Are you ready to charge people?

That's the question that gets asked a lot when you're thinking of starting a photography business. As artists we tend to question ourselves and our abilities constantly. We are forever in doubt about our abilities and whether we could 'get away with' charging people.

Here are 5 steps you can take to know whether you are ready to charge for your photography.

You've been looking at a lot of CRM's lately. So many that they seemed to have all morphed into one big headache, haven't they?

All of them promise to help your business and streamline your systems but so far all you're seeing is a list of features and hours of work - with no guarantee of success and even less idea if this CRM will work specifically for your business!

I've been using Dubsado as my client management system since November 2016. That’s over 3 ½ years. Before that I had been using 17hats but I wasn't happy with them and had been actively looking for another solution for quite a few months before that.

I had signed up for trials and tested various photography related CRM's before I finally landed on Dubsado through the recommendation of Jessica Stansberry - owner and tech nerd over at www.jessicastansberry.com.

With Dubsado - I have to say - it was love at first sight.

When I first decided to pursue photography as my career it was little more than an idea and a dream. I didn't know if I could make a success of it, I didn't know the first thing about running a business and I wasn't even sure that people would actually pay me to take photos.

If that sounds anything at all like you then trust me, you aren't alone.

There are a lot of moving parts to opening your own photography business, probably a lot more than people realise and it can feel overwhelming at the very beginning.

Sometimes my inner voice is a b*tch! There. I said it.

My inner voice has a tendency to tell me all of the things I can't do versus all of the things I can do. Does anyone else's do that too?

Why is it so easy to believe the bad stuff about yourself and so, so hard to believe the good?

As artists I sometimes think we may have it the worst. So much of what we do is creating something. We are opening ourselves up to the world and showing them our version of how we see something.

Is it the same thing that everyone else sees? Usually not but that's why we're hired. Because we 'see' something they don't. It's a very vulnerable place to be doing business from and as such we can get stuck in a place of inactivity due to fear.

Here are some of the fears I've held (and sometimes still have to beat back). I hope that by addressing them here you won't feel so alone and that you'll realise that these fears don't have to stop you.

Your CRM is your businesses central command center.

It's your hub. It's where you keep track of all your clients details, their contracts, invoices and session notes.

It's where you prepare emails, create contracts, design your forms and draft your proposals.

It's also your chance to wow your potential clients. No matter who we are, we like things simple. The easier it is to do something, the better.

The same can be said for onboarding a client. If you have to re-create a contract for every client, change the details, save as pdf and then send to your client to download, sign and then scan back to you. That one step now has multiple points where the client could drop off or get pushed to the back of their to do list because it's too hard right now.

Same for getting paid. Getting them to send a cheque or bank transfer can be much harder than simply sending them an invoice where they can pay via a credit card.

You want to make things easier for your client.

And by making it easier for them, you are ultimately making it easier for yourself as well.

That's where Dubsado comes in.

You're thinking about starting a photography business and you're feeling a little overwhelmed and wondering exactly where to start. I get it. I've been there. There's so much new stuff you have to learn and you can't even figure out where to begin. Your brain is on overload and you just want someone, anyone, to tell you where to start.

I hear you, I've got you, my friend. Today I'm going to talk about 5 steps to starting your photography business. This is just a small sample of things you need to factor in but what these steps will do is give you a place to start to see if your little dream is even feasible for you right now.