Millionaire Challenge

Karmacat

Night Ryder, Tink - you're on the way, believe me. With being conscious of this sort of stuff at your ages, you'll do great.

cazmanian_minx

If I'd been bonkers enough to buy the mill a few years back, we would have applied for Grand Designs - we'd have needed every bit of expert advice we could get our hands on for that! Not sure they'd have come up as far as us though. I know they've been to the Black Isle, just north of Inverness, but that's two hours south of here.

Kayalana99

Eek! That wedding course I am doing is brilliant, one of the things he said (something the simplest of things is the ball drop moment) is that your clients are interviewing you for sometimes up to two years before they contact you to book then they are ready to sign up the dotted line.

So have a facebook page/blog/website and whenever you update it just remember your potential clients are going to be reading it.

I still hadn't heard back from an August mid week wedding and I have already got two weddings booked for August weekends (I said I was only going to take 1 weekend a month, but it's a one off and the most popular month so hey why not...) so I made a post saying I just had to turn another weekend august wedding away and it's fully booked apart from old mid week dates....lo and behold within 5 hours I had an e-mail of the midweek August wedding saying if I am still available she would like to book .....

We use our websites/pages as advertisement, but I think we don't often see the bigger picture that a client will choose whether or not to buy something on there emotions...

My partner says I am getting a big head because I said after I posted that post that it was aimed at this August wedding (She is getting married in one of the most lovely venues in Derby area so I really wanted it!) and when she contacted me I said I told you so lol.

I've actually got 3 potentials now..2 are a yes and 1 is speaking to her partner tonight but sounds promising...I've got a big gap between Jan-march so I've offered a discounted price for that now but I reckon anyone organised enough will have already sorted it and anyone who isn't organised won't be looking lol.

I had an enquiry for Sept 2017 who wanted it for the £200 price but I had to say look I'm sorry but I'm not taking bookings for 2017 yet and would be looking more £325 if you wanted to go ahead because I am doing this cheap price this year but next year I'll be built up and hoping to charge £300-500 ... I figured I will keep it easy for 2016 at £200 and just get the bookings though, but anyone on the right side of 2016 is getting an absolute bargain...

I thought I needed 1.3k for my next lens but done some research and picked up a similar one for £450 (still a proper branded lens, but second hand and slightly different) it's not going to leave my camera so it's a well needed buy. Hopefully it will be ok as got it off eBay........ugh.

Now my basic lens collection is complete (just need a macro but that is only really useful for taking pictures of rings and I can manage without it)
I just need some lighting equipment but it's shaved near £1,000 off the 4-5k I needed buying the lens second hand so it's a start. My husband has agreed to come to my April wedding if we can get a baby sitter as a second shooter so he has over 6 months to work on his photography and if he doesn't do a good job it's fine because they are not paying for him they are paying for me only.

Next stop I really need to start work on a website/logo combination....

lessonlearned

Kay :T:T:D

Well done - fantastic progress. Go You!!!!

Well now - where are we now.

the rellies have gone back and I have been working like a demon.....autumn tidy in the garden almost complete, outside house painted, new sofas delivered and setup, downstairs decorating complete. Need to start the hall and porch but a little break first to catch our breath. Dads paperwork, finances and legal bits almost done, just need to switch his bank account to one that has a local branch so my sister can take over.

On the money front Although I have splashed out on furniture and homewares I have been very frugal in other areas. I have bought clothes for my holiday and a couple of really lovely pure wool winter coats. All charity shop bargains - have spent less than £30 on clothes so feeling well chuffed.

As you know I'm on a mission to lose weight and drop a couple of sizes so don't want to spend too much on clothes untill I reach my goal but of course I'm vain enough to want to dress well in the meantime so charity shops fit the bill.

Ive also done really well with the food budget this month, reducing it by at least a third. Funny thing is we are eating better because im really thinking about what we are eating and planning it better - lots of healthy stuff too. Today it's cold wet and miserable so a nice warming casserole with lots of extra veg to keep up the vitamin quotent.

Ive pulled a muscle in my thigh - oh the joys of getting older - so it's time to ease up a bit I think. I go on holiday in just 7 weeks and I want to be fighting fit, so it's back to the exercise programme, yoga, tai chi, and then as soon as my leg is ok then dancing, walking and my cross trainer.

Also on the money front im going to get DS2 to set me up with Amazon prime, I do a fair bit of Internet shopping these days and I though I might enjoy the film package.

Btw. Rumour has it we are in for a harsh winter. El Niño causing trouble again. I noticed the geese left early this year, last week in August in fact so not a good sign.

You have been warned......:rotfl:

Karmacat

LL, thats a lot! My word ... Until flu season kicks in, I'm going to be trawling the charity shops for high end dresses - I have a *really* posh wedding to go to in May, and I can't possibly pay full price for my clothes there! Can't use a dress I've previously worn, either, I have to think of keeping up for my sister - and its fun to say "I *have* to buy this" every so often, ha!

As far as my own stuff goes, its a mix of keeping the blogs going till I actually start to monetise them (which I must do this month), starting some cat designs so I can sell them via funky pigeon or something, and finishing off setting the house up for the designing, tra-la. Oh, and I have a cold

Otherwise, I've started to tell *all* my clients I'm retiring - some have been quite annoyed with me at retiring so young, and then I tell them I'm 60 at which their jaws sort of bounce on the floor for a bit thats quite fun.

Kayalana99

I hope your thigh muscle is recovering LL. I've got a bit of a cold ATM to! They are just annoying!



