Is it important to have a website for your photography business? Oh, most definitely. This week the guys discuss the why and how of photography websites, and why one cannot live on social media alone. Along the way Michael busts out a Gwen Stefani riff, Carl talks about wearing the same shirts all the time, and Dan "casually" mentions his pricing product at store.seniorsunlocked.com. This week's pop culture references include Alta Vista (again), Aldo Nova, Gwen Stefani, Front Page, Titanic, and polygamy.
Informative and entertaining, grab your favorite beverage and press "play". And don't forget to subscribe!
Your Hosts:
Michael Mowbray, M. Photog., Cr., owns Beautiful Portraits by Michael in DeForest (Madison) Wisconsin and also owns MoLight. Learn more at:
www.beautifulportraits.com
www.gomolight.com
Dan Frievalt, M.Photog., M. Artist, Cr., owns Frievalt Photography in DePere (Green Bay) Wisconsin and also runs Seniors Unlocked. Learn more at
www.frievaltphotography.com
store.seniorsunlocked.com
Carl Caylor, M. Photog., Cr., ASP-Fellow, Kodak Alaris Mentor, owns Photo Images by Carl in Iron Mountain, Michigan and also runs Carl's Coaching Corner. Learn more at:
www.photoimagesbycarl.net
www.ccphotocoach.com
MoLight offers more than 20 different MoLight -brand softboxes and modifiers.
Is it important to have a website for your photography business? Oh, most definitely. This week the guys discuss the why and how of photography websites, and why one cannot live on social media alone. Along the way Michael busts out a Gwen Stefani riff, Carl talks about wearing the same shirts all the time, and Dan "casually" mentions his pricing product at store.seniorsunlocked.com. This week's pop culture references include Alta Vista (again), Aldo Nova, Gwen Stefani, Front Page, Titanic, and polygamy.
Informative and entertaining, grab your favorite beverage and press "play". And don't forget to subscribe!
Your Hosts:
Michael Mowbray, M. Photog., Cr., owns Beautiful Portraits by Michael in DeForest (Madison) Wisconsin and also owns MoLight. Learn more at:
www.beautifulportraits.com
www.gomolight.com
Dan Frievalt, M.Photog., M. Artist, Cr., owns Frievalt Photography in DePere (Green Bay) Wisconsin and also runs Seniors Unlocked. Learn more at
www.frievaltphotography.com
store.seniorsunlocked.com
Carl Caylor, M. Photog., Cr., ASP-Fellow, Kodak Alaris Mentor, owns Photo Images by Carl in Iron Mountain, Michigan and also runs Carl's Coaching Corner. Learn more at:
www.photoimagesbycarl.net
www.ccphotocoach.com
MoLight offers more than 20 different MoLight -brand softboxes and modifiers.
Recorded live from a cheese store off of Interstate 9094. That smells gouda. It's the photo happy hour podcast. Hey welcome everybody. I'm your photo happy hour bartender Michael Mowbray Today I'm serving up banana Daiquiri of photographic BS. I'm joined by my fellow bartenders, Dan Frievalt and Carl Caylor. Hey, what do you guys serve up?
Carl Caylor :Not bananas.
Unknown Speaker :Bananas yeah
Michael Mowbray :ba Na Na s
Carl Caylor :Oh my. Oh
Dan Frievalt :Flash back to the 90s Gwen Stefani
Carl Caylor :Michael, looks like it was raining at your place. Your shirt looks like I was getting rained on.
Michael Mowbray :You know this shirt does I just I kind of have worn this in forever, and those kind of grabbed it all the shirt drawer button, the shirt rotation shirt that's been on rotation for a long time.
Carl Caylor :You know, I was thinking about just that thing lately I've been I've been noticing, I've been wearing the same shirts, you know, like, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and it just keeps rotating. And I thought, you know, we have to take everything out of my closet. Just like throw it up in the air, pull it back up and put it back in different orders. Otherwise, I'm never going to wear that other stuff. You know, because it's not on top.
Michael Mowbray :So I thought you were saying like, what I've been doing here in COVID I've just been wearing the same shirt. Everyday.
Carl Caylor :No, no,
Dan Frievalt :no, no.
Michael Mowbray :So what are you drinking? What would you pour yourself?
Dan Frievalt :Well, we're gonna have to take a break soon because we've been talking for like 10 minutes. Am I almost gone? Again?
Carl Caylor :Oh yeah, Mojito. You know I'm finally
Michael Mowbray :I finally made a Dan Frievalt style Mojito for us over the over the weekend. And as hot as it was, that was refreshing. It's good refreshing summer drink is just tough to beat. Yes.
Carl Caylor :Yeah, and I'm just back on rum again. I'm sorry. No.
Unknown Speaker :I'm drinking whiskey.
Carl Caylor :My brother You gotta drink a lot of rum this weekend and he was just tell me about it. But no, I'm back to the whiskey again. But I'm doing it without ice today because the glass wasn't big enough.
Michael Mowbray :I'm doing mine without ice. You see what I got in there.
Dan Frievalt :Oh, yeah, you guys see that
Michael Mowbray :ran it through when I got the granite so that way it doesn't ice down my scotch but cool. You know, when it gets above 90 degrees. I will you know bend the rules a little bit and put a little coolness in my scotch
Carl Caylor :so is that just a rocky put in the freezer? I can put her there.
Michael Mowbray :Yeah, just No, it's just a piece of granite.
Carl Caylor :Well, I got tons that are on here literally.
Michael Mowbray :So my kids know me the last couple of Father's Day and got me one that got me these tumblers and then another one they got me these granite rock so I think they recognize a that I like to drink scotch and be that I might have a problem. But they're supporting it.
Carl Caylor :Yeah, that's nice of them. Okay, go pick up some stones this afternoon to go footprint in the freezer. Oh,
Michael Mowbray :yeah. Works. works great. Yeah, if you got grants out there, it works great.
Carl Caylor :Oh, I got tons of it.
