March Income Report $38,880

Vendors: $2700

Paypal Fees: $943

Website Payment Fees: $206

Facebook: $11,275

Pathwright: $210

RetargetingApp: $2206

Post Planner*: $19

GoDaddy: $2

Rare.io: $39

Pixieset: $50

Social Login: $2

Privy: $24 

Adobe: $10

Quickbooks Bookkeeping: $29

Accountant: $290 

 (Anything with an * next to it is an affiliate link)

 

GROSS INCOME TO DATE $971,705

(income in graph below is only for January 2015 - now) 

FACEBOOK, E-MAIL SUBSCRIPTION, INSTAGRAM, PINTEREST GROWTH

• Facebook: 97,008 +1000
• E-mails: 51,652 +323
• Instagram: 7683 +454
• Pinterest: 5474  +125

TOTAL GROWTH: +1902

It was important for me to add this information into my income report because I do use social media to grow my business. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and e-mail subscription is what really made it possible for me to build my business so quickly. If you compare starting a business to the time before social media was in our life, it was hard. Someone had to open up an actual store business to be found and then count on foot traffic and phone books to be found by potential customers. We live in an incredible time where we have tools such as social media to make it easier than ever to connect to the right people. For me, using these social platforms has helped me grow my businesses and reach hundreds of amazing clients & customers. Below I'll go over how I personally love to use each platform. They each unique, and I have different things I love using about each of them. 

MY STRATEGY BREAKDOWN: 

FACEBOOK STRATEGY

I have facebook listed first, aside from my own websites, this is what I love spending most of my time. I love it over other platforms because I feel like it allows me to engage with people on a deeper level. The people that follow me on there. (photographers, creatives, and my amazing clients) are extremely involved and I love that it feels more like a community than a fan page. My strategy on facebook has always been to be as authentic, helpful and encouraging. I love inspiring others to pursue their dreams and share my own work with people who truly care and have that same positive mindset as me. 

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I try my best to put out as much good content as possible and give people a place to learn and connect. I love giving people direct answers and advice on their own path and love how easy facebook makes this. I get a ton of messages and comments every day and do my best to respond to each of them. I love it when I get personal messages from other dreamers, and love chatting with them. It's really time-consuming to stay on top of all of it but it makes me happy knowing that people can come to a place to get more encouragement. 

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A really great way that has allowed me to grow my client base is uploading client photos and tagging them directly. I'm friends with all my clients and love seeing comments on their page. (you can only see them if you're actually friends with them). I might get 10+ comments on my fan page, but there's usually another 50+ on my clients page. There's usually a few people asking for more information and I'm glad to always see my clients tag my page or me personally under the comment which allows me to connect instantly with another potential client. 

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If I was to draw out my client base and add a line between the ones who know each other it would be a huge spiderweb of lines. They all know each other in some way and I love that about it.

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I spend money on facebook boosted posts and feel like it's a great way to reach more people who are looking for a photographer, or love to connect with another photographer. 

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Other social sites are great but facebook works really great for me since I do have so many aspects of my business. My portrait photography business, wedding photography business, store & business coaching. Facebook makes it really easy for me to have all those on the same page. 

E-MAIL STRATEGY

Growing an email list has been something that I've been working on over the last few years. I find creating newsletters extremely time-consuming, but know what an awesome way it is to reach all clients or customers at once. So although I don't enjoy it as much as Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest I do my best to still stay on top of it.

The way I collect email address is by giving away free content, or some sort of giveaway. For my portrait business, I have done monthly giveaways for people to enter and have collected email addresses that way. For weddings, I have done a wedding package giveaway. For those I will usually only do one giveaway a year, and only if I want to book more weddings. For my store side and business mentoring I giveaway one business class seat each month.  

Giving away free content, advice, products, sessions etc is a great way to get a long list of potential clients or customers. Once I have those collected I reach out on a later date to see if they are still interested in the service or product. Collecting email addresses is a great way to open communication with hundreds of potential clients. 

