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Episode 147: How Photographers Can Make More Money using their Online Gallery
629 Plays3 years ago
Gavin Wade, founder of CloudSpot joins me on the podcast today to discuss how photographers can make more money using their online gallery. Gavin dropped some real gems that are super practical when it comes to selling like, how to seed the sale so that it becomes a lot easier to make that sale later in the experience. You will want to stick around for this episode. You might remember Gavin from an earlier episode where he shared the story of building CloudSpot. Check out that episode if business origin stories interest you. Also just so you know CloudSpot has increased the limits of their free plan to 10 gigabytes this way you can actually take CloudSpot for a real spin to see if it's right for you before signing up for the paid plan.
For show notes visit...https://daveyandkrista.com/cloudspot-make-more-money-online-gallery/
Recommended
Transcript
Setting Purchase Expectations
00:00:05
Speaker
but that there's an expectation that they will and that this is how you're going to continue to serve them after the gallery has been delivered. And not just them. And oftentimes more often, they're friends and family who are making those purchases, not just the clients themselves. How do we make sure mom gets a book? How do we make sure grandma gets a print or a kit? It's like, you know, and making that just as easy for the clients to pass along versus just hoping that they like place an order. So what we have seen, the most successful people who are selling
00:00:34
Speaker
ingrain that expectation into the very first meeting. They are planting those seeds. It's called seeding the cell, right? And you're planting those seeds at the very first meeting that you have with your clients. You talk about the experience that they're going to have.
Boosting Photographer Income with Gavin Wade
00:00:51
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands That Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:01:00
Speaker
Gavin Wade, founder of CloudSpot, joins me on the podcast today to discuss how photographers can make more money using their online gallery. Gavin dropped some real gems that are super practical when it comes to selling, like how to seed the sale so that it becomes a lot easier to make that sale later in the experience. You'll want to stick around for this episode.
00:01:21
Speaker
You might remember Gavin from an earlier episode where he shared the story of building CloudSpot. Check out that episode if business origin stories interest you. Also, just so you know, CloudSpot has increased the limits of their free plan to 10 gigabytes. This way you can actually take CloudSpot for a real spin to see if it's right for you before signing up for a paid plan.
00:01:42
Speaker
As always, be sure to check out the show notes at DaveyandChrista.com for the resources that we mentioned during the episode. And we want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands at Book Podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram at DaveyandChrista. And if you have a moment, leave us a review on iTunes. Now, on to the episode.
Post-COVID Revenue Strategies
00:02:07
Speaker
All right, we are live. Gavin, welcome back to the Brands at Book Podcast.
00:02:12
Speaker
Thanks, Dave. Good to see you again, man. I feel like last couple of years, we've just been floating heads, we as a society. But it's good to see you. That's right. That's right. And hopefully we'll get to... I feel like every year we get to see each other at least in person once. 2020 obviously being the exception, but we've got to hang out at conferences before.
00:02:31
Speaker
So hopefully that continues, maybe even this year, I don't know. But if you don't know who Gavin is, Gavin has been on the podcast before, so I highly recommend going and checking out that episode. Gavin is the founder of CloudSpot, so a tool that
00:02:47
Speaker
a lot of our listeners probably use. I feel like it is probably one of the more popular, if not the most popular option out there for photographers when it comes to an online gallery. And in our past episode, you talked us a little bit through how you founded CloudSpot. And today, we're going to talk about how photographers can make more money using their online gallery. So excited to dig into that with you. But fill us in. Last couple of years, what's been going on? Oh, gosh. Yeah.
00:03:14
Speaker
It's been one heck of a ride. I mean, so many photographers and, you know, I've been a photographer for over 10 years. So, you know, COVID has definitely brought up a lot of things kind of to the surface for photography businesses, like a lot of small businesses. And so we've seen and we've been listening and making sure that we're there to help photographers and empower them in the ways that they need it most as hopefully we're coming out of the COVID.
00:03:39
Speaker
years and into extremely busy seasons. And with those extremely busy seasons come new stresses and strains and new bottlenecks on any small businesses workflow. And so we've been doing what we can to get ahead of that, to help with that, like we're going to talk about today. And a good part of that is how, how can we start earning some more revenue to kind of make up for some of those last months there in COVID, but also just to get more out of all the hard work that you're doing anyways, with hopefully
00:04:05
Speaker
this surge of clientele or this need, the surge of need that's going to be coming for events and weddings especially. Yeah. One thing I think I really appreciate about CloudSpot and a number of other businesses that I admire, I think you could throw show into this, this comment as well, where you guys have just grown so intentionally over the year, you know, over the past years, right?
Community-Centric Growth at CloudSpot
00:04:25
Speaker
And you've done that, I think, not at the expense of growth, but maybe choosing intentionality
00:04:30
Speaker
overgrowth to a certain extent or over maybe really fast growth for that matter. I just feel like you guys are so community-centric and every time that you roll out new features, it's not just like, oh, this is something that we pasted together and it's taped on. You roll them out and it's always like, hey, this is a feature set that maybe people have been asking for, but here's why it's better than everything else out there.
