Portrait Sales Are Up!

I just had a few orders placed within the last month and I noticed a trend - my average sale is higher than last year by about 30%. I'm crediting it to three things. #1 taking credit cards (see my post here about trying to find a credit card vendor), #2 using the Easy As Pie Guide to adjust my pricing (see this post for more details and a coupon code) and #3 simplicity. I've tinkered with my pricing quite a bit this year and I'm still not as high as Alicia suggests, but my packages and products are all higher than last year.

I believe the combination of the pricing and credit cards have bumped my sales. I'm still doing online sales, so that hasn't changed. Too keep things simple, I've really stripped down what I offer to clients and only products I enjoy working on are in the mix. An example is albums, I hate peel and stick albums, while they are beautiful, they totally stress me out. Being a designer as well, I'm super picky when it comes to lining things up and those peel and sticks were never perfect. I got to the point where I would cringe at the thought of assembling one. So, I said goodbye to them and hello to slip-ins. I found two different slip-ins that I love and now I don't cringe when a client orders an album. I no longer offer photo jewelry and my pricing doesn't include every size print known to man. Too many choices just confuse the client. If they have a special request, I'm happy to send them pricing for that odd frame size they want to fill.

My busy season last year was end of summer and fall. I'll be interested to see how these changes stand up to last year when I'm booking high school seniors and family portraits for the holidays. I'm very happy with the changes I've made over the last few months. Next on my list is in-person sales, but I that is going to have to wait a little longer with my full time job taking up so much of my time. I can easily see my sales jumping even higher with the chance to really sit down and work with clients to pick artwork for their walls.

Are You Accepting Credit Cards?

I finally decided to "cave" and start taking credit cards this year. Previously I was cash, check or paypal. I had a customer last year that didn't have the cash, refused to use paypal and was left with option of a check and wasn't thrilled about that either. While the sale was a good one, I wondered if she had the option to pay with a charge card if she would have spent more. Personally, we no longer use credit cards in my family, but I know a lot of my clients do. And when I used to use credit cards, I would always come home from the mall with many more purchases than I originally planned on buying!

So, are you getting the sales that you could?? I do 95% of my sales via my Photo Cart, since with my full time job I just don't have the time to meet every client in person. After talking with fellow photographers, I knew that charge cards were the next step in increasing my online sales. I'm still offering paypal payments to clients, which some are using, but a lot are migrating towards the ease of paying with credit cards.

After much research I decided to go with NobelPay. Chris at NobelPay worked with me to find the right plan that worked for my online needs and offered me a great price on my monthly payments as well. The customer service with NobelPay has been great. Anytime I have any questions or problems, Chris is fast to respond and if he doesn't have the answer, he finds someone who does.

While it's only been a short period of time since I started taking credit cards, it was definitely the right move for this stage of my business. More and more people are having issues with paypal and I don't want my clients to be forced into using something that they are unsure about. If you're currently not taking credit cards, think about the potential added sales you could see from making the small change!