One of the reasons I collect email addresses for newsletters is because I have no idea where social media will be in 5-10-20 years. I might not use newsletters a ton, but I know that those contacts will be on my list forever, regardless of where social media goes. So growing that list long term is a great way for me to ensure I have a direct contact with the right people. 

INSTAGRAM STRATEGY

I use Instagram for my portrait and photography business. Instagram strives on visuals and using my photography on there has been a great way to reach more potential clients. Connecting with other businesses has also been a wonderful way to rasise more awareness on my own brand. I don't most a ton of content to Instagram but use it to showcase more of my work. 

In 2016 I split up my personal and business page to help create a 'prettier' Instagram. I love sharing my little personal life moments on Instagram but hated how it just didn't fit into my photography style. For those who follow my work know my work is very bright and airy with lots of white. My personal life is a little messier and has a lot more color. I share lots of pictures of my two kiddos and our little adventures. Splitting the two apart has helped me share more personal moments while keeping my business side nice and pretty. 

Here's a quick look at my business Instagram. @modernbabyphotography

And here's my personal Instagram. @Mrs_Ringo

PINTEREST STRATEGY

I use Pinterest for gathering ideas and inspiration. I showcase my own photography work on there, as well as link my blog post content and products. I often use it to create vision boards for upcoming sessions and love the amount of knowledge that is available on there. I also use Pinterest to find other vendors to work with. One thing I do like to do is keep my Pinterest page really organized and pin only things I personally really love. Overall I keep Pinterest pretty simple. I love using it, who wouldn't. 

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The next few things are tasks I started in the month. Some are on going and some have been completed. 

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I TOOK A MINI-VACATION

February was a little stressful and when Spring Break came around I knew I wanted to take a week off from working. For me, my biggest triumph was taking time for myself and my family and turning everything off. I don't take a lot of time off work. 1. Because I love what I do, and 2. I work from home so it always feels like work is around me. Recently I've have had more stress than usual and I knew that I needed to slow down a little, spend a more quality time with family. I took an entire week off, focused 100% on being in the moment and told myself not to worry about work. I hung out with my family, we went on a little mini-vacation, swam with some dolphins and made memories. I turned everything off and took a break. Coming back from taking time off I realize that business goes on, even when we take a little break. Taking time off is just as important as being productive while at work. My goal for the remaining part of the year and upcoming years is to schedule actual time off, and then really put my feet up when I do. Oh, we also went strawberry picking which was a blast. 

CHANGING FOCUS

My last scheduled wedding in Florida is May 20th and with that, it means I've had to really change my focus, but more focus on other aspects of my business for the time being of getting transitioned over to Hawaii. I've had to turn down so many session requests in the past few months because of my move to Hawaii. This means slowing down and not shooting very much and although it's been really great to have the time to re-focus on the direction I'm going with my portraits I am so excited to get to Maui and start shooting again because man I miss it! My mind has been on over drive on ideas that I'd like to do when I get there and I know right now I just have to sit and wait to get there to start. 

OPENED UP A PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP FOR FREE LIGHTROOM TUTORIALS

A huge part of my business is giving back to those around me. I try to create helpful articles, encourage people and help them with the things they struggle with. Sometimes it's hard to figure out how to do that. I had been asked to start a private group for those who use my presets and loved the idea. I loved the idea even more because it would give me a place to share free tutorials that I create. When I hear that people struggle with using Lightroom I want to hop on a plane, fly to their house and show them how to use it because it has helped me so much in creating consistent work. The first video I created was a 25 min long video on HOW TO USE LIGHTROOM. It goes over how to import your images, how to keep everything organized, how to cull a session, edit, bath editing, and goes over some of my favorite tools. There's so much you can do with Lightroom and I wanted to help others learn. Over the last few weeks I've also created some requested videos and will continue to help those in the group learn. 

If you'd like to get access to the free videos I'd love to see you in the group! 