00:04:53
Speaker
And so I just really appreciate all the intentionality that goes into, you know, every time I'm talking to you, even just explain what you have going on at CloudSpot. So how is the how is the software developed over the last couple of years? What are some of the big things that that you've added that people are excited about? And maybe you can choose, you know, a little glimpse into the future as well. Absolutely. And I really appreciate it. And yeah, just to go back to what you said a little bit, you know, since we are photographers, we are solving not just
00:05:21
Speaker
features and things that we think people want. We're listening to our photographers, to our community, and it's not just building a feature for feature's sake. It's the why behind it. What specific issue or problem or pain point does this solve? We don't even lift a finger on the development side of things or on the product side of things until we have a really clear idea of exactly why we're doing what we're doing. Yes, that intentionality is huge because just
00:05:46
Speaker
If you throw a bunch of things into a product or a piece of software or platform, it's just going to confuse. If you confuse, you lose as the saying goes. On our side over the last couple of years, we've been focusing very heavily, especially when COVID hit, we said, okay. We want to be able to serve our photographers as best we can. We realized that everyone's in a different spot here.
00:06:06
Speaker
So at the time more than anything, people are always making decisions based on this, but does it save me money or does it make me money? Two really big questions that any small business owner is asking when they're evaluating a product or when they're falling into times in their business that are challenging. And so we decided to go the route of what can we control? We can control how we can help photographers make money. And so we put all of our eggs into one very specific basket in the year of COVID.
00:06:32
Speaker
That was reinventing our entire store. Within the client gallery that photographers give to their clients, what is that store experience?
Mobile-First Client Gallery Redesign
00:06:41
Speaker
When we're all doing things virtually, how can we give as near as perfect of a buying experience for clients to help photographers earn more through every gallery that they've had previously or that they're about to publish and send?
00:06:55
Speaker
So we overhauled our entire shopping experience with a mobile first approach because we know about 75% of all client gallery visits come from a mobile device, which is crazy.
00:07:06
Speaker
So photographers keep that in mind as you're delivering these galleries. We like to think that our clients are glued to their 27 inch screens just like we are, but it's not like they get everything on their phone, they tap on it, they view it, and that's where they live. And so we looked at the data and we said, okay, that's how we're going to start building out our store from that approach first. And then we really tried to make it as immersive an experience as possible.
00:07:28
Speaker
What does that mean? That means putting the images from your client's gallery right onto the products themselves. Giving them up to the millimeter of precision when they pick a can and saying, okay, what could that look like on a wall? Putting it against an example background and things like that. We invested really heavily into making sure that this store can be tailored and customized not only to your brand, but also to your clients specifically because we all know your clients buy
00:07:55
Speaker
what you showed them. And so we're all vain and we love seeing ourselves and our faces and our kiddos or whatever it might be on that product and you're more likely to go for it. So we invested really heavily into that, built out some new technology related to that.
00:08:07
Speaker
such that we can scale it. And so we've been intentionally putting that in every step along the way. So that was the year of COVID. And then last year, one of the biggest things that we've launched, and there's a few things like a notification center, which again, it's just giving you visibility into what your clients are doing, even to the precision of, did they take this action on a mobile device or on a web-based browser, like on their desktop or something like that, so that you can have insights into how people are interacting.
00:08:32
Speaker
with your galleries. But what we did last year that was super exciting and it was a pain point that a lot of photographers shared with us was, okay, okay, going to the, does it make me money or save me money? One of the avenues that can help photographers make money is social media. It's getting your work out there. It's separating yourself
00:08:48
Speaker
from a lot of the noise that's potentially crowding everyone's attention spans, right? So how do you reach your ideal client? So we took the social media pain point and really examined it closely. So a lot of photographers like, Hey, I've got all of this work, but I'm horrible at posting to social like Instagram, Facebook specifically, like, and the workflow, as we took a look at it and listen to our customers, we were just hearing one word throughout like disjointed.
00:09:14
Speaker
And it's like, hey, I go edit my photos, I upload my gallery, I send it to my clients, and that's kind of it, right? And then if I'm going to do social media, then I have to like go on my hard drive, or I have to text it to myself on my phone, or I have to, you know, post it that way. And I type out this long intricate caption on my mobile device and Instagram app, and then all of a sudden the app crashes, and I lose it all. And like you just throw your phone against the wall and say, it's too much work, and I'm done, right? So we said, how can we help with this? And the answer that we were hearing very clearly was,
00:09:43
Speaker
I need to be able to manage this on the social media side of things like the captions, what I'm going to say, what I'm going to share. I need to be able to manage this when I'm actually setting up my gallery, when I'm uploading my images, when I'm managing them on my web-based machine and getting ready to send it to clients. I'm already working there anyways.
00:10:00
Speaker
integrate like what I want to share or the images I want to use for social media right then and there. And so what we did is we created what we call our social media captions feature. And so in your Cloudspot dashboard, you can click on an image and you can actually save captions for every single social media channel, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, all of that
00:10:20
Speaker
right there on a per image basis. And we made it fully mobile responsive. So you log in your Cloudspot dashboard. You can download that image and save it to your device with one click. And then you can copy that text to your clipboard, swipe over to Instagram, upload the image, paste the text, done. And that helped the workflow, but it didn't make it perfect. There was one aspect that was still missing. And so what we did is, and this was years in the making, is we partnered and we're the first gallery provider ever to do this.