Michael Mowbray :It's everywhere. So if you guys are joining us for the first time. We are three professional photographers who have been around for a fair amount of time and know a few things. And the purpose of this podcast is we get together and we drink. I was gonna say a little bit or a lot and we talked about things that are toxic. fever bladed and each week we try to have a topic although we go off tangent. And this week's topic is What the hell is this week's topic? Oh, websites. So websites, we all have them. We all love them. I have many of many I keep them on the web. I keep them on the interwebs on the line on the line. They're all on the line. Yeah. Actually, I just finished I was just telling Carl this off line here, Dan, that I just finished my re total revamp of my main portrait site. And I'm trying to get the flip the switch flipped on it to turn it on tomorrow, hopefully. Yes, switch
Dan Frievalt :switch the flip this sites
Michael Mowbray :Yeah, and the URL guys is beautifulportraits.com. You guys know that. But yeah, for people listening. That's how long it's been around. I actually got beautifulportraits.com as from the 90s I think I think are registered for that on AltaVista. That's our second AltaVista reference in the last year. Weeks robell share with the other ones or gals ya know, I always one of them I think and
Dan Frievalt :God Oh man. Yeah, we need an Aldo Nova reference like life. fantasy. Yes, vinyl. Yes. That was a DJ.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah. Oh,
Carl Caylor :yeah, there's a bartender, he's a DJ.
Dan Frievalt :I ran the gamut of weddings. I was a DJ as a bartender, a photographer. You know, I just, I didn't even do it again. Like, that's probably the only thing I did do.
Michael Mowbray :You did. My first job. I went to a banquet hall. So I was the guy who fried the chicken for a while. There you go. Yeah. And they were like, holy
Dan Frievalt :crap up. See if I sell dresses and flowers. Yeah, I pretty much have a one stop shop.
Michael Mowbray :But you did my third job. Rented tuxes. Yep. So
Carl Caylor :we can totally like get into the wedding venue and not even know Take pictures of it.
Michael Mowbray :That's called vertical integration. We can do everything.
Unknown Speaker :Yes, yes. But But yeah,
Dan Frievalt :for the most part, I've always done things a difficult way though, like now being a dJ dJ, it's like, oh, you set up your laptop and you have all these all this music and says request, well just download that. Yeah, remember to buy like the tape and skip to the song and the tape was 20 bucks. And it was a one hit wonder band. You're like, Oh,
Michael Mowbray :yeah, go for or like when I was DJing. It was all turntables. And one of the turntables because we would take all these boxes of albums when the turntables decided that 33 in the third wasn't going to work. It's only gonna work on 45. Luckily, we had like 840 fives in the box. So you play an album cut, you'd play one of the 845 so you take a break and then replay the 40 fives again.
Dan Frievalt :You could skip to this song with us. Yeah we had 4040 fives and 12 inch finals and Mel crates full he had hollom all and so what so websites
Carl Caylor :about DJ
Michael Mowbray :so what did you build your first website and here's the here's a trivia question
Dan Frievalt :I don't even I will not mention the name because because they were kind of blackballed in the photography industry and I think they're out of business now but a lot of people were were it was a template driven and your website company but they had zero customer service which is why photo biz rocks, rocks is their customer service was fantastic. But yeah, a lot of people switch from that other company to to once photobooth came along with great customer service like a lot of people jumped ship so
Carl Caylor :I was was Gonna be different than that even. It was get this. Somebody that was a vendor came to our trade show at Wisconsin vppa talking about their websites and how easy it was going to be because they would do it. They would have it there for you. It was like a template place and it wasn't the other people. But I still couldn't figure the stupid stuff out. It was it would have been easier writing code word I think but yeah, Michael Yeah, that's no and we ran it into we it stayed for a little while, but then when photo biz came along, it was a very, very easy switched, to say the least.
Michael Mowbray :So I did my my first site in 97 1997. And front page
Unknown Speaker :by
Michael Mowbray :now was in front page, what was the what was the Microsoft product that was like the cheap consumer grade design. Thing Page Designer or something like that? I think it was in front page it was that's what I did the site in. And then I graduated I upgraded to front page
Dan Frievalt :to remember front page and I remember Apple had like a thing. Yeah, like I like I like iMovie for webpages like I write web or something like that, right?
Carl Caylor :I can't think of what it was called. But yeah, I actually bought the software and then said, this is silly. Comparison then that some photo biz came along. I've been with photos a long time because of that.
Dan Frievalt :Yeah, and I almost almost paid someone I was like five or eight grand to do a website because there wasn't a lot of options back don't even know until the templates. Businesses started to evolve, you know?
Michael Mowbray :Yeah, and I went template. I just finally changed to photo because that's what my new revamp is going to be. But I've been using a company called creative motion designed for probably at least 10 years, maybe longer, that we're one the early good template companies in the dead good customer service, but they just haven't, in my opinion kept up with what's going on. But yeah, I've got non photo biz, I've got a couple sites built in WordPress. I've got I got the mole light store that's built in Zen cart that I hand coded. That was fun.
Dan Frievalt :You So besides template driven and design wise, what do you guys feel like? Kind of the number one or the top few things that a website? The importance of it or the mobile?
Michael Mowbray :Yeah, yeah, it's, it's got to be mobile. And it seems like websites have gone through so many iterations throughout the years. It used to be you wanted to have a really deep complex navigation. You know, or you had maybe six to 10 main categories, and then you'd have all this sub pages underneath that, then people roll over and scroll down. People just want people are so used to being on their phones and just scrolling with their thumbs. So you're seeing a lot more of these shout what I would call a shallow sight that you know, just use a scroll. It's everything's on the first page and scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, basically a scrolling site.
Carl Caylor :Yeah, and bigger because I noticed that something might change your mind too. Nobody looks at like the like the the three hash marks anymore. Remember that you know that the sub menus. It's too small. I mean, we're getting older, and it's harder to see. And by having the scrolling sites, you can see things bigger. And if you see an image of a kid, you're like, oh, let's click on it, but it's something big you can click on so you can go to the children photography or a senior that's bigger, look at the senior stuff and just I think is Going to make it more user friendly. Because everybody's on the phone, how the anybody looks on their computer anymore. It's kind of crazy stats on that. I think shopping stats on my MoLight page, it was 60 I think 63% of the people shopping there are mobile. So, I mean, that's shopping. I mean, just in regular websites, I gotta imagine it's going to be higher.
