Selena Rollason has been shooting professionally for over 15 years, mainly focusing on weddings and families. Then, after photographing her first birth, she fell in love with birth photography and now specialises in maternity, birth and newborn photography. No matter where your photographic interests lay, or whether you plan to ever photograph a birth yourself, Selena openly shares how she is marketing to, pricing for and attracting birth photography clients. What she shares can easily be applied to any portrait photography business.

In a genre where it can be difficult to get permission to share the photography she likes to create for her clients, Selena has had to get creative in the way she attracts business. Amongst her strategies are client information nights and networking with professional service providers that have similar values and opinions when it comes to natural births. Selena shares in detail how and why these are working so well in her business.

“For me, it's not about the time away from my business, it's not about the cost of my time for those meetings. It's more important for me that clients feel comfortable having me in that birth suite on that big day.”

Regular listeners to the podcast will have heard Selena in a past episode… but only briefly. She had just won the highest scoring print at the recent APPA print awards in the inaugural birth category and she was a ‘tad' excited in that interview! She went on to take runner up in the category that day at the 2014 APPA print awards held in Sydney Australia.

Here's some more of what we cover:

  • Where is Selena's cash flow being generated?
  • Understanding your target demographic perfectly for perfectly targeted marketing
  • Why Selena offers discounts for some bookings
  • How to make your pricing look appealing to your clients
  • Why bundled photography pricing is more favourable to clients
  • Identifying your photography niche to focus on a better photography business
  • The business transformation from portrait and wedding photographer to birth photographer
  • Why Selena's husband ‘freaked out' when she announced she's going to transition to birth photography
  • Why birth and wedding photography will never co-exist in your photography business
  • The stress and pressure of transitioning to a new genre
  • Setting up a new business, step by step
  • Research is key to figuring out your pricing and products to offer
  • How Selena booked her first birth photography session
  • Using Facebook as a marketing tool to find clients
  • Offering free photography to attract clients while asking clients to pay for the printed images
  • Portfolio building to market your business
  • The advantages and disadvantages of using a generic name for your business versus your personal name
  • Why Selena used a free website to test the viability of her business
  • Why Selena insists on meeting her clients at least twice before a shoot
  • What happens during client meetings for  birth photographer
  • The advantage of spending more time with your clients
  • Is ‘fashion' important for your birth photography clients
  • Birth photography pricing
  • What Selena is doing to ensure she has a sustainable profitable business

I'm not sure if you'll ever photograph a birth, I doubt I'll ever have that chance again. I expect, if you're a male listener, chances are, you won't be photographing too many births in your career either. It's interesting then, to think how many things Selena shared in her interview that I can apply to my wedding and portrait business. How about you? What did you hear that can be applied to what you're doing in your business?

Selena Rollason Photography Podcast 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 implementable content from where we dive deeper into some of the earlier topics plus some new ones that I pushed hard for that include:

  • Why you need to be versatile, flexible and have a full understanding of the foundations of photography to become a successful birth photographer
  • Where Selena gets her bookings
  • Tapping health workers to market a birth photography business
  • Establishing partnerships with birth centres to market your business
  • Why it's easier to network with other health workers with similar values
  • Information nights is a casual opportunity to meet and greet future clients
  • Why Selena believes giving up her part time job to go full time was the best thing she's done for her business
  • Work flow
  • Starting over, what Selena would do differently if given the chance

Selena Rollason Photography Podcast Interview

What is your big takeaway?

Following this interview, I’d love to know what your biggest takeaway is – what is the one thing that you’d like to implement or learnt from what was shared? Let me know by leaving your thoughts in the comments below.