00:10:49
Speaker
is we partnered with the top social media scheduling application called Plan, which is also a web-based Instagram scheduler, planning tool, calendar. I mean, it's fully featured. It is huge. We partnered with them, and we integrated with them such that when you're using Plan, you can just with a few clicks bring over any images you want that are already uploaded to your Cloud Spot collections, and not just the images, but also the captions that you've saved for them.
00:11:19
Speaker
So it automatically pulls them over. You can schedule them out one by one, but it's essentially just a few clicks and you're done. And you can completely, without ever touching your phone, automate your entire social media posting schedule as a photographer. And that's never been done. And it just takes all of the stress and strain out of it. And it's super easy.
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. It would have saved us so much time back in the day while we were photographers, had we had something like that. There's a few things I was thinking too, just as you were explaining some of the new updates with CloudSpot. One, how big the store is, just how awesome that functionality is. Because even though this year is, I think, supposed to be maybe one of the busiest wedding years of all time, I know last year for sure,
00:12:02
Speaker
There was busyness, but it didn't necessarily mean more revenue. Just having friends who are in the venue space or another aspect of the wedding industry where it's still a lot of things that were postponed. So it was like you weren't realizing necessarily any more revenue in that year, but with something like the online store and learning how to use that effectively, and I'm excited to get into
High Demand for Prints During COVID
00:12:24
Speaker
that with you. That's a way to realize some revenue on something that you booked maybe a year or even two years ago.
00:12:31
Speaker
Learning in a time of need like that, going forward, you can increase the customer value of every single event that you book going forward, which is exciting. 100%. One of the things that our print partner labs were telling us, even through COVID, it was one of the busiest years for print labs. It's because everyone was sitting at home, everyone was staring at empty walls, and they were telling us, look, our canvases, our large prints, anything that's going on the wall,
00:12:58
Speaker
we are just selling out, like it is just like increasing two, three, 400% over the previous year in terms of what photographers were selling.
00:13:06
Speaker
And you're right, like a lot of things were postponed. So revenue had already been gathered the year before, but the event and all the work part of it was kicked down the road a little bit. But as far as what people were actually buying and spending was unlike anything, you know, professional labs had ever seen before. And that's largely due to photographers giving their clients that ability to fill up those walls and easy ways to make those purchases through their calories.
00:13:30
Speaker
Yeah, there's one other thing that you said that I just like, you know, that's something I continually need to learn, which is you'd mentioned that you don't even start development, you don't lift the finger until you really thought out, you know, some of these questions around why and is it a good idea, you know, so on and so forth. And I'm just thinking like all of us business owners can learn that, you know, I feel like
00:13:48
Speaker
for maybe in the development world, you have to learn that to a certain extent before you actually start building something and then have to go back and rebuild it. Whereas maybe for everyday tasks that I have, I'm like, man, if I just sat back and even though I was excited about something, not just dive into it and thought through some of that questions, I'd be probably a lot better off, but just as an aside.
00:14:09
Speaker
So we can start talking about how photographers can make more money with their online gallery. Before we get there, what sort of things should people think through when they're choosing an online gallery system? And why choose a platform dedicated to that? Believe it or not, come across photographers occasionally who are delivering things via Dropbox and Drive. So why should somebody choose an online gallery platform and then what really should they be looking into when they choose one?
Choosing the Right Platform
00:14:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And so there's, there's good news and there's better news as far as that goes. And the good news is there is a ton of great companies out there that can help photographers accomplish this. You know, I'm extremely biased in cloud spot direction, obviously, but there are a lot of great companies out there. So in terms of just like, I need something, okay, what's the best one out there? Best is relative, right? And it really comes down to what you as a business owner, as a creative,
00:15:06
Speaker
really value on two aspects. One, it's your workflow and the ease of use for that. The things that are going to save you time and buy back your time essentially so you're not glued to your computer. That's one aspect. That's the behind the scenes part of the tool that you choose. Then there's also the client facing experience. It's interesting I hear and see so many photographers who come to us going
00:15:28
Speaker
Oh my gosh, like I put up with so much stuff on the back end. It's because the front end seemed to be okay. So I just didn't want to upset the Apple cart. But when you find the best experience for your clients and also the best tool for you to use in your workflow, that's when you really start, like I said, buying back your time and realizing, Hey, look, like it doesn't always have to be this way. So when photographers are choosing a gallery platform, I always say, look,
00:15:52
Speaker
It's usually a question of better and best. So it's not like, you know, which is the one that by far and away I need that, you know, use and adopt because people ask that on Facebook groups all the time. And everyone, if you've ever seen those posts, everyone just says their own thing and whatever they use. But my, my thought is try them. Try, try the ones experience them. How does it feel? How does it look to your clients? Can you track your customer's journey and your workflow journey through this tool? And can you see yourself working in this day in and day out? So,
00:16:20
Speaker
You know, that's, that's a big question. And then also, like you said, some people are still using the drives or the drop boxes or whatever it might be. And when you're first starting out as a photography business, I can see why that would be the default, but keep this in mind. Like, and I know photographers at any stage in their business are always very conscious of this. And it's what is the brand identity? What is the look and feel and vibe and credibility factor really that I'm putting out there with my clients.
