Business Skills for Photographers

In this final chapter of our Business course, Karl looks at considerations for running a successful business. The points outlined in this chapter don’t strictly relate to photography, but are relevant to anyone wanting to make the most of their business.

Karl looks at essential things like insurance, accounting, studio/equipment costs/rental, websites, usage fees and government start us schemes, to name a few.

As part of this course, you can download a selection of useful key documents. These include model release forms, copyright terms and conditions, invoice examples and others. You can find these in our Downloads section.

In this class:

  • What costs to consider when running a business
  • Insurance
  • Accounting
  • Computers and software
  • Transport
  • Studio/Rent
  • Website
  • Licensing and usage fees
  • Government start-up schemes
  • Useful documents for photography business owners

Questions? Please post them in the comments section below.

Calculating business costs

Part of running a business is considering the costs.

Comments

  4. Thanks Karl for this business insight. Much appreciated. Hope to change the game and be more successful in photography than you are 😉

    #MachoniMwangu

  7. Hi Karl,
    I just signed up today. Thank you for this course. One thing I have a challenge with is contracts. That is one thing you haven’t mentioned in these business videos. I’m looking forward to watching more of your videos in the upcoming days.

    Sincerely,
    Stanley (Lee- preferred )Peterson

    1. Hi Lee, thanks for signing up, in the downloads section there are some documents relating to contracts and terms and conditions that you might find useful.

  8. Thanks for the business series videos. Would be looking forward to you sharing more business skills and experience. Examples of how you deal with clients? Any special experience that could be share? Any mistakes to avoid? How to educate client for our works in terms of copyright and usage fees for them to understand? Etc.
    Really wish there are more videos about business video.

  9. This was an excellent series, I can’t wait to watch the rest of these. I do have a question though. I am 18 years old, with several years of photography under my belt, and hopefully a lifetime more to look forward to. I want to start my own studio one day, and focus on commercial photography and filmmaking, possibly one day moving into narrative filmmaking. I have full time job now, on top of doing photography out of a home studio part time. My parents are pushing me to go to college before I try to jump into running a business full time, but I just don’t think I will become a better photographer in a classroom… I could go to college to learn more about running a business, but do you think that is necessary when I have access to so many great resources online such as this, MZed, and countless other sources of online education?

    1. Hi Noah, this is a tricky one. I didn’t go to university but other photographers I know did. Most of the top photographers gained there best experience from working for other photographers. But that being said it is always good to have something else to fall back on especially in such a competitive market.

  10. Very informative Karl, thank you!
    There are numerous tutorials out there on how to shoot certain photos but very few actually explain the business side of it or how to sustain a living from doing so. This course explained quite a few things I had no idea of. I hope with the information of this course my break into the commercial world of photography has a better chance of happening.

  11. You are sharp Karl. A succinct set of business presentations with a no-nonsense approach. A small business who invoicing a big business, effectively granting them credit, is very risky and can leave that small business in a weak position. What is your best method of guaranteeing getting paid for all your hard work, and paid promptly, Karl?

    1. Hi David, all the big businesses I’ve ever worked for have expected payment terms of at least 30 days. In the early days there were clients (usually advertising agencies) who had a habit of being slow payers. My first course of action was to issue invoices with a 5% surcharge that was accumulative each month overdue and this was detailed in my terms of business. Second course of action was that they were often repeat customers and I’d accept the next job from them without complaint but when it was time to deliver the images I’d refuse to hand them over until full payment was received on the last job. They couldn’t really argue with that. If things got really bad (only once or twice) i then again reverted to my terms and conditions (which had already been accepted) which stated that I was the exclusive copyright holder and licensee of the images and no license was issued until the invoice had been paid in full. In this situation I explained that they (or their client) were in a breach of copyright having published unlicensed images. The option was then there to threaten a legal claim on breach of copyright and/or late payment. This prompt usually did the trick but sometimes could sour relations, however I always felt that if that was the type of relationship that had evolved then it was a relationship I was happy to do with out. I’ve always been very firm with clients and very careful with my terms and conditions. I’ve lost a couple of clients but I have no issues whatsoever with my list of established clients that I have now worked with for many years.

  12. Thank you for this Karl! I am about to embark on a new direction in my photography career, stepping out of full time wedding photographer and delving into a portrait and product photography studio! This was the most essential course for me, I’m not very good at the business aspect so needed a confidence boost to get me there and this really helped!

  14. Your videos about photography business are informative and educational. Now, I can see clearer about the direction of photography business. Thanks Karl and team.

  15. Karl, thanks so much for this course, it was extremely helpful and honestly unrivalled. I am newly subscribed and can’t wait to dig into the rest of what you have to offer.

    Cheers.

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