It doesn’t matter what your business model is as a photographer. It matters what the customer’s buying model is.
The above bit of wisdom is by Guy Kawasaki, who is quoted in an interesting article on rethinking photography business models.
These days, just about the only way photographers can make a living is by shooting weddings. But brides are creatures of our modern age too and are balking at some of the more old-fashioned elements of the business. Scott Bourne writes:
Gone are the days when we can just send some negatives to the lab, order some cheap 8×10 prints, put them in a black folder, mark them up 400 percent and call it a day.
Instead, brides want everything done digitally. They want all the pictures taken during the ceremony burned onto a CD. They even want the unprocessed files so that they can Photoshop them on their own.
Photographers must adapt to what customers want in order to survive.
I see the same thing in the book publishing business. Customers have e-readers, wonderful devices that allow them to buy books instantly. They don’t believe that e-books should be as expensive as print. While publishers may resist, customers believe that e-books should be priced somewhere between free and $9.99. Continue reading “Adapt to Customers or Perish”