00:16:47
Speaker
through every step along the journey. Just like in software, but putting my photographer hat on for a second, it's the whole reason why I created CloudSpot. It's because I felt like we were creating this wonderful branded boutique experience for our clients all the way up until the point when we were going to deliver their photos. And then it was this third party, very much this, here you go, here's your Dropbox link. As I say, have a nice life, right? Onto the next one. And it was just through being naive and not knowing any better that
00:17:15
Speaker
This wasn't actually the end of the customer's journey with you. Just when you deliver those photos, you're not done. We'll talk about it, especially in the context of selling through galleries and prepping clients for that. In so many ways, the relationship is just beginning with your clients. When you're wanting to establish a long-standing, referral-based business of not just having a one-time client, but having lifelong clients, that gallery experience
00:17:40
Speaker
that ease of use, the ability for not just your clients to get what you want them to have, but also their ability to brag about you to all of their friends and family. And how do you make that possible really comes into play when you're at that gallery image delivery experience side of things. So it's,
00:17:57
Speaker
Keeping that in mind, you need to have your brand being reflective of something that you're proud of when it comes to the online gallery experience and image delivery experience when you're serving your clients in that way.
Importance of Customer Service
00:18:09
Speaker
Yeah. Regardless of the type of software that I'm looking to choose or whatever app, one of the things that I almost always do is looking to support. How quickly is the support team going to get back to me?
00:18:20
Speaker
Do they have some sort of community where questions can be asked? Because it doesn't matter what tool you use, you're going to run into an issue at some point. And it might be something you feel like is not working right, or you want to do something and you're just not quite sure how it can be done, right? And one thing that I've always admired about you is that you are in your Facebook group, you're answering questions, you're posting updates, and your team is as well. And so, I've always appreciated that. And even though we're not photographers anymore,
00:18:46
Speaker
I can still see that. I'm still in the group. I see that happening consistently. A little plug for the community that you've created for sure. Thanks, man. Hats off to our support team because they're fantastic and they pour their heart into it. We hire
00:19:02
Speaker
support team members based on not just, oh, we have X number of people that need to be served, it's how can we go above and beyond? And the moment that we feel like we can't go above and beyond, not just get bare minimum, that's when we start hiring new support people. It's not when we're at the breaking point, it's when we can no longer deliver that type of over the top extra mile experience for our photographers.
00:19:24
Speaker
And that's kind of the barometer that we use because we get it like you're a small business and it's just you and you need some help. You need a real human on the other side. You need someone to type in the chat. You need someone to follow up the email. You need someone to take that extra step with you because we're shoulder to shoulder right next to you in all the ways that matter. So it needs to feel that way.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah. And I admire that. And every tool that I use, there's always going to be a feature where I'm like, oh, it'd be really awesome if they added that. And so going back to my point is it's just nice to know that there's someone actually on the other side that's listening and cares. It doesn't mean that they'll maybe build that feature. Who knows? But at least I know that they're listening and they care about me as a user.
00:20:07
Speaker
As we transition to talking about how photographers can make more money using their online gallery, what do you see? What has worked well for maybe some of the top earners that use CloudSpot? Where should we even start? Yeah, absolutely.
Learning from Top Earners
00:20:21
Speaker
I think like anything, when you're looking to grow, whether it be personally or professionally, it's find those examples, like you mentioned, the people who are the top earners and reverse engineer that success. They got a $1,000 print order.
00:20:37
Speaker
Did they just get lucky or like, how did they do that? How, what led to that, that particular type of print order or that maybe not a thousand dollars in terms of one, but like what led to 50 $20 orders in a given month or like, and it's a very different approach based on how people are running their businesses.
00:20:53
Speaker
I would say just flipping a toggle and turning on the store. In product and software, they call it the field of dreams mentality. If you build it, they'll come. And that's just this delusional thing that a lot of founders think is like, oh yeah, as soon as my product launches, it's automatically going to go viral. Everyone's going to talk about it. We're going to be gazillionaires overnight. And so it's the same thing with online gallery in terms of sales.
00:21:16
Speaker
Just by flipping that toggle and saying, hey, client, you can buy things doesn't mean they're going to buy things. In fact, if you treat it with that type of cavalier attitude, they're going to treat it the same way. So it goes back to, OK, how do you reverse engineer that success and setting the stage for your clients to not just know that they can buy, but that there's an expectation that they will and that this is how you're going to continue to serve them after the gallery has been delivered, and not just them.
