Hilary Wardhauph – Wedding photographer
Hilary is an AIPP master photographer & proud of it. She uses its logo attached to her name logo as marketing.
Pre-photography Hilary was a radiographer. She gave it up & started her own business in 1998. It was v slow at first. Her marketing strategy was a biggish ad in the yellow pages; made herself a logo in black silver & white.
While going through the CIT she held 2 exhibitions – one on environmental portraits & one on 30-something women. After she was qualified she promoted herself through journalists (she had previously worked at the Canberra Times for a short time). There was a new classy magazine in Canberra called Capital Magazine. She introduced a weddings section into the journal. She also competed in the AIPP competitions & won lots of times. This was good for the confidence & good for marketing & networking. Later she had other exhibitions including one with Lindy Holly.
She set herself up with a website which was simple to navigate & the yellow pages contained that address. She also made some cards – nice standing type ones – done at Temcoau.com.
Hilary concentrates on Weddings and portraits. She started with lots of portraits – 40-50 per year, but found that too much. She then reduced to no more that 20 & did more portraits.
Wedding & portraits pay differently. With weddings, they pay a big deposit up front & the rest a month pre wedding. With portraits, Hilary charges $150 for taking the photos then earns more when they order prints.
Fixed Expenses:
Some expenses are incurred week=in week out. These are fixed expenses such as:
Advertising – spends 10% of gross turn over
Equipment
Rent an office
Car
Insurance
Staff
Admin
Accounting bookkeeper (she pays $55 /hr at home)
Communication/phone
Electricity
Professional subscription/education
Legal
Postage/freight/cartage
Job Expenses:
Printing/lab costs
Framing
Albums, books
CDs
Wages
After all of this there is profit. H pays her self $1000/month
She needs to earn $1500pw.
She takes Sun & Mon off & 8 weeks during the school holidays
Total Expenses:
Per year - $100,000 (with 8 weeks off pa)
Per month - $10,000
Per week - $2,500
Per day $500
Per hour $60
This is whether working or not!
She aims for a profit of at lease twice the fixed overheads to cover actual job costs as well (ie albums, prints etc) ( nulab – I think_ $4 for 8x10” print)
DVDs – Hilary chooses Not to give all the full res images to clients so she charges high for this:
$8200 if nothing ordered like albums, prints. BUT if a wedding was about $7500, then she would just charge about $350.
For portraits she would charge $4000 for hi res DVD
Job costs should not exceed 10-15% of total costs of job.
MUST HAVE:
Website
Blog facebook
Visual email
In person portfolio showing
In person networking oppertunities
Social online networking
Adv budget should be ~8-10% gross TO
Quote:
Rather than have a package deals, H just itemises her products.
