How to Plan Your Photography Business: Goals, Time and Growth

By Catherine Connor

Running a photography business can easily become a constant exercise in reacting to whatever lands in front of you.

A client needs something. An enquiry arrives. An album needs checking. There are images to edit, emails to answer, social media posts to create and invoices to send. Before you know it, another week has disappeared.

Being busy isn’t necessarily the same as moving your business forward.

One of the most useful things you can do as a photographer is to step back from the day-to-day work and decide where you actually want the business to go.

Are you controlling your time?

Think about a typical week.

How much of your time is spent on work that moves the business forward, and how much is spent simply responding to what other people need from you?

Clients and suppliers will always have demands on your time, but if they completely dictate your week, it becomes difficult to work on the things that matter for the longer term.

Marketing gets pushed back. New ideas never get developed. You don’t have time to improve your skills or consider whether you’re attracting the type of work you actually want.

Your business needs some direction from you.

That doesn’t mean every hour needs to be planned. It means making deliberate choices about where your time and attention should go.

Start with what you actually want

Before setting targets, think about the kind of photography business you want to build.

Do you want to photograph more weddings? Perhaps you prefer smaller, intimate celebrations. Maybe children, portraits, commercial work, fashion or landscapes are where your enthusiasm lies.

Or perhaps the type of photography isn’t the issue at all. You may simply want a business that gives you a better balance between work and the rest of your life.

There is no single definition of a successful photography business.

The important thing is to define what success means to you.

Once you know that, your business decisions become much easier to make.

If you want more wedding work, your marketing, portfolio and networking should support that goal. If you want fewer bookings at a higher value, your pricing, positioning and client experience need to reflect it.

Without a clear destination, it’s very easy to spend a lot of time moving without actually getting anywhere.

Give your business a simple plan

A business plan doesn’t have to be a huge document full of spreadsheets and forecasts.

For many photographers, a simple working plan is more useful.

Start by asking yourself a few straightforward questions:

• What do I want the business to achieve over the next year?
• What type of photography do I want more of?
• How many bookings would give me a sustainable workload?
• Who are my ideal clients?
• Where do those clients find their photographers?
• What marketing am I currently doing?
• What is working?
• What isn’t working?
• What skills or knowledge do I need to develop?
• What should I stop doing because it takes time without producing much value?

The answers give you something to work with.

You can then turn the bigger ambitions into smaller actions.

For example, “get more portrait clients” isn’t really a plan. It is an objective.

A plan might involve updating your portrait portfolio, creating a dedicated portrait page on your website, contacting previous clients, building relationships with local businesses and setting aside time each week for marketing.

That is something you can actually act on.

Make time to work on the business

Photographers spend a lot of time working in their businesses.

You’re taking photographs, editing images, meeting clients and delivering work.

But you also need time to work on the business.

That might mean reviewing your website, improving your pricing, planning marketing campaigns, looking at your enquiries, developing new products or services, learning something new or simply deciding what you want the next stage of the business to look like.

If you only deal with these things when you have spare time, they are unlikely to happen.

Put them into the diary.

Even a few hours set aside regularly can make a significant difference because you are no longer waiting for the perfect quiet week to arrive.

Don’t let your diary make all your decisions

It’s tempting to judge the health of a photography business by how full the diary looks.

But a busy diary isn’t automatically a successful one.

You might be working long hours on jobs that aren’t particularly profitable, travelling further than you’d like, or accepting work that doesn’t fit the direction you want the business to take.

Before automatically accepting the next booking, consider whether it moves you towards the business you want to build.

Sometimes growth means taking on more work.

Sometimes it means becoming more selective.

And sometimes it means changing the way you work rather than simply working harder.

Keep learning

One of the easiest ways to become stuck is to assume that experience alone will keep moving the business forward.

Photography changes. Client expectations change. Marketing changes. Technology changes.

You don’t need to chase every new trend, but continuing to learn can help you make better decisions.

Look outside photography as well as within it. Business, marketing, sales, customer service and communication can all have a direct impact on the experience you provide to clients.

Talk to photographers whose businesses you respect. Ask questions. Attend relevant training. Find people who can offer a different perspective.

You don’t have to copy somebody else’s business. In fact, you shouldn’t.

The value is in understanding what they have learned and deciding what might work for you.

Step back and look at the business from the outside

It’s surprisingly difficult to see your own business clearly when you’re immersed in it every day.

Every now and then, deliberately step back.

Look at your website as though you were a potential client. Review your enquiries and bookings. Look at the work you’re producing. Consider which parts of the business energise you and which continually drain your time.

Ask yourself:

If I were starting this business again today, what would I do differently?

The answer can be revealing.

You may discover that something you’ve been doing for years is no longer necessary. You may realise that a particular type of work isn’t what you want any more. Or you may find that a relatively small change could free up a surprising amount of time.

Your plan should be allowed to change

A business plan isn’t a contract.

Circumstances change. Your interests change. Your clients change. Sometimes an opportunity comes along that you couldn’t have predicted.

Review your plans regularly and adjust them when necessary.

The purpose of having a plan isn’t to predict exactly what will happen. It’s to give you a sense of direction so that you can make better decisions when things do change.

Your photography business should support the life you want to lead, rather than becoming something that controls every part of it.

Take control of the direction, make time for the things that matter and give yourself permission to change course when you need to.

Being serious about success doesn’t necessarily mean working harder.

Sometimes it means being more deliberate about what you are working towards, where you spend your time and why you’re doing it in the first place.