00:21:44
Speaker
and oftentimes more often their friends and family who are making those purchases, not just the clients themselves. How do we make sure mom gets a book? How do we make sure grandma gets a print or a canvas? And making that just as easy for the clients to pass along versus just hoping that they place an order. So what we have seen, the most successful people who are selling ingrain that expectation into the very first meeting. They are planting those seeds
00:22:13
Speaker
It's called seeding the cell, right? And you're planting those seeds at the very first meeting that you have with your clients. You talk about the experience that they're going to have with you, right? And that kind of goes back into a separate topic that I'm sure a different podcast for a different date. And that's essentially how do you communicate and market yourself to potential clients, right? What are the hot button issues? What are the fears, frustrations, needs, wants, and desires, right? That you're essentially addressing within the context of a wedding day, let's say, for clients when you meet with them.
00:22:41
Speaker
It's no different when it comes to sales as well. There's a lot, especially for clients, A, most have never been married before. So that's a whole new experience for them, right? So they're getting their heads wrapped around that. B, hiring a photographer and choosing a photographer. They're wrapping their heads around all the intricacies of that. And you're just one of many vendors where they're trying to figure out this path and what's the right fit for them. And so, and then even within that sphere of, oh, I'm choosing a photographer, then it's,
00:23:08
Speaker
How do photographers price and run their businesses? And am I going to get taken to the cleaners after the fact and hidden costs or fees or gotchas essentially they're looking for? So what I would say is the best sellers, just in general, set the stage and remove all barriers for concerns or questions or even just ambiguity when it comes to this is what you're going to get, this is what you're going to be able to do, and this is how I'm going to help you do it and incentivize them to take that extra step.
00:23:38
Speaker
So let me deconstruct that a little bit and take it out of the abstract. But it's like that takes the form of just in terms of how you're wording things. Like, hey, when we deliver your images, we know you're going to be printing your photos. We know you're going to want things on your walls. This is how we're going to make it the easiest way for you to accomplish that.
00:23:58
Speaker
We're connected like with the best pro level print labs. So you don't have to go to Costco. You don't have to do anything like that. We're going to take care of that for you and give you access to printer quality labs that only we pros have. So rest assured anything you do there is going to be a hundred percent, you know, way better in terms of quality. B, we're going to ship it to you. We're going to make sure it's handled for you. And you know, depending on how you run your business, you can say, we'll fully retouch every image before it goes to print or we'll adjust things for you or we'll make recommendations
00:24:25
Speaker
on the best images that you could possibly use for filling up your walls. So even in the client meeting, you're seeding that sale, you're setting the stage and you're kind of building out that assumption that they're going to be buying. And then how do you get them to take that next step? I highly encourage a lot of photographers to build in print credit into their packages, print credit, such that when clients go and say, okay, I've got 100 bucks to spend, right? It's not going to cost you the photographer $100, you're going to mark up your prints, it may cost you
00:24:54
Speaker
$10 in actual costs for the prints, but your clients are going in the expectation that they have X amount to use and they get in the buying mood and then based on your pricing in the gallery, they're going to more oftentimes and not add more than what you've given them credit for. It goes back to an example that I heard that was done. It was at a car wash and the car wash did two things with different cohorts of users. What they did is the first people, they gave them a punch card for 10
00:25:24
Speaker
car washes. So after you get 10 car washes, you get the 11th one for free. And there was a blank card and they said, okay, here you go. Use it on your next purchase. The other cohort, they gave them that same punch card, but they started them off with three punches. And they said, okay, on your 11th car wash, you're going to get it free. 80 to 85% of people who got the three hole punches ahead of time
00:25:46
Speaker
got that free car wash. They came and they got the seven more than the people who just had a blank cart. Give them hole punches in their card to use when it comes to prints and products that you're selling through the gallery because that's going to give them the permission when the time comes and the excuse for you to remind them that they have this to use and gets them in the buying booth.
00:26:07
Speaker
I'm pretty convinced that everything you need to learn about selling you can learn from car washes. Just absolutely everything. How they list their prices, their entire pricing structure. It's like, you're telling me that there's actually a $30 difference between the basic car wash and the advanced car wash or whatever. But every time I do the advanced one, I do whatever the
00:26:26
Speaker
the highest the highest packages or whatever, you know, and it's what they like dry the windows or something. I don't know. But point being, I think that's I mean, it's just it is true. We used to do that with album credits in particular, you know, having some sort of album credit and almost always people would spend more than you know, whatever the album credit credit was, you know,
00:26:44
Speaker
And so I could see that working with prints for sure. And yeah, I just love that car wash example. Even just seeding the sale throughout the conversation and by asking people questions about what kind of photos that they love and have you already picked out places in your house that you're gonna hang photos. It just starts getting people thinking like, oh yeah, where am I gonna hang these photos in my house?
00:27:08
Speaker
So I think that's pretty ingenious. One other thing I want to say about just toggling the store on, I would 100% agree.
