Any of you out there that have a decent set of lights, a backdrop, a location, a couple of friends to help, a couple free evenings and want to make some $$$ for Christmas or a new lens, here is a idea.
With my photo club I̢۪ve organized a holiday photo shoot and it̢۪s turning into quite the little money maker.
We̢۪ll be shooting for 4 evenings at a local restaurant that is letting us use their space for free in exchange for bringing people into their restaurant. We̢۪ve been holding our monthly meeting there every month so we have a good relationship with them.
We have a couple different backdrops, a stand, and a set of Alien Bees B800̢۪s we̢۪ll set up, along with some stools and holiday props.
For the club, the photographers and assistants are volunteering so all the money raised will go to the club.
We are selling 15 minutes of studio time with a photographer for $25 a pop. After the 15 minute shoot we burn all the photos taken during the shoot to a CD and they are out the door to do with them what they want. If they want the images post processed before they print, some of the club members are offering to do that for a fee (outside of the club).
We did minimal advertising and are doing it by appointment only. I quickly filled up almost all our available time slots.
With a couple assistants we should keep things moving and do 4 appointments an hour, thus $100/hour.
We are only shooting from 5pm-7pm for 4 days and with appointments already scheduled we̢۪ll make about $700.
I know we could charge more, but this is the first time we are doing this and we are not sure how things will turn out, so we didn̢۪t want to charge too much the first time. If it works next year will probably charge $40-$50 per 15 minutes. It depends on the feedback we get this year.
We considered photoshoping and selling prints, but all that added far too much time and work on our end. Minus the time it took to prepare everything (which was pretty minimal) we̢۪ll only have to put in 2 hours after work for 4 days to get this done.
Note: how we are doing this, it̢۪s very important that exposure and framing is perfect. We̢۪ll be shooting with that in mind and have everything we need, so we should be okay. We also have back up equipment available should anything go bad.
If you do this, please send me my 10% cut for sharing my business plan :)
|
