Katie McManus (business strategist and money-mindset coach) presents a one-year retainer model for branding photographers to target ~$200,000 annual revenue. She proposes quarterly branding shoots (one per quarter) with 200 edited images delivered each shoot, an initiation fee plus monthly payment plan (or a single annual payment option), guidance on standalone shoot pricing, niche selection advice (clients with seasonal needs and frequent new merchandise), and a CTA to book a strategy call.
Questions this video answers
200 edited pictures per shoot.
$4,000 initiation fee (covers the first photo session).
$1,400 per month for nine months.
$16,000 for the year.
12 to 13 clients.
Chapters
If you're a professional photographer and you want to start a branding photography business making $200,000 a year, then listen up. Here's how you're going to do it. Oh, and hi. I help ADHD business owners make more money and less time with your distractions by showing you how to pick a profitable niche, design an offer that your ideal clients are dying to buy, and show you how to market and sell your services. Without wanting to vomit. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. So let's break this down, shall we? And this is just one of the retainer options that you can have for your clients. If you want to have a really successful photography business and you want to work with brands, there are so many ways for you to make money. But if you wanted to streamline it and just offer one thing, this is how you would make the math work. So first off, you're going to have your clients commit to working with you for one year, and each quarter you're going to do a branding shoot with them. Now, obviously, this is so that you can keep it fresh throughout the seasons and also come up with fresh assets for certain holidays that are coming around, like summer holidays, holidays, Christmas, New Year, so on and so forth. For each shoot, you're going to provide them with 200 edited pictures, which is amazing because that means that they're going to have a gazillion pictures to use in their social media and on their websites for three whole months. Now, to plan each shoot, you are going to do a consultation before the photo shoot. This is going to help you get aligned with what it is they're wanting to get out of it, what kind of assets they're going to be creating for the season to come, and really help you make sure that you have a happy client on the other side of taking all these pictures. And the fee schedule is a little different from the ones that I've done before. So because no one really wants to sign up for a photographer and then wait three months, you're actually going to do a $4,000 initiation fee. Now, this will cover your first photo session with them and then you're going to do a nine month monthly payment plan of 1400amonth. And if they did want to pay in full, then it would just be a clean 16,000 for the year. And when we break down the math, okay, so if you had 12 to 13 clients and you'd make around $200,000 a year and you'd be doing a total of 48 to 52 photo shoots. That's 48 to 52 live days where you're going to be on set with them or at their location taking pictures, which in a 52 week calendar year that means you're doing one photo shoot per week. Now you can also do standalone shoots. Now I would charge about $5,000 for those because a those people, you want to incentivize them to potentially become your long term branding clients. Um, and so when they work with you long term, a photo shoot would be about $4,000. Now of course this is also like, like that one time planning fee that you're gonna have to do because when you work with a client long term, you don't necessarily have to get to know them every single time. You just kind of have to get aligned to what their new goals are. And for those people who sign up for a $5,000 one off shoot, they become your p potentially do more frequent branding shoots and become retainer clients in the future. And the key to success here is you need to pick a niche where they need updated pictures regularly. Okay, so I want you to think about shops that are going to have new merchandise in. When you think about influencers, I want you to think about any kind of business that might have some kind of seasonality to it. And the cool thing about this business is that if you were to sign like two clients a month for half a year, then you would have have a full client base and you wouldn't have to do another sales call until another half, half a year goes by. And anyone else you sign up in that time is just more money that you're gonna be making on top of the 200,000. And if you're a service based business owner and you're struggling to build consistent income and you want some help and something like this looks really appealing, then I invite you to book a generate income strategy call with me. And if you want to book one, then I want you to go to this link into my splayo and you can grab a time that works for you.