Sales Mindset and Strategies
00:27:16
Speaker
If you build it, they won't just come, right? But it is surprising. I remember when we, for a time, weren't doing much with our online gallery and every once in a while,
00:27:26
Speaker
someone place an order. You're like, oh, wow. And it's like, soon enough, we realized, man, maybe if we put some effort into this, we'd see some more consistent income from it. But I think for a while, and this is the first business that I ever ran, I just thought to myself, well, they could just go to Costco, or of course, they're just going to print it out on their own or they're going to do the cheapest option. And it wasn't until I started thinking,
00:27:49
Speaker
But I don't do that in my own life. I still buy people's books even if I know I can find all that content on their blog. It's just not how we operate. I think it's just such a mindset issue a lot of times when it comes to selling. It's not really practically as hard as we sometimes make it out to be.
00:28:09
Speaker
100%. We even see in some of the emails that our CloudSpot users send out, they literally tell their clients, hey, here's the download link and here's where I recommend you go and get things printed. They say the Costco, they say the Walgreens. A little piece of me dies inside, not because we make tons of money from print sales, we don't. Photographers keep 100% of the markup that they add to these things.
00:28:34
Speaker
But it's like you're missing such an opportunity to serve your clients in that way. Because they don't want to go and do that. They'd much rather click a few buttons in the gallery you've already given them. Price the prints a few cents above, whatever. You don't need to get absolutely rich either as a photographer selling prints. That's not part of your model. But it's at least giving your clients that ability.
00:28:55
Speaker
to have that service from you, which is overall just going to elevate your brand's reputation in their mind or in the way that they talk about your services. So it's 100%. I think a lot of us photographers get in our heads about sales. Like photographers, especially since we're creatives by nature first, it's like sales is a four-letter word that we just don't want to touch.
00:29:16
Speaker
And in so many ways, clients are asking for that permission to spend money with you in those ways. You just need to give them that excuse and you need to guide them to the best possible outcome for it. And that's what so many clients are just needing. Guidance, right? You need to be the Obi-Wan to their Luke Skywalker in all things related to their experience with you. And print sales are not excluded from that.
00:29:39
Speaker
Yeah, and once you start thinking about all the ways you can sort of seed that throughout the client experience, even with client gifts, one of the things that we started doing was we would require an engagement session. It just got everybody comfortable before the wedding day, but one other thing that allowed us to do was
00:29:56
Speaker
actually print photos for them as a gift from their engagement session. So now they can actually, they have some tangible in their hand. It's good marketing because they always got hung in the house somewhere, you know, so other people were seeing it. But then it also, you know, they realized like, oh yeah, this is a lot better than what I get at Walmart or, you know, whatever. And so they trust, you know, they trust the product right then and they don't have to, it doesn't feel, I think, as much of a risk after we've shot the wedding or whatever.
00:30:24
Speaker
Oh, I love that. In essence, you're punching their car wash card in that way by giving them those prints already and giving them a taste for it. And yeah, it looks like, okay, that one's so hard. And look, wow, it looks really awesome. And we can gift this just like it was gifted to us. Like, I love that.
00:30:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So what is there anything else like it's even in like maybe setting up the online gallery that you notice that certain people do that you're like, Oh, yeah, that's really smart or in the emails that they send. Is there anything else that people should, you know, keep in mind as they're kind of setting up the sales experience? Yeah, absolutely. I would say
00:30:57
Speaker
Again, let's say you're doing a great job of talking about it in your client meetings or communications with them leading up to delivering the gallery. It doesn't mean the work is done and that the sales are going to come. When you're delivering the gallery specifically, now when that time has come, because keep in mind, there's an emotional window here that you can capture.
00:31:16
Speaker
you know, kind of put yourself in your client's shoes. They're getting all their wedding photos. They're super excited. They just want to dive right into that gallery before they finish reading the email. They just can't wait to see everything, right? So you need to think through all the various touch points of not just telling them once, but telling them over and over and reminding them lovingly, of course, and with some perhaps time sensitivity or like that credit, like you mentioned, how can you do that such that it just kind of comes to the top of their mind over and over. So when you deliver the gallery, mention it in the email like, Hey,
00:31:46
Speaker
Here's your discount code for the credit that you got, or here's the time sensitive discount you're going to get for any prints and products sold. Tell your friends and family. They're not going to necessarily tell their friends and family, but you tell them in there. It's again, just another point of touch for sales. Then in the gallery itself, how can you bypass your clients?
00:32:06
Speaker
You know, again, bride and groom may not just tell everyone that they shared the gallery with, Hey, here's the promo code that my photographer gave me. No. So you as a photographer need to find a way to expose that promotion, a time sensitive sale or that discount code to all of the gallery visitors as well. We call that our sales banner feature, such that it's at the top of the gallery. And that removes essentially that game of telephone for the bride and groom or your client needing to tell everyone they showed a gallery with that here, this is what you do in order to get a deal on prints.
00:32:34
Speaker
So we use our sales banner feature and photographers can customize the message that goes there.
00:32:39
Speaker
And then also, you know, we encourage our photographers to expire the gallery or at least tell your clients that a gallery is going to expire. It could be, you know, re-released, it could be brought back to life again or whatever, but giving them that immediacy of like, here's your window to use the credit, right? Or here's your window to access the gallery and share with folks. And then what we have is we have gallery expiration reminder emails that you can automatically set up and leverage email templates such that X number of days before the gallery closes, there's another touch point for you to go, hey,
00:33:08
Speaker
Forget, here's the discount code that you got. Here's the promo that's ending. And again, combine those things. Those are just three to four very easy reminders that they have this gift waiting for them to put things onto their walls.