Dan Frievalt :And that's a great point, like, install, you know, Google Analytics and, you know, take a look at what pages are people are visiting and balancing out of and where they're coming from, if you're coming from Facebook or social media or Pinterest, or you know if they're on mobile or not. And, yeah, make sure your site is mobile friendly. I've still I've gotten a few sites even. And they still are using Flash. Yeah, yeah. You know, which isn't mobile friendly and several of them have entered the flash site or enter the HTML Well, that needs to be updated, you know, it's just not gonna, you know, work and the other thing I just wrote down here is the before I forget to is put your state and we've mentioned this before your location, even if you want to do destination stuff still please list where you're located. Right? It's a pet peeve of mine
Michael Mowbray :state at minimum ideally your town you know, because if you're if you live in Texas area even though everything is just down the road a piece is still eight hours away. Yeah, whether it's in Odessa or in Brownsville, you know, how just grab two random
Carl Caylor :Abilene and waco.
Michael Mowbray :Yes. Yeah, the lava was no love because that was a different time. We weren't done love it. Oh yeah, we're stealing from
Carl Caylor :Abilene, isn't it? Not Abilene? well isn't that we're in the desert
Dan Frievalt :at Arlington. No
Carl Caylor :doubt, that's Dallas. That's a long way away.
Michael Mowbray :Stay tuned for our next podcast episode, where we talk about places in Texas.
Dan Frievalt :Geographic geographical locations in Texas and we're
Unknown Speaker :talking about
Michael Mowbray :taxes before.
Carl Caylor :I'll tell you what math makes us try to drink if we do geography I can keep it out of hand. I don't
Michael Mowbray :know I'm getting a little low here seemed more purely like 15 minutes into this thing. So
Carl Caylor :it seemed more of your granite there then.
Michael Mowbray :I'm sorry, my ground showing
Carl Caylor :websites. I didn't just check mine. I know that just actually, you know, speaking of customer service, and that's something I know that we're all pretty pleased about what We're at with photo biz I know we're all there, or have a site there. But I changed over got rid of flash, what was it two years ago, a year and a half ago, I guess, to make it more user friendly for the mobile stuff, but it wasn't me that brought it up. It was them up to me. So I mean, it was as beyond customer service, when they're like, hey, let's go. You gotta update this a little bit here. So you're, you know, with the times other companies wouldn't do that. And so I think that was a pretty cool thing that happened in my, in my business anyway, so was
Michael Mowbray :awesome, too. You know, I called them today because, you know, I needed to, I need to go live. And I needed to know what their protocol was to go live with the site, what name servers to point to, and all that kind of stuff. So I knew I could just pick up the phone and call them and somebody would actually answer and they'd be actually really nice. So those guys they're based out of North Carolina, North Carolina. Yeah, yeah. And so I mean, great customer service. And they are not sponsoring this yet. No. But yeah, that's, that's one of the main reasons why I switched there is I liked what the product was, but you guys have a great experience. Jen Lewis, I know is a huge fan of them. She's gotten them, just about everybody I know has their website through them. So it's like, you know, I like being different. But in some ways, I like being the like everybody else, especially all the cool kids. So I can be, I can get the T shirt and be like the cool kids. Yeah.
Dan Frievalt :And the other thing, besides, like you said, being, like everyone else, even though it's a template company, they you can customize it so much that like, we could all three have the same template. And they can look completely different. So that's what's nice, too, because sometimes you get a template and then someone else like, Oh, that looks cool. So they get the same template. They could be in the same area and it could look exactly the same. There's not much you can do about it. That's what I like about photo visit. If you get bored with it, you just be like, click, I like this one. And it completely kind of changes. It still has some of the same functionality, but has almost a new look with a click of a button.
Michael Mowbray :I actually had that happen. When I changed the creative motion design way back when for my senior site. Within six months, I had another area photographer with the exact same template. That's back when I used to care about competition, I'd go check them out. I don't I don't do that anymore. And if you do that, stop doing it because you'll stop making yourself crazy. But then I saw as I call man, so I got one night he had to change my template up. Because I didn't know I didn't feel like calling him and saying Hey, dude, that's my website. Don't use my website, and I was fresh in mine up, but pain in the butt back then now.
Dan Frievalt :click a button. It's easy. Here. You can hire a guy that will take them out at the ankles. All right like Polo, Nancy Kerrigan. going on. Oh, yeah, well, somebody I know.
Michael Mowbray :I'm offline. I'll tell you who it was. And you guys would probably would have done the job for me.
Carl Caylor :Thank you. Yes, thanks. Sure, I guess.
Michael Mowbray :Madison area senior photographer.
Carl Caylor :So back to the website. So I mean, because there's so much that's involved in it, and one, we already hit on that you want to make sure that it's mobile friendly. But the other thing that I want to make sure which I thought this in the years ago is when I did this is I wanted to be integrated with e commerce, because I wanted people to be able to purchase their sessions online. And then call me to, you know, to schedule the date but but all the transaction for the sessions are done right there. And then I went further and we can integrate through the site, all my sports and volume stuff as well. So it worked out really, really well. To be able to have customers or clients that are going on to my website, so they had to go through my website to get to the e commerce part, to see their kids dance pictures, or the little league or soccer or whatever it was that I was photographing. So it's a really, really nice added benefit to be able to integrate e commerce with our normal websites on photo biz as well.
Michael Mowbray :Well, you know, once you got on there, let them do all their business there. You know, it just makes sense. I went to online booking God many, many years ago, and the vast, vast majority of all my bookings come through online, just make it easy. Make it easy for people to spend money with you. Right. Right.
Dan Frievalt :Yes, but you know, you've said that and so I started the online booking thing and it and no one uses it. I've had it for a couple years, you know, and then I had one person do it this year and they were confused by it. So I'm just like, Okay, oh, you just did it wrong, then Doing something might not
Michael Mowbray :be right for you, you know it works.
