Premium Members, click here to access this interview in the premium area.

Newborn, maternity and birth photographer, Minna Burgess of Baby and Maternity Fine Art Portraiture is from Brisbane, Australia and todays guest on the podcast. Minna recently changed direction and style with her photography business by moving away from posing and props to create, she says, a more meaningful experience for her clients.

Minna's view is the newborn photography industry has exploded, huge numbers of photographers have gotten to an incredible technical level very quickly due to amazing workshops that teach everything from lighting, posing and post-processing, but there's now a cry for more…

She was asking herself, how do I go beyond posing and props to create images that make my clients and viewers FEEL something? Minna has been working on exactly that and shares what she's doing, how you can too and includes booking strategies I've never heard before.

Here’s some of what we cover in this interview:

  • Starting your career in photography
  • Joining a photography forum will help you establish your ground in the photography business
  • How Minna’s approach to photography has evolved over the years
  • Why go for minimalism when using props for baby photography?
  • How to avoid burnt out when chasing success in business
  • What is Moment Designs?
  • What are expression invites and how to use them for your business?
  • How to shoot natural moments with newborn photography
  • How to find where your passions in photography lay
  • The need to immediately jump and work on an idea before it belongs to someone else
  • How to take action following a photography workshop without feeling overwhelmed
  • The changes Minna started implementing in her business after attending an intensive workshop
  • How to start shooting in a new style when you have past bookings lined up
  • How a client’s experience can make a whole lot of difference in running your photography business
  • Will the use of the Moment Designs turn you into a robotic photographer following recipes?
  • Will the expression invites be applicable to male new born and baby photographers?
  • How to remember these expression invites easily
  • Why Minna doesn’t do in-person sales

Minna Burgess Photography Podcast

What’s on Offer for Premium Members

If you’re a premium member, you should have received an email with links to your version of this episode where you can hear lots more content and we dive deeper into some of the earlier topics plus some new ones that I pushed for and include:

  • What Minna did to kick off her photography business after moving back to Brisbane
  • Why hand delivered gift certificates for free shoots are better than a free shoot offer on Facebook
  • Printing photos of your work in your vouchers as a selling strategy to instantly show people your work
  • How to build the portfolio to shoot what you want to shoot
  • What instructions you should be giving when handing vouchers to your target clients
  • What is the ideal number of photos to give away during free shoots?
  • Why offering a commission to past clients for referrals didn’t work for Minna
  • Why it is okay to giveaway free vouchers when seeking out your target audience?
  • Why you should not set your profit hopes high from free shoots
  • How to find the courage to approach strangers to give out vouchers and the script to use
  • How to find the inspiration to write great content for your blog
  • How Minna picks the mums to give away free sessions
  • Publishing great content will affect your Facebook engagement, SEO and word-of-mouth referrals
  • Using mum quotes with birth images as a powerful tool in selling your work
  • Utilising word-of-mouth marketing as your best strategy for future bookings

If you’re on the fence about becoming a premium member, join with the $1 trial today and get access to the FULL interview with Minna, get access to an amazing back catalogue of interviews and ALL future interviews delivered automatically to your phone or tablet.

Plus, access to a members only Secret Facebook group where you'll connect with other members and interview guests to help, support and motivate you to take what you hear in each episode and put it into action. You will not find more friendly, more motivated and caring photographers online.

Minna Burgess Photography Podcast

What is your big takeaway?

Following this interview, I’d love to know if you're up for the challenge and wiling to invest a little time and effort into yourself, your writing and your business. If so, let me know by leaving your thoughts in the comments below and feel free to share links to your blog posts – I'd love to check them out.

When I look at my work, I would call it polished. It’s very polished; and there’s nothing wrong with polished. But I don’t want polished anymore. I want raw and I want authentic – Minna Burgess

If you have any questions that I missed, a specific question you’d like to ask Minna about the challenge or if you just want to say thanks for coming on the show, feel free to add them below.