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think the time sensitivity thing is so important and not only for sales, I mean, any of us know, right? As you know, when you sell the most in a given launch, you know, typically it's going to be you're going to see a big bump when when cart opens, but then you're going to see maybe the biggest bump right before cart closes, you know, as a countdown timer is counting down or whatnot.
00:33:42
Speaker
And so there's a good business reason to do it, but I'm convinced that it's an experience issue too. You should do it because it does improve the experience. And what I mean is somebody who hasn't, who could have gotten an album, who hasn't gotten an album,
00:33:58
Speaker
They haven't used their credit or print credit for a year. That's not a good experience for them. You want them to have something tangible in their hands as soon as possible after you actually shoot the wedding or whatever session it is, not just weddings, of course. I really think that's going to be – that's key when it comes to the experience, not, oh, it's just this thing looming over my head and I know I have this credit and I don't even feel like getting to it or whatever.
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's, you know, I think a lot of photographers are like, sweet, they haven't ordered their album for years. I'm probably off the hook or whatever. It's like, well, no, that's, that's a piece of marketing. That's, that's your brand not being in front of them all the time and then thinking about you. And, you know, what does that translate into? Translate that translates into them thinking about you for
00:34:48
Speaker
family portraits or for major life moments like just got emailed the other day from a client who's since moved across the country now to California. And like we've captured all of their kids newborn photos and all of their now I can email for their birthday parties and twins like their one year old birthday party like this originated from their wedding seven years ago, but we
00:35:08
Speaker
because we gave them their album because we got the products on their walls. They are looking at this all the time and going, Oh, man, we really need to have more of those types of moments around and to remember, you know? And so it's just us. It's our brand. It's the reminder that we exist all over their house wherever they walk. And then special moments come up in their life. There's no one else in their minds that they would want to capture that because of what you did for them that many years ago. The album is no different. Print credits no different. And it's just that
00:35:37
Speaker
ever-present marketing billboard, so to speak, that's in your client's hands or on their walls. Absolutely. I want to move on and ask you what you would say to somebody who maybe hasn't tried this. But before we do, is there anything else that you really feel like you need to mention before we move on? I would say
00:35:55
Speaker
As it comes to sales and on the CloudSpot side, something that I forgot to mention previously, our goal is always to allow you to have a more fully featured store and product offering for your clients, if that's something you choose.
New Design Features in Galleries
00:36:07
Speaker
Something we released last year and the first ever integration was we built in an album design feature into the gallery. I think a lot of photographers, and this goes back to your question just right now, is
00:36:19
Speaker
photographers are just scared of sales and why and I totally get it. It's what do I price things out? What do I offer? What makes sense? What are clients even want, right? And it's just all of these little points where that little devil on your shoulder just kind of goes, you don't know pricing. You're going to price it wrong. You're not going to sell anything. Don't worry about it. You make thousands of dollars from a wedding, a hundred dollars or a couple hundred dollars for print sales. You know what? It's just not worth it. Put it to the bottom of your list.
00:36:43
Speaker
And so going back to, you know what, just giving your clients that opportunity, right? Like, you know, step up to the plate, you know, maybe you might price things wrong initially, but you can adjust. Like, don't let that fear of perfectionism when it comes to pricing things stop you from giving your clients that awesome experience. Like you mentioned, right? It's a disservice at that point.
00:37:04
Speaker
rather than a service. We built in the ability for photographers just to sell albums through their galleries. Some photographers would never touch that. They want to have that album building experience and that client experience in-house. Totally get it.
00:37:17
Speaker
A lot of photographers, though, aren't quite there yet in their business and say, you know what? I'd rather sell a few hundred dollar album and let my clients build the perfect book. And I just get 100% of the profits. And so we partnered with our WHCC Print Lab partner and they can, clients can order and design books right through their cloud spot gallery. Drag, drop, customize the cover, choose leather types, choose embossing. Like it is a fully featured album design tool. And again, that's a service you as a photographer can now offer to your clients.
00:37:46
Speaker
remove that question mark of where do i go to get a great quality book right only through you similarly in just literally a week we're launching our. Custom holiday card greeting card like special occasion card builder as well with the same thing in mind like all the special occasions that you're capturing for your clients.
00:38:04
Speaker
They want to brag about that, especially during the holidays, especially during newborn births and save the dates and all those things that you're already doing for them. Allow them to completely customize and build beautiful cards right through the gallery after you deliver the engagement session. Just say,
00:38:19
Speaker
Build your save the date straight through here. Here's the discount code. That is one less thing that this bride has to go and find and source and do. You are providing that straight through there. And again, they're spending that money regardless. Give them that opportunity to spend it with you and add it as a part of your service because it is one less thing for them to care about. And you're actually helping them by letting them spend money with you. So anyways, going back to your question, it's just step up to the plate.
