Our friends at 5DayDeal just launched “The Complete Photography Business Bundle”, featuring a great collection of eBooks, starter kits, and videos, all focused on helping you launch and grow your photography-based business. It’s available for only $87 for five days only — the deal expires on March 1st at 3 PM ET, and will never be offered again!
We’re very pleased to see that this bundle is very different from the one offered last year. Whereas previous bundles focused on photography, lighting, or post-processing techniques, this bundle focuses on the business aspects of photography: marketing, attracting clients, SEO and web marketing, and legal.
We had a chance to preview “The Complete Photography Business Bundle”. We spent several days going through all the material. Scroll down for the full review!
Speaking from our experience, the journey towards being a professional photographer can be a daunting road, with many surprises to “discover” along the way. It’s most important to have mentors to guide you in this process, helping you avoid the pitfalls, letting you learn from their mistakes. If you are not fortunate enough to have local, personal mentors, the next best thing is to rely on the collective wisdom of successful photographers, and this bundle is an excellent way to tap into that. Read on below for our review of some of the content in the bundle.
Here’s a quick summary of some of our favorite items in the bundle.
- Click Click, Tick Tock eBook by Dan Carr. In a 94-page eBook, Dan covers several important aspects of a professional photographer’s workflow: strategies for managing digital files and backups, and time-saving tips for using automation for social media, accounting, and publishing online galleries. A very valuable, concise introduction to many useful tools.
- Attracting Clients by Brent Mail. Brent describes several techniques for marketing — both ones that worked and ones that did not. Most fascinating is his “3rd party marketing” technique, where he obtains photography client referrals from car dealerships and other unrelated businesses.
- Defendit by Rachel Brenke — a must-read for every photographer looking to protect their work from theft. A well-written explanation of copyright and trademark law, and detailed instructions for preventing unauthorized use of photographs and other creative work through the use of Cease and Desists, DMCA Takedown, and other techniques. Templates provided!
- Two great resources for wannabe-wedding-photographers: The Complete Wedding Toolkit by Erin Youngren includes e-mail templates, sample contracts, and workflows/checklists for making sure you don’t miss anything. Jen Bebb’s 123-page eBook Love & Light is a visually stunning; most useful are the shot lists as well as a detailed guide on how to best position yourself during the ceremony and make use of the precious time.
- In-Person Sales 101 by Chris Scott — an introduction to in-person sales techniques, specifically applied to wall-art. Not for everyone, but some interesting concepts here. Chris knows what he’s talking about as he’s the creator of the Preveal App, an iPad-based photograph sales tool that enables you to pre-visualize wall-art in a client’s home or office.
In general, this edition of the bundle featured a lot more books than videos. Overall we were impressed by the quality of the eBooks. In addition to the above, several longer books by David duChemin explored the ethos of the creative spirit (and creative entrepreneur) and Corwin Hiebert extracted words of wisdom from dozens of photographers in “Growing the Visionmonger 2”. Sadly, a few of the videos disappointed. Joel Grimes’ video was long and rambling, while Serge Ramelli’s “Photography Business Masterclass” was long, but wasn’t really teaching much.
In total we think the overall quality of this bundle was quite good, and up to the high bar set by 5DayDeal in previous years. As before, we recommend purchasing “The Complete Photography Business Bundle” if you see two or three items of interest; at a $87 price point it’s quite easy to derive value from this. It’s suitable for all types of photographers: those just thinking about starting a business, those growing a business, and even those with established businesses; there’s also something new to learn. Going through all the material in this bundle reminded us of our early days in the photography business — and the many mistakes we made. If only we knew then what we knew now!