Carl Caylor :Yeah. So you know what i do though is I push them that too that I, you know, if somebody calls and asks about I'm like, yep, this is how we do it. You just go onto my website to pay. But that way when they're there, they see other things. They're like, Oh, geez, you do family stuff too. Perfect. You know, oh, convert you do commercial stuff, too. I had no idea. We have our own business. Perfect. So I mean, you're putting eyes Your eyes. No, I don't let him schedule. They can only pay there. And then there's the direction you need to call to make an appointment. Because I want to control my life. I'm not gonna let somebody just schedule whenever they want when it's the wrong time for what they're looking for. And when I want it free from my schedule, so you got to pick and choose, pick and choose the battles win the war, right?
Dan Frievalt :Right. Right. And I and I switchover this year doing in person consultations before the session, which has been working out even better than I could imagine because one of my unique selling points is that I have a studio you know, and that you know, everyone is in this digital age and thinking digital and so we started getting more questions like well do you just sell how much for the digital files, how much for digital files and we kind of cover this in another topic like answering questions, you know what the questions you get a lot. And so I was explaining everything and setting my pricing out and a lot of my business is word of mouth. So a lot of people were kind of pre qualified and that wasn't a big deal. But now I'm still because I am getting more internet leads also because I did pay for photo visit my SEO. So they're more cold traffic leads that may not know me as much but they see the website and see it like hey, I like what I see. So then it's how do you justify the price? So it's like, come to the studio and you can see the albums and see the wall portraits and like, hey, this, this guy's legit, you know, and it helps justify the price and that, you know, he adds a tangible thing that goes with it. And another thing I've meant to do, which I didn't do with the COVID I'm like, you know, how many like, raise your hand everyone out there if you're listening or driving, like, raise your hand if you like, all right, I have all this time I get 100 things accomplished, you know, always put off, right? And you maybe got two things, maybe 10 things accomplished, you know, so, yeah. But what I wanted to get accomplished was putting, like photos of wall portraits on that or that I took from people's walls and albums. And so instead of just showing pretty pictures, pictures as you're showing printed product, so when they go to your site like Carl Yeah, all you do commercial you do this, you do that. When they go to the site, they see printed product and albums and be like, oh, even if it's subconsciously it says, this person isn't just going to give me a disc of images. So reinforces it. Even subliminally when you say that like, well, I'm a for Full Service Studio, I want to provide printed products for lifelong legacy and heirloom portraits, blah, blah, blah. Okay, let's do this.
Michael Mowbray :And no point to talk about, oh, all these digital images I'm going to give you
Dan Frievalt :Yes. Right. Right. It's like, well, that's further down the line. And that's, we'll get to that. And that's an option. But
Michael Mowbray :yeah, there's nothing not included in such a price match. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because that's actually well backtracking a little bit. Yeah, my two main things I was gonna do with the COVID shutdown, while they're like three or four, but the two main things were I was going to make sure I have all my taxes ready on time for the corporation and personal well, then they push back to Tax deadline and I like to call it as accountant last week. This guy? Yeah. He found out his accountant had a heart attack last week. This guy. Oh, he's fine. He's doing okay, good. Yeah, so we're filing an extension. The other thing was I was finally finally going to totally revamped my website. So guess what? I've been working on the last two days. website that things are busy again. website
Dan Frievalt :website. Yeah, yes.
Michael Mowbray :Yeah. And price guy, senior price guide. Yeah, we're gonna do
Dan Frievalt :well, well, part of my big plan. So this is my excuse is that I was going to record videos as well like, not just like photos of albums. I wanted to show videos and talk about it and have more of interaction. So that didn't happen because of COVID being shut down and then I couldn't get taken pictures. Well, then The other thing is like I want new samples right? I don't want to do pictures of these old samples so then ah I'll then I have to lay design albums out and do all this stuff and yeah, that just kept getting pushed to the backburner so
Michael Mowbray :and here we are, it's still and here we go.
Dan Frievalt :And you know and then these guys they said, let's start a podcast and they say
Carl Caylor :don't take up any time No.
Dan Frievalt :And then after this, you know, your, your your evening shot after doing this, it's like, oh, okay,
Michael Mowbray :it's gonna go gross mistakes after this
Dan Frievalt :can be eaten and fall asleep on the couch. Yeah, so it's gonna be it
Carl Caylor :may find some rocks. It's like I'm,
Michael Mowbray :I'm down in my in my presentation room and but so I don't have any windows in this room, but looking into other rooms. It got really dark here. So kinda thinking. Maybe we got a storm blowing in I might be mine. grilling steaks tonight. We were supposed to
Carl Caylor :do it on us.
Dan Frievalt :There's a storm coming this way.
Carl Caylor :Yep. Here. You tell him to come up here. We need more rain for the clover planted. Oh heck yeah.
Unknown Speaker :Let me see. Yeah. Oh cheese
Michael Mowbray :like a big old hole. Well, Lisa, Lisa is not really hot and humid to fuel that storm always Yeah, not
Carl Caylor :at all. Josh Do you guys see the the photo I sent to the group the other day when I took the thermometer the deck was 100 is over 128 stopped me. I topped out the thermometer between the so the just the heat and then the sun boats in Opera House. Oh yeah. 120 degrees. Yeah, crazy.
Michael Mowbray :Yeah, well, I have a I did a consultation last night with a senior that I'm photographing on Thursday. And it's supposed to be the heat index is supposed to be 100 here. So I'm like I started off with like, well Maybe we want to find a different date. And she's like, well, I don't really want to go outside that much anyway, so we just come to our studio and like, boom, three hours in the studio.
Unknown Speaker :Yay.
Michael Mowbray :Yeah, for that, which y'all can be it can happen. But, you know, it's pivoting. No other pivot, everything's, everything's a pivot now. Thanks. 2020 Yeah.
Dan Frievalt :And she'll probably be like one of these really fast changers. You know, it's not like when you're on location, and they're like, what are you doing? They were run out in the daylight.
Michael Mowbray :I told her to bring a lot of outfits and don't be like those guys who bring one shirt and it's not sure. But
Dan Frievalt :that is the beauty of shooting indoor is that you know, you you're not wasting time going from place to place and all that but that's also the downfall. It's like, oh, shoot three hours.