Minna Burgess Photography Podcast

Premium Membership + SEO Bundle – 1 Week Left!

I’m having a 12 month membership + SEO bundle, special offer for the next two weeks only!
The total cost of the 12 month Premium membership is normally USD$200 – you save $40 on the regular monthly price.
I can vouch for the SEO course on offer. I now rank page one for all the keywords I aimed for because of it – Nick Peel of Barley Monks family portrait photography
Included, if you sign up in the next two weeks, access to the PhotoBizX 2015 SEO course – 35 videos taking you step by step through SEO best practices from beginner to expert level. These videos were recorded by Gabriel Machuret (interviewed in episode 34 of the podcast) and show him actually doing what he's teaching in the videos.
  • Learn how to best use your limited time, prioritise your SEO tasks, have your site ranking well without being a blogging machine.
  • Easy to follow step by step, bite size video tutorials where Gabriel teaches by showing you exactly what to do as he does it. See his monitor as he makes changes and tweaks to real websites.
  • Learn the theory behind SEO to understand exactly what Google is looking for in 2016 with your website and prioritise your tasks no matter how little time you have to work on your site.
  • Learn how to analyse your competition to find why they are ranking well and what needs to happen for you to outrank them.
  • Get into the backend of your website and learn which changes you need to make for your site ranking well and being seen by your prospective clients.
  • Follow the course checklists and steps to rank well in your studio (or home) location or the location you want to be attracting clients from.
  • What you need to avoid doing to prevent being penalised and how to obtain epic links to boost your rankings.
  • Learn how to become the online AUTHORITY in your local area for your genre of photography.
This is the same course made available to listeners at the end of 2015 for $199
SEO for Photographers

BONUS part 2 is the SEO Cookbook by Zach Prez (who I interviewed in episode 79 of the podcast) valued at USD$99.

The SEO Cookbook is a 60-page PDF that teaches photographers everything they need to know about search engines and how to rank well in search. The book is organised into simple recipes, each taking anywhere from 15 minutes to 4 hours.

The recipes allow you to focus on a specific part of your website a little bit at a time. For example, you can optimise your homepage one day, images another day, then a blog post, then learn how to get featured on another website.

With the SEO Cookbook, you can move forward at your own pace. It covers how Google works and how to exploit its ranking factors. It gives you step-by-step instructions for improving every page of your website so searchers can find you.

If you'd like to learn more about the SEO Cookbook, click here.

SEO COOKBOOK

THE SPECIAL OFFER

Sign up for a 12 month membership, and get the two bonuses included!

If you have an existing 12 month membership, email me andrew@photobizx.com and I'll organise a manual invoice for USD$200 and add an additional 12 month membership and access to the 2 SEO bonuses.

If you have any questions or want to simply add 12 months to your existing membership, just hit reply and we’ll sort it out.

Click here for the 12 Month Membership signup page.

Minna Burgess Photography Podcast

Spencer's example blog posts for the challenge

The blog challenge put out by Spencer Lum in episode 172 has well and truly kicked off and a bunch of premium members have jumped at the challenge of posting once per day!

It's not too late to get started – in fact, there's no time limit but you have to start sometime – it may as well be this week.

What has been surprising is hearing from listeners taking the challenge, just how much more aware they are of what's happening in their day to day life and the ease in which they have been able to tie those observations back to their photography and more importantly, their prospective clients and their brand.

And here are a couple of examples from members:

Shaun Carr on – Street Photography in London

Les Hanna of hanna Arts Photography – Practice What You Preach

Raymond Hatfield's – High Risk, High Reward Approach to Photography

Saskatoon newborn photographer, Sheila Buhr – The dreaded topic of pricing

I love what San Antonio wedding photographer, Anthony Guana had to say inside the group:

I don't remember what day I'm on, but I wanted to share that my social media engagement has gone up ever since I started the challenge.