Got my website up today. It's .. OK. Not to flashy, just basic and gets the information across to the brides...oh and it has a blog! Not sure if I can monetise it yet, planning on doing a 'Bride' section and a 'Photographer' section for help planning weddings/picking photographers stuff like that ...don't want my site advertising other photographers though so I might just settle for *hopefully* brides sharing my page and getting bookings through it for now... we will see if I am going to be doing information I could do with making something out of it somehow but I suppose it will put my value up as a photographer.

It's on word press so my website is https://www.X.wordpress.com but I think I can pay to upgrade it later on and do other stuff with it and a lot of professional photographers use it but with there own theme so sounds interesting.

Another Bride booked officially yesterday (dep paid), got a booking for Oct 15 but she has yet to pay the balance. Think my other enquiry has gone walkies and haven't got any new ones..although still waiting to hear back from my August midweek wedding that I'm so excited about >< just want the deposit paid so it's official.

It's a start for saying really I only want about 12-15 but I have a big gap in January-March time.

Kayalana99

Gone a bit quiet on here? :-)

I've just purchased a flash gun for £190 but I have promised my partner that is it...for a '£200' wedding photographer I have more equipment then I should lol.... there are still things I need (want depending how you look at it) but this is the last piece of the puzzle of the basic's

I still 'need' a macro lens and a long lens suitable for low light but I can live without the macro lens for now as it's only used for close in shots of rings etc and I can just take a close up picture, as for the long lens again I'll have to live without it.

The plan now is to start bringing the money in and *if* I want to buy more equipment then I will wait until I am charging £300-400 a wedding or so.

I also need to get focused on my main goal, I think things are looking up for us, I owe my Dad around £1,200 from that £1,500 I borrowed but I've started paying myself a wage from my business of £250 a month, so £160 of that goes back to my Dad but still means I have a wage from my business now.

My enquiries for weddings has stopped although I have 6 bookings for next year and the aim was 12..so for saying I've been advertising since start of August I don't think that's to bad?

The plan now is to get focused on the main goal, getting a B2L...it always was the plan but I think when you 'need 14k' to get started you just never do..I've set up one of my accounts as my B2L fund and the first part is to raise 7k to pay the mortgage down so we can turn this intl a B2L (then I'd get the next step of the deposit for the next)

Now I'm done spending ...(Looking at over 2,000 since this whole photography thing started..just on equipment..!) I'll start saving and time to start looking after the pennies and towards the main goal.

I'll be 25 next year, if I can pull together 5k by April that would be a hell of a start.... doesn't seem possible with current earnings but I suppose it could give me something to work for. I reckon 2k would be doable if I just put the extra in there.

I've taken my website down for now as I want to spend more time working on it and don't think it's needed right now. I'm not overally bothered about getting bookings any more (that sounds bad) but I want to just spend time developing my skills, of course if I get booked up that's amazing but I worry if I get to busy then I'll end up doing the same things over and over and have no time to learn new things.

I'm taking some friends out this weekend to do a sunset shoot, practice posing and if we have time going to get the sparklers out and do some light painting, if all goes well I'll take two more couples out for free or a small charge and then start adding engagement shoots onto my wedding packages (and try and get a few more just general couple shoots as they are about an hour and could charge up to £50 in the long run so a nice side income and I bet some will develop into weddings as if they are happy they will come back to me!)

So it's all go...best get back to business number 1 though!

droopsnoot

Kayalana99 wrote: »

but I can live without the macro lens for now as it's only used for close in shots of rings etc

I'm not sure if it's still relevant, but it used to be possible to get a thing called a "reversing ring" which allows you to put a standard lens "backwards" onto the camera body for macro shots. Reading this article ( http://www.eos-magazine.com/articles/macro/reversevision.html ) implies that might be a bit too close, though. I'm thinking of studio shots, not really on peoples fingers in an actual wedding party environment.

cazmanian_minx

Sounds like you've got it well under control, Kayalana

I'm still playing the solicitor waiting game, though she did email me last week to say we now have a formal written acceptance of the offer :j We're not quite at missives concluded yet, though it's unlikely it'll fall through now.

I spent a couple of hours up at the farm on Monday, soaking up sheep and crofting knowledge from the farmer - she told me, amongst many, many other useful things, that I'll be eligible for crofting grants and it's quite a lot of money, so I should look into it. I Googled it this evening and as a 'young farmer' (though only for another 11 months - need to get my applications in before my 41st birthday next August :rotfl:) in a less-favoured area, I am apparently eligible for an 80% grant on approved projects up to a maximum of £25,000 :eek::eek::eek: in any rolling two-year period. When I hit 41, it drops to 60%. Well, I reckon that would easily cover 80% of the cost of putting up a steel-sheet agricultural building, connected to water and electricity, with sheep pens, hay and feed storage and space to park a tractor, with maybe a bit left over for some hedge planting, so as soon as the tenancy's registered, I shall be off down to the SGRPID office for some help with filling in the forms correctly!

gallygirl

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

I spent a couple of hours up at the farm on Monday, soaking up sheep and crofting knowledge from the farmer - she told me, amongst many, many other useful things, that I'll be eligible for crofting grants and it's quite a lot of money, so I should look into it. I Googled it this evening and as a 'young farmer' (though only for another 11 months - need to get my applications in before my 41st birthday next August :rotfl:) in a less-favoured area, I am apparently eligible for an 80% grant on approved projects up to a maximum of £25,000 :eek::eek::eek: in any rolling two-year period. When I hit 41, it drops to 60%. Well, I reckon that would easily cover 80% of the cost of putting up a steel-sheet agricultural building, connected to water and electricity, with sheep pens, hay and feed storage and space to park a tractor, with maybe a bit left over for some hedge planting, so as soon as the tenancy's registered, I shall be off down to the SGRPID office for some help with filling in the forms correctly!

So what are you more chuffed about - the 80% grant or being told you're still 'young' :rotfl:. Great news :T.