Michael Mowbray :You know, it's less of an adventure then you know, We'll be in conditioning though too, so we're not going to be dying. So, yeah, I still think I think 2020 is going to become like a coin a new phrase for the crazies like, Oh, you see that girl over there? She's so 2020
Carl Caylor :crazy.
Michael Mowbray :wacky or
Carl Caylor :psycho psycho?
Dan Frievalt :She's so 22 that is good.
Carl Caylor :It goes both ways. I mean, he could be 2020 as well just say that's true. But usually talking about websites. Yeah, so here's
Michael Mowbray :your riddle. riddle me this Batman.
Carl Caylor :All right. Why can't
Michael Mowbray :I just have a Facebook page over? That's a great question.
Carl Caylor :That's a great question. I'll answer that was something I was gonna bring up today. The last two seniors I just worked with here.
Dan Frievalt :Wait, you prepared for this? I did. Because
Carl Caylor :by accident by accident, okay. Yeah, uh, the last two girls that came through here in talking to him about thought, I'm looking for somebody to hire to do social media stuff. I want a high school senior like we've talked about this before in our podcast. But I thought, okay, I want somebody that's been in here recently. And so I asked both the girls, neither of them are on social media at all up here, and I'm like, Yeah, good. Gosh. So more and more kids, everybody I'm talking to I mean, the majority of kids I'm talking to that I even want to, I would want to hire and personality wise, they're not even on social media at all.
Michael Mowbray :Yeah. So that's why you need a website, not just on Facebook, because it's going to last the test of time, compared to the social media changes. Now my son graduated last year. Zero, he has zero social media accounts zero. My daughter who's 24 does a little bit of Instagram and that's it. But so that's a big reason why And the other reason, Dan, I think you're probably gonna hit I don't want to steal your thunder ball at your role that I'm just gonna bring it up is who owns your data? When you're on social media? Facebook, does Facebook
Dan Frievalt :owns it? And what if Facebook disappears one day? You know, all that disappears, you know, and And what about people finding, you know, Google, at least you have Google Analytics. And I know I don't think Google, what was the Google Facebook thing that was going for a while Google pages or go Google?
Michael Mowbray :Oh, yeah. Which was epic, which fail. Yeah,
Dan Frievalt :which is the only people on Google Plus were employees of Google that were forced to have a Google Plus page and Scott detweiler.
Michael Mowbray :Really funny
Carl Caylor :because it's true.
Dan Frievalt :But he did teach me something. So what I was doing is I was automatically posting things to Google Plus, I never went there, but The beauty of that is it gave you search engine power by posting images to your Google Plus page, when you post into Facebook gives you zero SEO, Google power. But yeah, I mean, what happens if that goes if it goes down? You know, like you said, Facebook owns that and, and there's no way for people to find you and if less and less are on Facebook and
Michael Mowbray :Yeah, exactly. And cop and there's copyright issues going on too, because somebody and I'm just kind of paraphrasing this because I can't remember the exact details. But somebody had a company that stole one of their images off of one of their social media platforms. Use it for an ad campaign. And they really had no no recourse to go after this company. because technically, when you when you're on Instagram, when you post something to Instagram, you're assigning your rights over to Instagram for that photo. So It's really, really hard to go after somebody from a copyright issue. On the other side, if you don't only posted this to your website and also have it registered with the copyright and Patent Office, you have all kinds of records that you can go after somebody. So think of that too, when you're posting stuff here social media is is something that you're willing to let go of, and let everybody have out there and it's, you know, it's worth it to you or is this. This is something you may want to hang on to and don't want to see showing up in a, I don't know, a diaper ad or a man male enhancement ad.
Dan Frievalt :Speaking of which, oh God. This is a segue here into Do you have a different website? This question comes up a lot for different niches or niches. Is your business. So if you do boudoir photography, this is my segue if you're not going to get this, if you do boudoir photography and high school senior photography, it may not be a good idea to have those, you know, you may even want to branch out and have a different name for that. You know, but how about, like Cairo said, like commercial and family and stuff? This question comes up a lot. So kind of what are your thoughts on the more generalized stuff?
Michael Mowbray :Exactly, I actually split. I split my senior from my regular site years ago, and had a separate, dedicated site because seniors want to, you know, feel like they're the only people in the world and they're the only customers and they don't want to, they don't care about babies and families and weddings and all that kind of stuff. So I did split that off. And I'm actually bringing it back around because I'm seeing far fewer seniors that are doing the search then maybe seven years ago and it's the parents, so I do a depression. Everything back underneath the main beautiful Parker's umbrella otherwise I had a I had a subdomain created that was SR dot beautiful portraits calm, which I still am going to keep I'm just going to point it to that particular page on my current site. But yeah, you make a great point anything that doesn't mix well, like oil and water or food, water and seniors. You know, could you have could you have boo boo duar and maternity Sure. You know, but it might be weird to do boudoir and family. Or I don't know, pet photography, maybe patent pets and family but pets and seniors would be a little strong check. How about pet boudoir? Well, yeah, I've already actually copyrighted that.
Unknown Speaker :That's my thing. Yeah.
Michael Mowbray :So give me like one of your friends poodles. There's so good he'll like himself.
Unknown Speaker :Because he can't
Michael Mowbray :edit that out.
Carl Caylor :Anyway, maybe not. So they might say, it's probably gonna say I could definitely see I mean, for sure. And seniors in you know, different directions for sure. And I even think like weddings a different direction. But I'm with Michael on this and saying that I think more parents now are looking online or on their phones, checking out the sites than the the kids, the kids. I mean, and they are too, but I think it's the parents not looking as well as the kids and I want them to see the family. I want them to see the pets. I want them to see that. It's not just seniors that we do that, that there's other things other qualifications that we have, that we can that we can record. Because everybody's different. And you know, the more we can show, in my opinion, the more we can show that we can do for them, the more chances we have to sell product because we have nothing to sell as a product. If I don't create images of them in some way, shape or form,
Michael Mowbray :if somebody doesn't pay us to pick up a camera, there's nothing we can sell them.