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

If you’d like an easy way to show Selena your thanks, and support for the show at the same time, click the link to create a tweet and automatically show you’re listening: https://photobizx.com/sue

Selena Rollason Photography Podcast Interview 

The Resources Page

Remember the ever expanding resources page that has a listing of products, programs, hardware, books and directories mentioned in each episode of the show. If you’re looking for something that a guest has mentioned on a previous episode but just can’t remember who or what it was – you’ll find it listed in order on the resources page.

iTunes ratings, reviews and Shout-Outs

Each week before recording the podcast I check iTunes for any reviews and each week I’m excited to see what you’ve had to say about the podcast. This week I was blown away to see two fantastic reviews! Thanks you so much to:

Jamie from Jamie and Natalie Photography in Colorado Springs in the USA

Jared Lindsay of jaredlindsay.com

Sincerely, thanks so much for your ratings and reviews, I appreciate the time you’ve taken and it’s a big help for the show. It’s these iTunes reviews that make a big difference to the podcast being ranked well and found in the iTunes store. If you have the time and are happy to leave an honest rating and review, head over to iTunes.

Photo Biz Xposed iTunes reviews

Don’t feel your comments have to be long, involved or gushy, an honest opinion is all I ask. Don’t be shy about leaving your business name in the review either – that way I can add a link in the show-notes and show my appreciation with a proper thanks and a Google loving back-link to your website.

Also, a big shootout to Kara Whaley of Kara Whaley Photography and Design for her lovely emails, support and catalyst for the start of todays episode.

Do You Have a Question about Your Business or Marketing?

If you’d like to get in touch, ask a question or make a suggestion for the show, you can email me andrew@photobizx.com, find me on Twitter https://twitter.com/andrewhellmich or on Facebook at https://photobizx.com/facebook – I’d love to hear from you!

This weeks question cam from Ahmad of Knight Image Photography who asks:

I have a question relating to my WordPress website and wanted to see if you had any insight.

Blog post vs webpage: Is there a general consensus which is more effective for SEO when putting up web content?

If I have a collection of 7-10 images from a recent shoot and want to share them on my site, am I better off creating a post on my WordPress blog or creating an actual web page?

I answered Ahmad's question in detail during the episode and included the following advice:

A post or a page will have the same weight for SEO purposes (if they contain the same content)  but they are used for different purposes on your site.

A “page” would be used for major menu items on your site like; weddings, portraits, commercial, about us, contact us etc.

A “post” on the other hand is mainly used for smaller chunks of content or information about a subject. For example, you may have a series of posts about different wedding venues in your area, another on choosing the perfect wedding gown or getting the most from a rainy wedding day etc, etc. Posts, would also be used for short articles about weddings you've photographed, why you prefer one location over another etc.

You could have all this wedding content on your one wedding “page” but it would be way too long and visitors would never be able to find anything and would need to scroll and scroll and scroll to find what they're looking for.

For your 7-10 images: it depends what you are trying to say or do with them. If they are to tell a story or teach your visitors something, write a “post” and use those images to illustrate your story or advice.

If they are simply great photos, you might add them to you wedding gallery “page”.

You might add them to your wedding page to add some visual impact.

You can see, it really depends why the images are for. I'm guessing though, you’ll be using them for a blog post.

To make things easier to find on your blog, you can create “categories” and assign a category to your post to make them easier to find. Remember too, posts can be assigned more than one category.

You can see examples of all this on my sites – http://impact-images.com.au and http://impact-blog.com.au

Light Blue Studio Management Software

No real updates for the implementation of Light Blue this week because Linda has been too busy with wedding edits, and coordinating shoots and other studio jobs. Now that she knows there is a dedicated segment on the podcast, I reckon that'll be the catalyst I need to see the software seamlessly integrated into my business.

I'll be back next week with another update on her progress… I hope.

Selena Rollason Photography Podcast Interview 

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

Selena Rollason Website

Selena Rollason Facebook

Selena Rollason Twitter

Selena Rollason Pinterest

Selena Rollason Instagram

Pro Photo Template

Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA)

AIPP

Photo Mechanic

Lightroom

WordPress.org

Heartfelt

The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

Light Blue studio management software

Equipment

Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 for Canon SLR Cameras

Selena Rollason Photography Podcast Interview

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

If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, I’d love for you to tell another photographer about it – it could be in a Facebook Group you’re a part of, a photography forum, with a photographer friend or on twitter.

If you do have a twitter account, simply click here: https://photobizx.com/tweet or use the share buttons below.

Thanks and speak soon

Andrew