds of things. He talks about, you know, your kids, that when they see their family unit on the walls of their home, it does something to them, that they feel like they're a part of something that they can physically see themselves in the family unit in the family photo. And it like just brings a sense of unity of like I belong. And I don't know about you. But for me, I've got a five year old and a three year old, almost four years old. And for them, that can be a hard concept to grasp that they belong in our family. But when they see our family photo up on the wall, they know like, that's me, that's my family and I belong there. So just does something to a child to see a print that's not on a computer screen, or on an iPhone screen. And so that's the kind of story that we want to be able to tell our clients, why should they print their photos because it's so much more than them, right? It's about their kids and generations to come. I one of my favorite things is flipping through old family photos of people that I may not even know, personally that you know, it's photos that my grandmother passed down. But there's just something about holding prints in your hand that's not on the computer that just does something to you as a person. And so you want to be sure to educate your clients on why they should be printing their photos, and not just keeping them on their computer to get lost forever, right. There's just so much beauty in what we do as photographers that we want to pass that on to our clients. So they grasp the importance of it. The next piece now, once clients are understanding the why you're gonna want to talk about the fact that you offer prints, on social media and on your blog, in your content that you're regularly putting out. Because clients, you want them to feel excited about printing their photos, right. And they the best way to get them excited is to show them, you know, they say you show what you want to sell. And so if you're wanting to sell like beautiful wall art and get your clients to make those purchases, then show it, put it on your social media have, you know, Instagram posts and stories and reels about prints and why they should print them and all the things. So the more that you talk about it and it stays front of mind, clients will be more ready, more willing to make those purchases when the time comes because they've seen you constantly talk about it. And on that same thread. Another thing that you can do is tell them and this is kind of on the education side of things, but tell them why they should not go print their photos at Costco or at you know, through Shutterfly or whatever, because obviously you and I know the quality of those places is just terrible. And so you want to educate them and literally show them the difference of print quality. put them side by side with a professional print lab and show them like the color difference the quality difference. If you're like me, I give high resolution
In digital images to my clients, they're included in my sessions, you know, I upsell them for my mini sessions. And so clients have printing rights, they have the rights to print those photos wherever they want. But my job as the photographer is to educate them as to why they should not print them at Costco, and all those cheap places. Is it cheaper? Yes, but they're gonna get what they pay for. And if they want this stuff to last for generations, and the color quality look beautiful, and be a great accent on their walls and things like that, they're gonna want them to print them professionally. And so the more that you talk about it, in your regular content, the better and more likely people are to print from you knowing that you're not the cheaper option. But what you're doing is you're creating the value of printing through you in the content that you regularly talk about. So that's an important piece that you don't want to miss. And here's a little bonus for you. I told you, I'd talk about pricing, because people always ask how do I price my prints. A good rule of thumb for pricing your prints is to do at least three times the cost to print it through the company. For easy math, let's say a print costs $2 to print wholesale, then you're gonna want to mark up the price by three times. So you're gonna charge $6, at least for that print. Now, some people will tell you that you should charge hundreds and all this stuff, you know why, if you're gonna charge that much, absolutely go for it. But do at least three times the cost to print just in case. And the reason you do that is in case a print gets messed up somehow, and it needs to be replaced, that you're able to cover the cost of replacement and still make a profit because you're doing three times the cost. So you'll still make a little bit of profit if you have to replace that item. So selling prints to your clients doesn't have to feel slimy. It doesn't have to feel like forced or anything like that it can feel very natural. And I feel like those are the best ways to do it is to treat it very conversational, make it available to them, and just talk about it talk about why they should do it. Talk about you know the benefits of it. Talk about the fact that you offer them and what your favorite prints are and how they can, you know, use their prints in their home and stuff like that. But the more that you talk about it in all of your content, the more that you educate your clients, the easier it is, you know, to be available to them, the more likely your clients will purchase those prints for you. So take this as you will go check out if you do nothing, at least open up the shopping cart in your gallery delivery system so that they're available. You know if maybe you decide next year is going to be the year that since we're like in Super busy season right now, maybe over the like calm periods coming up. In the next couple months once busy season quits, then maybe that's when you decide to make a content plan of like, how are you going to post about prints, take photos of prints so that you have content to be able to post? What blog posts are you going to write? What stories are you going to post all that kind of stuff, think through the strategy. That way, when the next busy season hits, you're ready for it. Because here's what I don't want for you. I don't want next busy season for you to be exactly where you are today, where it's like, oh, it'd be nice to offer prints. But gosh, I just feel like I don't have time. Don't waste the next slow season. Take advantage. And maybe this is an episode that you come back to in January when nobody's booking photo sessions, because it's freezing cold outside and they just got through the blur of the holidays. Use that as the time to really focus on your prints. But I feel like it's such a beautiful way to take what we do in capturing memories for families even one step further so that those memories are preserved, that they are not stuck on a computer or a hard drive for people to lose years down the road that they're printed and they're able to, you know, have something to physically hold in their hands. So I hope that you take this and do something with it. If you have any questions about anything we talked about here, I'm always available on Instagram. You can find me at Rebecca rice photography, shoot me a DM and I would love to help you. And I hope that your busy season is going well. And the lights at the end of the tunnel guys. It's almost done. So stick with it. I know that you can do it, you can finish strong. So with that we're gonna go ahead and close out for today and I'll see you back next time for another episode. Bye guys.