Carl Caylor :There's nothing we can sell. So and I
Dan Frievalt :specialize in seniors, I don't necessarily want to do any of the other stuff
Carl Caylor :that's different.
Dan Frievalt :Right? And what's but what having said that what's interesting is I still get a lot of people asking Hey, do you photograph weddings Do you do this to that because they they see the imagery and they see the maybe the creativeness and then they're like, Hey, I would love him to do the photograph my wedding for instance.
Carl Caylor :And it will you know,
Michael Mowbray :one thing I hemmed and hawed about on my my new site, is that I do a fair amount of kind of like beauty work and not some food wire, but I do some beauty work and like some creative work and in collaboration work and I'm like, do I put that on there? Because it's like a whole different look from fashion. Yeah. And and more fashion. So I'd like to call it fashion was really more like fashion inspired. But you know, is that going to create a little visual? Huh? What's that? That's cool but why, you know, why would you put that on there? I'm thinking about senior portraits, and I decided, you know what, screw it. That's where some of the most creative stuff is. And, and actually, you know, Dan, I think you just do some of that on your site. And that's actually what made me think, yeah, maybe I need to put more of that on my website, more of the creative stuff on there so they can see what the scope could be. And not that this, you know, needs to be limited to senior portraits, but we could do something that's really creative and bring that into the senior portrait realm, too. That you're capable of it capable. Absolutely. Yeah.
Dan Frievalt :Well, and it's it shows that you're Different, you know, when I, when I started over, I had all those crazy images and that's what I had to use for marketing. So I thought, well, people are gonna think I'm crazy, but this is what I have. And when everyone looked at it, they're like, Oh, I can see that you're creative and artistic. So got them. We got them to stop the scroll, you know, then it's like, oh, I do senior stuff. Or all my images were from like, when I taught it after dark. So I was just doing a mentoring session and talking about this because the girl was asking about destination sessions, and I go, I kind of created the senior destination idea, because when I started over eight years ago, those are the only images I had. So it's like, Hey, I could go to Vegas. I can go to Arizona, I can go all over and create this. And what it is I never really booked a destination senior from that, but it showed that I was different, unique and then people like okay, that's cool. But I'm just gonna book you for a regular session. It's cool that you can do that. Right. Right, right now.
Michael Mowbray :So very much so I mean, they've they They're interested in you because of what you could do, but they don't necessarily pay you to do that. Right? That just makes you stand out. I don't,
Dan Frievalt :I never liked destination weddings, as well as destination. Seniors. I me personally, it's just it's too much of it's not enjoyable for me when I
Michael Mowbray :go to certainly.
Carl Caylor :That's different, even though it still is. It's,
Dan Frievalt :it's still stressful.
Carl Caylor :It's stressful. Trying to travel with everything your equipment now and you just don't I mean, there's too many unknowns. I mean, you got to be able to roll with anything that happens. And it's exciting, but it's also who it's not as glamorous
Dan Frievalt :as what it was. Oh,
Michael Mowbray :no, no, no. It's the one time I quoted a destination wedding in Maui and I really wanted to do it, but I quoted based on how long I was going to be out of the studio on out of the business, and I quoted them a per diem because you're going to have to get there early. And pay for the extra hotel room and the meals and a rental car and I'll vote with all that. And they're like, well, we're giving you a free vacation. It's like this is not a vacation to vacation. You know, this is going to be at least four days tied up with your wedding. And I might extend it and stay another three, and have some Have a nice time. But, you know, that means for sevens, there's math, again, is working for you, and you're gonna pay for that part. I'll pick up the rest of it. But the four sevens you gotta pay for, in addition to the regular wedding photography.
Dan Frievalt :No, that's a great point. And I'm not knocking anyone who does it. Knock yourself out, do whatever you want to do. But I want to just stress with everything that you do as you look at dollar per hour, you know, like, like, for instance, I can talk large averages, large averages, or people can talk large averages. But if you're only doing 10 sessions at that large, large average, well, how does that work out or if you're doing 500 sessions Uh, you know, like more of a volume work, you could make 10 times the money. So don't always look at when people talk average sale, you know, is that you know, what's the dollar per hour and, and that's why I won't do a wedding because dollar per hour I can make more with a senior and I enjoy seniors. So that's a business decision that I made.
Michael Mowbray :Right? Yeah. And the great example that I do a lot of volume headshots for, like big companies, and the one I've had the longest contract for, I can go in and I can photograph 100 employees in less than two hours. And they're only paying $30 a pop, but they're not going to be retouched. You know, they're just cropped and done. So in less than two hours, I can grow $3,000 and I have no product cost. I've got where my time cost was to get there and the you know, the writing off, you know, some of the some of the equipment to be there. But yeah, so that's my highest dollar dollar. per hour thing that I do is that.
Carl Caylor :Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of prices, and segue back into websites, no good you the big question here. Yeah, we were originally a question that always comes up, do you put your price list on the website?
Michael Mowbray :Now there's arguments or both, I prefer to put a range. There. Matter of fact, I was writing, rewriting this again, just before we got into the podcast. And it was I rewrote my investment section, I have an investment section and you know, and one of the things I put in there is what can you expect to invest? And I give them a range, I give them a range that covers probably 80% of all my senior clients. And then I say, the typical a senior client will pay X amount. So you know, you've got the range of like 900 to $3,000. And then the typical one will invest like 1800 So it gives them an idea of what range they play in and then where do most people end up falling? And I think that will help weed out some of those tire kickers that are thinking 300 bucks which is not which fine that's what their budget is they can find somebody for that, but it's not going to be me. But I don't like to get down into like nitty gritty detail I'd like to do if they want to do that I'm gonna do that in a consultation.
Dan Frievalt :Yeah, I'm the same way Yeah, I don't have Well first of all, I sell my pricing to photographers which you can get that store that seniors on like that calm for profit
Carl Caylor :I did buy that one. That's an awesome yeah.
