starting out self employed and need financial help

tidydan24

Hi I have been trying to start my own wedding photography company for a while now. I use free advertising like gumtree and ebay but there is only so far I can go with this sort of marketing. There are a couple of courses I would like to go on such as photoshop skills, There is other equipment I need and so on. I have shot around 25 weddings since starting out 3 years ago so am very confident in my ability. I just find it so frustrating that I cant afford to advertise more and go t0o the larger wedding exhibitions.
I have written out a plan and feel that with just £5k I would be able to make my business sustainable but with a very poor credit rating, no criminal convictions or other grant obtaining attributes and living in a wealthier area, I just dont know how to get this financial push up.
Can anyone help me by pointing out a grant or loan that may help me.
Thanks
Dan

silverjay

Have you looked on your local Business Link website or your local small firms enterprise site? A couple of years ago my sister-in-law wanted to open a dress agency shop and she contacted the local small firms unit, she had to attend a course for a few weeks where they taught her about marketing, writing business plans, obtaining finance, etc. By attending the course she was able to obtain some funding towards the cost of her premises rental. Not entirely sure of all of the details but I'd start with Businesslink and see links are available for small firms on there.

paulwf

Hi Tidydan,

Please head over to the small biz & charity board as I'm sure we can find you 100 low cost marketing techniques and plenty of other tips and techniques to improve your business

For now though I'll make a couple of suggestions:

- presumably a majority of your business is on Fridays and weekends? Could you get a regular job working Mon-Thur or evenings or whatever? In a year you should be able to make an extra £5K.

- Can you diversify? The wedding photography market is saturated, you just have to look on this board...every man and his dog is buying a DSLR, getting some free business cards and a free website and setting up as a wedding photographer. I think you should aim to do family portraits and commercial photography to get more work outside the wedding season.

To be blunt after 3 you're only averaging 8 weddings a year. Are you sure £5K is going to magically turn this into a much larger business? You have to be very careful with advertising, it can be like throwing money into a big pit for very little return. Make sure you analyse exactly why you are getting such a low number of bookings, more money won't solve the problem unless your business is built on a very solid foundation.

groovey

I do some wedding photography and have found the best place to advertise cheaply is in shop windows near churches! I just use a postcard sized print out from my PC and say prices starting at £99 I get quite a few calls. Prices for advertising ranges from 20p per week to £1.00 per week in my area.

Hammyman

groovey wrote: »

I do some wedding photography and have found the best place to advertise cheaply is in shop windows near churches! I just use a postcard sized print out from my PC and say prices starting at £99 I get quite a few calls. Prices for advertising ranges from 20p per week to £1.00 per week in my area.

Seconded. Whilst I'm not doing photography, the lack of customers from mainstream advertising (newspapers etc) has taught me that there's not much point throwing money at it.

tidydan24

Thanks for all your advice. I do have a job in the week and know that I am only averaging a small amount per year but this is due to my week job and as I said, lack of funding. I am priced very competitivly and have quite good usp but really feel that I need to do some much larger exhibitions to get more bookings. I work free lance fir a larger wed photog company that is always at the large exhibs and the owner gets around 60% of his years bookings from these. The prob is I need exhibition material and fees which all in all is around £2000. I am aware of the large amount of ameatures that r setting up but as most wed photogs know, a large amount of bookings come from recommendations and with no offense meant, ameatures r generally just that and tend go out of the biz as fast as they entered. Like I said thanks for all ur help and please keep it coming.
Thanks
Dan

paulwf

What do you do at the moment to promote your business OP?

Hammyman

tidydan24 wrote: »

The prob is I need exhibition material and fees which all in all is around £2000.

How much of that is fees? A gazebo, a banner and some low budget tables cleverly dressed can look quite good.

tidydan24

tidydan24 wrote: »

Hi I have been trying to start my own wedding photography company for a while now. I use free advertising like gumtree and ebay but there is only so far I can go with this sort of marketing. There are a couple of courses I would like to go on such as photoshop skills, There is other equipment I need and so on. I have shot around 25 weddings since starting out 3 years ago so am very confident in my ability. I just find it so frustrating that I cant afford to advertise more and go t0o the larger wedding exhibitions.
I have written out a plan and feel that with just £5k I would be able to make my business sustainable but with a very poor credit rating, no criminal convictions or other grant obtaining attributes and living in a wealthier area, I just dont know how to get this financial push up.
Can anyone help me by pointing out a grant or loan that may help me.
Thanks
Dan

Hello I put this in the employment forum and was told to put it I here.

teabelly

The only medium with increasing advertising spend is the internet. Traditional print media is falling on its bum! A facebook page with your business and sample photos would cost nothing to put up. You can get free web hosting and photobox have pro website options too.

Also check out ffordes photographic or other camera places that sell second hand equipment as you can save a fortune getting good used gear if you are short of cash.

The whole wedding photography area is very competitive. What can you offer that other photographers can't? Eg cheapest for same quality, some unique product option eg photos on mugs or photo collation into a unique wedding day photo site/blog thingy of the event for all friends/relatives to share?

SueC_2

Have you tried forming relationships with local wedding reception venues?

Brides and Grooms-to-be sit goggle eyed at the enormity of what they are about to arrange. Whilst the C&B Co-Ordinator sits rubbing their hands together with glee as they sell menus, flowers, balloons, fireworks, entertainment, and whatever other add-ons and upgrades they can think of to help make 'the perfect day'. If they happened to have a CD of some of your work to hand I can't see why they wouldn't want to chuck photography into their sales pitch. Obviously the hotel would want to take a cut, but your advertising would be virtually zero cost, and you would be earning before you had to pay anything out.

Just a thought.