(if you want to join click HERE)

WENT LIVE WITH ESSENTIAL STUDIO MANAGER

My husband has been building my 11-in-1 Essential Studio Manager into a fully functioning website and we FINALLY  went live with the site last week. Free for life and upgrade when you need to. If you're a photographer who's looking for a convenient way to manage your business then sign up and take a look around because your life is about to get a whole lot easier. You can see that here! 

I LEARNED TO SLOW DOWN 

So the truth is that I really learned to slow down in March. For the last 8 years, I've literally hit the ground running and have not allowed myself to walk. My mindset has been focused on pushing myself as hard as possible in the right direction. I feel as if I've been sprinting for 8 years straight and kind of forgot how to walk. After taking 10 days off for spring break I realized that my overall business was doing just fine. For some reason, I've alway had this fear of everything falling apart if I slow down a little as if my momentum was holding everything together. I've realized that I've done such a great job as a solopenuer that even when I take a break, my business is doing great. Nothing fell apart. 

I don't have a team of people who work for me, I think that's actually one of my struggles. Hanging on to controlling every aspect of my business but it's also something I'm very proud of. I understand all aspects of my business like the back of my hand because I manage it myself 100% of the time. So finding out that even as a solopenuer I can take the time to slow down if I needed it was a great re assurance in what I'm doing. 

EMAIL ORGINIZATION

Raise your hand if you hate dealing with emails! Ahh...dreadful emails. They just come flying in and then I feel stressed out about not replying to people quick enough. I want to make sure to respond to every email coming in as quickly as possible but here's the thing. It's just me working and email is something I'm not overly excited about.  So I decided it was time to come up with a solution to deal with emails constantly flying in.  

I sat there and looked at my inbox and realized that I get three types of emails:  

• Junk emails I don't want.  (whoa there's a lot and they do a great job at cluttering up my inbox)
• Emails I love to get  
• Inquiries or people needing help with something.  

Here's what I did. I took my entire inbox and started making folders; 

• Inquires Sessions
• Inquires Weddings
• Leads 
• Customer Support 
• Orders 
• Receipts 
• Newsletter Love (a folder designated for all the newsletters I get) 

Next, I created rules for my email inbox that would automatically organize emails that came in directing the into their designated folders. The only ones that I see in my inbox are the urgent ones (Session Inquires, Wedding Inquires & Customer Support.) So now my entire inbox is organized and I see the ones that need my attention without having to go on a hunt. 

And for the first time in forever, I actually enjoy dealing with my email inbox! 

RE-EVALUATED MYSELF AND MY BUSINESS

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is on the constant search for balance between keeping my business professional and sharing enough personal to still feel like I am part of my business. Over the past few years I have gone from sharing lots of personal things, so switching to sharing more of just my work. And today I realize that although my Instagram and Facebook feed is finally looking perfectly styled like I had always wanted it to be, something is missing. I felt like I was missing. 

I wrote all about it on my recent blog post HERE and go in more detail on my struggles as well as what I want to get better at. One of them is putting myself more in front of the camera and sharing more stories with the world. 

CHEERS - I start to celebrate! 

I've decided that we all need to celebrate a bit more. I noticed that many small business owners such as myself spend a whole lot of time working, and very little time celebrating their accomplishments. I want to change that for myself and for those around me.

So this week, I asked the amazing ladies in my Photography Business Success Class what they are most proud of this month and my goal is to put together a monthly article to celebrate with them because they deserve it! They need to know that they should be so proud of themselves for the things they are getting done. And if you have something your proud of this month then join us!  Anyone who is crazy enough to pursue their dreams and spend countless hours investing into making it happen needs to take one day to raise a glass and give themselves a pat on the back. 

From now on I'll be putting up a monthly blog post on the 26th and list out everything we're celebrating as a way to remind us ALL to take the time and celebrate our accomplishment. If you like champagne you're welcome to join us ;) 

BONUS: CLICK HERE TO READ THE QUESTION & ANSWER SECTION

That sums it up for this months income report and Q&A. I had a lot of fun answering all those questions so if you have any at all, feel free to leave a comment below, or in a comment on facebook, or message me personally on facebook, so I can be sure to answer it in the Question & Answer post!