Dan Frievalt :So that's one reason why I don't but the main that's not really the main reason is is yes, I want to talk to them and start to sell the experience because that's what I'm doing. In in give you know, I don't even give I give a range on the phone, but I'm not even doing that a lot because the range So ginormous you know, it's ridiculous.
Michael Mowbray :Without content label you get scared off,
Dan Frievalt :you get scared off. Yeah, yeah, so my session fees are fairly high I think, although I've heard other people say that they're not so I don't know, I always feel like my session if he kind of pre qualifies because if it's $550 to come in for a session that includes no portraits. Well, I'm weeding out some of those that are just looking for a 350 or $200 shoot and burn session. Right. So, so that's kind of how I weeded out I don't have any minimum orders or anything on there as well because I want to talk to them about that and show the pricing and when they see the price and they understand that this is not going to be a in and out for $500 or not even for even like $1,000 you know, because it's a because the session fees 500 to begin with, you know, kind of depending on Where they fall, the different types of sessions. So
Carl Caylor :the session fees you have on and we have session fees on there. So you can purchase it right there on the website, but I don't have portrait prices, or album prices or book prices or cubes or anything like that. And it's just the product prices aren't there.
Dan Frievalt :Right, right. And so our friend Jan Lewis, what, what she does, and I kind of challenged her on this where it says like, like, creation fee plus a pre credit, I'm like, well, you will have a minimum order because you're saying, you know, at 20 $900 you get 20 $900 print credit. So I said so you're giving this session away for free, but she does well with it and her point or her point of view on it is that their thought on it is that when you say minimum order or minimum investment, that that wording is different than saying print credit, right free credit doesn't seem as Like they're investing, you know, like we always say to like money, spent his money forgotten that old terminology. So I kind of challenged her at it because I'm like, well, you'll give it away, then $500 in a session fee, but then she knows up front before she even picks up a camera that they committed to a $3,000 order.
Michael Mowbray :So as long as you get that built into the back end, I think you're okay. Now, if you know that going in, and then you know, for the 20 $900 people know, they're getting something, whereas the minimum order is like, why do I spend this money? No, I'm gonna get so it's splitting hairs, but I could kind of see the, I can see the thought process behind it. And you know what, and for everybody listening out there, we're giving you ideas on what works, what would work for us, and maybe what we've seen work for other people. You may have a methodology that works a lot better for you. So that doesn't mean switch to what we do. If it works for you. Great. If and
Dan Frievalt :then tell us about it. Yeah.
Michael Mowbray :Go to facebook.com slash groups, slash photo, podcast, photo, happy hour, whatever. What do we call this thing for happy hour? But yeah, you know, but if you're if it's not working, you know, listen to some of these ideas. And maybe there's something that will, that you can adapt and will fit you.
Dan Frievalt :And under the same understandings, we've all been doing this for a long time. So we can give you our suggestions and what other people are doing. But you need to kind of experiment and it takes maybe a couple years for you to lock in, like, I always had, I never had a minimum order. And then I started getting like a $2,000 average. And I was booking and booking a couple months out. So I'm like, I need to put a minimum order because I don't want to book a bunch of sessions. And you'd every once in a while, get someone that would come in and chop just $500 and you're like, Oh, you know, the I run a session. So I'm like, Okay, I need to prequalify Well, I don't know if it was just timing or not. I think we may have talked about this before, but I put a minimum order and I think it was like eight or $900 and The phone stopped ringing because I hit that right on the website. It's like what the heck. So I'm like, the phone was ringing, phone was ringing and all of a sudden it stopped. So I took that off, phone started ringing again, I started booking I'm like, Well, my average was 200 or 2000. Back then I put just at least the save me of, you know, a $500 session and $800 order. I'm sorry. Yeah. But then just because all of a sudden that $800 seemed to be scaring people off. So when I when I when they went through the whole experience, they would drop 2000 no problem. But up front, if you're telling people Same thing with with my mentoring session today, that girl's like, you don't do contracts. I'm like, No, because I don't want to hand a contract over to someone and be like, you know, this is just me like, hey, you're committed to this. And she's like, what if they're not happy and like, then I either do a reshoot and say I'm sorry. You know, I, you know, I'm sorry, you know, and it hasn't happened like, but if somebody comes to me and says you need to spend this I feel like I could lose people. Right?
Michael Mowbray :Yeah, I'm a big fan of portrait contracts either. I always have them for weddings. But I've never The only time I've had anything close to that is when I did a senior model team. And that just outlined my expectations of my senior models would be, and some of the was just, you know, that. Yeah, they do need to place an order at some point. And no, they can't be a model for some other photographer.
Dan Frievalt :Okay. I agree that the only contracts I did have is with my senior monitor program, because we are doing a lot of different sessions and I'm investing a lot of time in them. So I can create images to use for marketing. But then on the back end, I don't want to get like stiffed you know, either like, Oh, I did all this stuff. That's different. I'm investing a lot of time. So that's gonna pay out and that's all up front. So if they don't qualify for that, that's how I would weed out a lot of the models. Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with looks or popularity or anything. It's like, Hey, if you're willing to go through this process with me, allow me to use these images. And pay me this amount of money as we go actually some of it a lot of it was up front right then your boom you're in a lot of models after a while either it's you know
Michael Mowbray :your ambassadors or influencers now is what's called alright so I've got a question changing tacked on you guys got a question for you so if you build a website in a falls in the forest and nobody visits it visits it does it exist on Google? Well not on Alta Vista
Unknown Speaker :baby
Dan Frievalt :stop baby
Unknown Speaker :it'll be the top
Carl Caylor :we have to drink again by the way.
Michael Mowbray :I'm pretty much out but I'll suck some scotch off this piece of Robin pacing myself saying is you can you know we talked about website you can build a website But if you're not showing up in the search engines, and you, you know, nobody's visiting your site, and there's no, there aren't any links leading into your site from other places, how are people going to find you? Or will they find you? And that bridges over to something we've talked about briefly is search engine optimization, otherwise known as c. o, which some people like doing,
Unknown Speaker :I do not.
Michael Mowbray :So you know what I pay people you can pay people to do that.
