Premium Members, click here to access this interview in the premium area.
Matthew Druin of Matthew Druin Photography has been in business for just over five years and destination weddings are his number one target market. No travel fees in the U.S is one of his catch cries and with sales averaging close to $4500, things are going great!
Matthew and his wife Jessica strongly believe in living a debt free life and that's the approach they've taken every step of the way with their photography business. With an earlier career as a professional skateboarder and multiple businesses later, Matthew settled on destination wedding photography as his focus without being a slave to money, work or over committing. Lifestyle remains the number one goal.
Here’s some of what we cover in this interview:
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:
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 Matthew, 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.
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.
I'm a big believer in products to complete the experience – Matthew Druin
If you have any questions that I missed, a specific question you’d like to ask Matthew about the challenge or if you just want to say thanks for coming on the show, feel free to add them below.
Premium Membership + SEO Bundle – LAST DAY!
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
- 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.
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.
THE SPECIAL OFFER
Sign up for a 12 month membership, and get the two bonuses included!
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.
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 – Let's Throwback
Sheila Burr – Secret Keeper
Amanda Perris – A Hippo in Perth
Sevim Ozdan – Raine Shine
Tom Nicholls – Bedlam
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.
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.
PLUS: if you let me know the key word or keyword phrase you'd like me to use to link to your page, post or site, let me know via email after leaving a review and I'll do what I can to make that work.
For example, if I were linking to my wedding photography page on my photography website ” Impact Images” and want to target the keyword phrase “Central Coast wedding photographer” and left an iTunes review, I'd add something like this:
Thanks for the iTunes review by Central Coast wedding photographer, Andrew Hellmich on June 27, 2016
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 and email me your key word/s and where you'd like me to link to.
Informative and entertaining
In iTunes by St. Louis wedding photographer, Mike Heine from USA on June 21, 2016
Andrew's show is a must listen for anyone in or considering being in the photography business.
His podcast was one of many that I would listen to while sitting in my cubicle at my 9-5 job, and now his is the only one I make time for.
While I've only been in this business a short time I've accumulated many subscriptions for software, services, etc. When considering which of those services I may be able to cut, I upgraded to the annual subscription of this podcast.
It's just too valuable.
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, [email protected].
We value our time in our life more than we value money – Matthew Druin
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.
Links to people, places and things mentioned in this episode:
Episode 154: Bryan Caporicci – Is Sprout Studio the All In One Photography Management Software?
Disc Inventory X – disk usage utility for Mac OS X 10.3 (and later). It shows the sizes of files and folders in a special graphical way. If you've ever wondered where all your disk space has gone, Disk Inventory X will help you to answer this question.
Windows Directory Statistics – similar to Disc Inventory X but for Windows operating systems.
Thank you!
Thanks again for listening to the show and thanks to Matthew for coming on and being totally open about what he's doing in his business to achieve the success he is.
I don’t want to be around people where I’d be offending people or having to change who I am
as a person to accommodate them – Matthew Druin
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
Love it Andrew! You’re always asking the right questions.
Cheers, thanks Wilson 🙂
Thank you for this interview : really nice to see your success as a traveller photographer.
My biggest takeways is Matthews referral reward, which I will implement to my business.
I thought the referral reward was a great idea. I’ve offered a simple reward in my business for a long time but Matt’s approach is very cool.
So you are showing an interest in learning digital photography –
congratulations! Photography is an excellent practical pastime along
with an exciting career prospect. How to take good pictures with iPhone