I've now shot my first paid wedding, and actually surprising liked it and want to do more. Of course I'm still editing and all of that stuff, but it was a good day, I enjoyed the challenge and the hustle and bustle and feel I got decent results.

This first wedding kind of fell into my lap via word of mouth from people who have seen my pics and know Kris/me. Obviously I can wait around for another deal like this to come along but I'd rather go out and get it somehow, I just don't know where to start for booking future weddings/crap.

I know one thing that seems to be the 'entry fee' to the wedding business is a website with some sort of portfolio to show my work. I obviously need to keep building that, but what's the best way to get the word out?

What's the next step?

Word of mouth is actually one of the strongest ways... keeping a presence on FB doesn't hurt, and having a website that links to/updates on FB doesn't hurt. But don't underestimate the power of WoM.

99% of my business is WoM.

WoM, which FB is great for. IMHO you NEED a site to go with it, so people can see examples.

your personal blog can work, but you need to work on it a bit. I'm stuck right now with 2 blogs (3 when you count my gear site) that I'd like to merge into 1 and organize better though...

Start promising free stuff to people so you can get upset a year from now when another customer wants to book you.

Too soon?

Originally Posted by jacobsen1

WoM, which FB is great for. IMHO you NEED a site to go with it, so people can see examples.

your personal blog can work, but you need to work on it a bit. I'm stuck right now with 2 blogs (3 when you count my gear site) that I'd like to merge into 1 and organize better though...

Yeah, right now I'm on 1 blog, which is fine, but there's a ton of family stuff and not a ton of photo stuff. I've thought about incorporating a gallery into that site, or putting a gallery at jayluikartphotography.com with a link to the blog there. Still working on that, but my initial plan is to get posts going there regularily to give people stuff to look at. I average 50-100 unique visitors every update now which I know is mostly family/friends, but I get a lot of comments from random people when I see them in person about how much they like the blog.

Is there a way to have the blog automatically sort out only photo related posts when you direct from my jayluikartphotography.com or do all posts when you go to jayluikart.com? The goal there would be if somebody's checking me out for photography they only see photo stuff.

All that said, the good news is I always post with pics, so it's tons of photos either way, you just lose the photo ones in a sea of Noah updates.

Originally Posted by tbert

Start promising free stuff to people so you can get upset a year from now when another customer wants to book you.

Too soon?

Nah.


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On the other hand, I've already gotten one inquiry regarding another wedding since the first one!

Post the pictures on facebook and tag people

Is there a way to have the blog automatically sort out only photo related posts when you direct from my jayluikartphotography.com or do all posts when you go to jayluikart.com? The goal there would be if somebody's checking me out for photography they only see photo stuff.

yeah, link to a specific category.

I'm not seeing how that shows it in the nice autofocus front page theme type thing though. Honestly I haven't messed with it much yet, but it's cool.

That's because it doesn't. I've been playing around with that too and haven't got that part yet....

nudie pics?

of wife?

Lining up a baby shoot for within the next couple weeks. Word of mouth works!

Nice Jay,
Word of mouth is great. Lately I have been getting a lot of requests for family shoots. I just need them to commit 100% and i'll be set.

It's tricky for me on pricing of them, I figure I'd charge the same for a session whether it's engagement, family, baby, etc - sound about right? The tricky part is I always know them well and want to give them a deal but also want to charge what I feel is fair.