Dan Frievalt :I thought you're gonna say take out it take out a half page ad in the yellow pages. So people can find you. I
Michael Mowbray :did that for a while back when we still were doing Yellow Pages. I made the ad smaller and just put the website in there. Because I didn't want people to call me as long ago the website, pretty qualify, and then they can call
Carl Caylor :the phone numbers on the website. So lets you know, right. Exactly, yeah. And your state where you are See how we just kind of got a circle here from the game all the time, tell people where you're located.
Michael Mowbray :But SEO,
Dan Frievalt :SEO and that also brings up another thing and blogging, which I hate doing. But websites or Google likes to, they like to know that you're active and that they're updating. So blogs really help and having like, even if it says like, like Jocelyn greenbay, Senior, blah, blah, blah or you use a certain words in your blog, that are certain keywords that people are looking for. All those things help. So you have to get kind of creative with your wording, you know, as well, or hit landmarks or hit different things that will show up in Google when people search for things. So yeah, blogging is huge with along with websites. Great quote
Michael Mowbray :I saw the other day is somebody was going Putting about blogs, which I hate. I hate doing blogs myself, just don't find the time to do it. And my reasoning has been the same as what this other person says like, Well, nobody ever goes my blog and nobody ever reads it. And the response was, Google does. And that's the blog for seriously, that's what you end up doing the blog for if you can get engagement with your target audience and their friends and family. Fantastic. The number one reason to do a blog is Google will read it and that's going to drive people to your site.
Carl Caylor :Now, our blogs the same as blogs as far as Google.
Michael Mowbray :If it's on your site, and you're putting text along with a describe what's in the vlog. Sure,
Dan Frievalt :yeah, you need you need to text along with it. Yeah. So back to our YouTube thing. There are certain keywords and stuff that you can put along with it. Which will help. Yeah, and the more reviews will help. But yeah, I know and I and I need this. That's one thing with with pain. Photo bits to do my SEO, it's like, oh, you need to kind of transfer my old blog over and in and keep up to two and I haven't had time. So I'm looking at hiring someone, you know to do that and we'll throw another bone to Fundy as well because they have that blog creator. So at least you can put a bunch of images. And so someone can't just steal an image either. It's like all in a blocking collage, or just like in its in its size to fit, again, mobile friendly, all that kind of stuff. So it's nice where you can put a bunch of images in and talk a little bit about Susie's session and how great it was and drop some keywords that will help your SEO juice
Michael Mowbray :while doing so just to reiterate, that's funny software that Dan is talking about and something I used to use back in the day, back in the day back in the early 2000 10s. It's called blogs. blog stump is what I did something that did something very similar. But you have been by funding out to be your album designer, it can be your price guide designer. It can be your iPS cells, tool magazine magazine cards, your blogging stuff. There's so many things built into that. So certainly wash
Dan Frievalt :that shirt that you wore for five days in a row and was standing up in the corner.
Carl Caylor :Exactly I will do is to actually have two of those from See what I did there. Yeah. So yeah, I know you took advantage of photo biz. There SEO sale during the COVID thing. Are they still doing it? I thought I saw something the other day so I think I need to go out and find office. I know I got a chat with him really fast because I need him to do that.
Dan Frievalt :I think they are because again with my mentoring session this morning, we were talking about it and she was asking because photos also has it's like 1500 dollars. So they'll set your setup for you. And I said That's really easy I go I'd rather see you put that 1500 in the SEO because that's that's going to bring your business even if you had one page that you put together with with a photo and some text, like the SEO is, is I think more important, you can always add and build a page. So if it was me with 1500 bucks, where would I spend it? I'd throw it into the SEO Well, I mean, I would I would spend 1500 a lot of other ways but if Oh, gosh, those were my two choices. So I So long story short, I think she looked it up when we were talking and I think it was still going on. Oh, cool. Or mentioned my name and say Damn it, Dan Frievalt said he could still get this for 50% also give it to him and dental
Michael Mowbray :number always remember how he said I got really dark here. Yeah, just like that my phone's just buzzes like we got a severe thunderstorm warning right now. So
Carl Caylor :yeah, like boom. masses stuff pretty colorful over the top of you over there. Yeah.
Michael Mowbray :Yeah, I'm kind of hearing in the background
Dan Frievalt :before we lose everything,
Michael Mowbray :yeah, the same thing we're about at that time anyway. So do you guys have any parting shots? I think this SEO thing was probably one of the best parting shots. Oh, absolutely.
Carl Caylor :Now to go give them a call tomorrow. Well,
Michael Mowbray :no more parting shots. We're gonna we're gonna turn it over to our sponsor today. And we have a sponsor every week. Today's episode has been brought to you by polygamy Porter from massage brewery. This you top brewed Porter probably has the best tagline in the business. Why just have one that's polygamy Porter from massage brewery.
Carl Caylor :Utah.
Dan Frievalt :Mormons Yeah,
Michael Mowbray :polygamy, multiple wives. I don't know.
Carl Caylor :Like that's how you're getting here.
Michael Mowbray :Yes. drives you to drink. He's gonna have as many beers as you have wives. That's I think. So we just lost all of our listeners in Utah.
Dan Frievalt :And the more the better they look. That's right.
Carl Caylor :All right, sir. I look at you.
Michael Mowbray :So Till next time, cheers. Cheers.
Unknown Speaker :Cheers. Last call.
Michael Mowbray :You've been listening to the photo happy hour podcast. Be sure to hit that subscribe button to not miss a single action packed episode and join our photo happy hour Facebook group where we'll post links to the stuff we all talk about. You can find my mo light gear online at www dot gomo light com. That's geo mo Li gh t comm you can find the Facebook page under MoLight store and I also run the Godox flash help group on Facebook. You can find Dan SR unlocked website at www dot senior's unlocked.com. That's Sr. With an S at the end unlocked.com and the Facebook group under SR is unlocked. And you can find Carl's coaching corner@www.cc photo coach comm cc photo coach.com Till next time, cheers to you.
Unknown Speaker :I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you want me to pay you to subscribe, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you subscribe now, that won't be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will not personally But if you don't, I will look for you. I will find you and I will annoy you