00:38:46
Speaker
turn it on and just adjust what you think is right for pricing. We suggest a 300% markup on just basic prints and things like that, like four by sixes, five by sevens, and then canvases, perhaps a little less. But again, you don't have to make it astronomically expensive. Just make it to a thing that, look, if this was passive income for you, and if you got an order every couple of weeks or whatever it might be, it's going to make you happy. Anything is better than nothing.
00:39:10
Speaker
And we know without a fact that photographers make $1,200 a year through their gallery, even with zero effort, just by turning it on. That's the bare minimum that someone's going to make. And then it's up to us to help our photographers sell more. So we have some really cool things coming this year that will lead to that.
00:39:26
Speaker
But yeah, just step up, do it, turn it on, bring it to the top of your list. We even help you. We provide a free screen-sharing session and our team will actually set it up for you with your approval on what markups you want and we'll help you get that first sell. It's our pleasure.
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, heck, $1,200 a year doing nothing. No effort just toggling it on. There's nothing to lose there. That's awesome. As far as the holiday card maker goes, that's reason enough just to sign up right there. I mean, I just feel like that is such a nightmare for people. I'm just thinking, I'm lucky because I'm married to a designer so she can design her own card. But even being that, trying to go through Minted and all these things, it's always backed up. They're always late.
00:40:12
Speaker
Yeah. So anyways, that's awesome. That's an exciting feature that's rolling out. So anything else that we should be at on the lookout for, you know, I feel like we've covered a lot. I we have and I really appreciate the awesome questions. Again, our goal at the end of the day is that we help our photographers be successful. We've talked a lot about sales today, which I think is one of the easiest ways that photographers can essentially kind of have recurring ongoing
00:40:38
Speaker
success with each client if you just set it up right and see that sale like we've talked about. But especially when it comes to just tangible products, we still know that on a web-based environment, whether on the phone or computer, even though we show the images on the products and we still show examples of size and scale, we still know that it doesn't 100% get it there, right? It gets it there, but it doesn't alleviate that, oh my gosh, but what about my wall? What about that size and that image on my wall or on that table, whatever it might be?
00:41:08
Speaker
So over the past year, we've been racking our brains. I'm like, what can we bring to the photographers such that it's a service that they offer to their clients through us that gives that much more confidence to clients when they're actually purchasing larger wall items.
Augmented Reality Previews
00:41:25
Speaker
So, and I can let the cat out of the bag on this one because it's, it's very nearly there is we are going to be for prints and for canvases.
00:41:35
Speaker
We're going to be building into the gallery side of things in the store side of things, augmented reality previews for those products. So photographers, you don't have to be a trillion dollar business like Apple or Amazon in your e-commerce store to do this now. You, a photographer, can allow your clients to select an image in their cart, select a canvas size, adjust the cropping, and then before they click add to cart,
00:42:00
Speaker
They click a button that says, view this in my space. And it literally transfers the experience to their phone and they hold their phone up right to the wall that they're going to place that product on. And it literally just goes, boom, right against the wall.
00:42:12
Speaker
and they can walk around it, they can go side to side, see exactly how it's going to fit, position it. They can even see the fold of the canvas and the staple on the back of the canvas in that augmented reality preview. It's insane. That is wild. That is absolutely wild. I wish even half of the stuff was around back when I was shooting. I know. I know.
00:42:35
Speaker
I know. It's so cool. And then for prints, you just aim your camera phone at a table, and it literally just puts that print in the exact perfect size. Even the paper type you select, you'll see the sheen, you'll see the bat, you'll see everything. Just climb all over this thing. And it is so scary, real. I mean, the nerd in me just geeks out looking at it. But for photographers, you can say, Hey, look, clients, like, we know you're gonna be filling up your walls, right? You've talking about this throughout the whole experience. Now you can say,
00:43:02
Speaker
Now, I want to make sure that you can buy with that confidence and know 100% that what you're going to purchase is going to fit exactly in that space. All you have to do is through the gallery that I'm going to provide you, tap that button and I will help walk you through or it will walk you through exactly the perfect size product to go on that wall. I'm going to ask a question that I feel like you're just not supposed to ask developers, which is do you have an idea of when it's going to be released? We are testing it right now. I mean, our goal is with the next
00:43:32
Speaker
four to six weeks to have this launched. So this is basically built. Like it's built like you're in testing right now. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's amazing. Just was playing with it yesterday on my wall. Yeah, super cool. That's awesome. Well, Gavin, thank you so much for your time today and sharing your expertise around galleries and selling and sharing a little bit about what we can expect out of CloudSpot going forward.
00:43:54
Speaker
Absolutely. And it's always great to see you and super grateful for just the brand's up a podcast, Dave and Krista and just, you know, the types of photographers and awesome content that you guys create. So we really appreciate any opportunity to just to sit down and chat. Hopefully you do it in person soon.
00:44:09
Speaker
Absolutely. And maybe we'll just get together and exchange like everything we've learned from car washes because I'm legit believe we could that could be a whole podcast episode on selling. Yeah, that's it. I think so. I'm down for it, man. I'm down. Thanks, man. Awesome.
00:44:30
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.