Photography Leads

c.cloudwalker · Sep 7, 2009

Is photography a side job for you? If you are doing this full time, in LA, you should be making way way more than 20k a year. If not, you really need a rep. I do realize you said you were new to the LA area. That doesn't help business as a big chunk of it usually comes from relationships. The old networking thing.

And if you are just starting in the business, that's ok too. Some reps are just starting too. That's how I got mine. The guy had a lot of contacts in my field but he had never done it. We made a deal.

The only thing I can't really tell you is how to go about finding one because I personally got lucky. We got introduced by a common friend.

I used a lead company for another business and, frankly, it didn't do much for us. I can see it, maybe, for what I call retail photography (weddings, portraiture, and such) but not for commercial photography. Just can't imagine the big players going thru a lead company.

Antithesis · Sep 7, 2009

I think this is a tremendously good idea, but so far it seems like very poor execution? You need to revamp your prices or work on a commission rather than charging a flat fee. Nobody likes paying that kind of money for a possibly bunk lead.

I was always a bit concerned about finding work as a photographer. It seems difficult to do full time while your waiting for word of mouth to spread around, regardless of your quality of work. I always hoped that there would be some sort of listing for work without any elitist exclusivity to it. It must just relight the fire for me if there is an easy listing to find work. I suck at marketing myself.

craig · Sep 7, 2009

I was with Service Magic. They provided some lame leads mostly retail browsers. I just emailed a trial offer Agency Access | Photography and Illustration Promotion and Mailing Lists Services

A quick google search landed a couple of high end agencies. The search continues...

Love & Bass

photographerleads · Sep 9, 2009

To answer some of the questions, We don't take a cut out of your deal, our profit comes from when you buy the deal. As far as the pricing for exclusive and non-exclusive leads. I was hoping to get a little feed back on that as well. We were assuming that the average price of a wedding is around $2,000, with that in mind $60 to be the only photographer with that clients info seemed reasonable. Is $60 too high? What is a fair price for a lead then? Thanks for all of the feed back so far. If you are curious to see our site is is photographerleads.com and our lead generation site is photopricequotes.com. Thanks for the help, I'm hoping to offer a fair service to help your business succeed.

Mike

manaheim · Sep 9, 2009

Honestly, before I think you're going to get a heck of a lot of valuable feedback you need to take the community here a bit more seriously. This is just my opinion, but I've watched this thread with genuine interest ... at least initially ... and then I've felt that you have been slow to respond to others with genuine interest ... and then not always with a lot of detail (if you even answered the questions).

Lots of folks here are your potential target audience... myself included. If we're not inspired to use your service, that might not be ideal.

Antithesis · Sep 9, 2009

photographerleads said:
To answer some of the questions, We don't take a cut out of your deal, our profit comes from when you buy the deal. As far as the pricing for exclusive and non-exclusive leads. I was hoping to get a little feed back on that as well. We were assuming that the average price of a wedding is around $2,000, with that in mind $60 to be the only photographer with that clients info seemed reasonable. Is $60 too high? What is a fair price for a lead then? Thanks for all of the feed back so far. If you are curious to see our site is is photographerleads.com and our lead generation site is photopricequotes.com. Thanks for the help, I'm hoping to offer a fair service to help your business succeed.

Mike

My thought was that if you guys took a percentage of successful business to client connections, you might be more inspired to come up with more realistic leads. I don't like the idea of shelling out cash for a lead that might not go anywhere. It makes it so you just act as a middleman where none is needed, thus taking money from the photographer for a service that he could find elsewhere for free, on his own. At least with agents, my understanding is that they use the percentage model giving both the agent incentive to get sure leads,and the photographer a peace of mind because he doesn't have to shell out cash for every possible client. The emphasis being on possible.

But, if it worked out that I paid $60 for a sure job every time, that would be a different story. That is reasonable, but I wouldn't want to pay a premium and then have to resell myself to the prospective client. That should be the agencies job.