More likes and comments than what I had normally been getting, but that's an obvious given.

I also had an inquiry a few days ago from a couple that found me on Instagram. The bride said my work stuck out on a hashtag search because she thought my work was beautiful and because she consistently saw my work in that feed.

Just wanted to share that with the group! Hope everyone else is doing well. Keep it up! We're here for each other's support!

If you're putting yourself to the test, please link to your posts in the comments are below, I'd love to check them out and I know other listeners will too.

Minna Burgess Photography Podcast

iTunes Reviews and Shout-outs

Each week I check for any new iTunes reviews and it's always a buzz to receive these… for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it's confirmation that I'm on the right track with the interviews and that they really are helping you improve your photography business. That's awesome!

Secondly, iTunes is the biggest search engine when it comes to podcasts and it's your reviews and ratings that help other photographers find PhotoBizX. More listeners means more interviews and ultimately a better show.

If you have left a review in the past, thank you!

If you haven't and you'd like to, head to https://photobizx.com/itunes and you can leave some honest feedback and a rating which will help both me and the show and I'll be sure to thank you on the show and add a link to your website or blog if you let me know the URL of your website and your name.

Alternatively, if you've left a review for PhotoBizX and are looking for more backlinks to help your SEO, leave a review for the new Photography Xperiment Podcast  for another link to your site like William Gray has done below:

Great Podcast

In iTunes by William Gray of Gray Pictures in the USA on May 27, 2016

Andrew is one of the best photography interviewers out there.

He gets creative intent, work styles, customer interaction, sales, and most importantly, he sheds light on the life craft of photography. Perfect for people who both people wanting a full-time photo biz, and people who want a secondary $ flow. Things college doesn’t teach.

I work as a photographer and I teach photography, I recommend his PhotoBizX Premium Content show, and now I will do the same with his new show. I cannot express my thanks enough for all the hard work Andrew puts into his own photography biz because that’s what drives his questions.

He has a work ethic beyond most I know in media.

Thank You Andrew!!

Minna Burgess Photography Podcast

The NEW Photography Xperiment Podcast is live and available

Following the success and support shown by listeners after the experimental format of the recent interviews, the new Photo Xperiment Podcast has been launched and is available on this site and in iTunes now.

Interviews are underway and I'll be looking for new guests, not restricted to wedding and portrait photographers. If you have someone you think would be a good fit, let me know in the comment area below or email me, andrew@photobizx.com.

The idea behind these interviews is to get into the headspace of the photographer and find what makes them tick, what drives them, their thought process, philosophy on shooting and how they achieve what they do with their photography. So yeah, a little technique type content too.

These interviews will not focus on the business of photography – that'll be preserved solely for the weekly and unchanging format of the PhotoBizX podcast.

To hear these interviews in your podcast app, you will need to subscribe to the podcast – these interviews will not be delivered automatically if you're subscribed to PhotoBizX. Open your favourite podcast app and search “Photography Xperiment Podcast” or enter the feed URL,  https://photobizx.com/feed/xperiment/ into the search field of your podcast app.

Minna Burgess Photography Podcast

Links to people, places and things mentioned in this episode:

Minna Burgess Website

First Moments by Minna Burgess

Minna Burgess Photography on Facebook

Moment Design Facebook Group

Episode 087: Sue Bryce – How to Make Real Money From Your Photography Business Right Now

I Love Photography Forum

Jesh de Rox

Kristen Cook

Melanie Kellerman

Kelly Brown

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin

Minna Burgess Photography Podcast

Thank you!

Thanks again for listening to the show and thanks to Minna for coming on and being totally open about what she's doing in her business to achieve the success she is.

I really realised I wanted to do more storytelling – Minna Burgess

If you have any suggestions, comments or questions about this episode, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post, and if you liked the episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post!

That’s it for me this week, hope everything is going well for you in life and business!

Thanks and speak soon

Andrew