PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOPS 101: Chapter 5. How to Build Trust

EURO CAMERA MONEY by ANNETTE KIMx HAPTICPRESS

To be honest, 90% of the hardest part of photography workshops is actually getting people to sign up.

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PHOTOGRAPHY ENTREPRENEURSHIP 101 by ERIC KIM

How do you get people to sign up? Do you need more social media followers, better marketing tactics… or a fancier website?

No. You just need more trust.

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Ok let me break this down.

First principle: for a profitable workshop, it is better to have a few students pay a lot of money, rather than have a lot of students pay a little money.

Why?

Primo, less stress. Managing fewer students is less stress.
Second, it is easier to have a few students sign up for your workshop (at higher prices) than to have LOTS of students sign up.

You can try to be a Walmart and have millions of people to buy your service, product, or workshop. But… how the hell can we reach millions of people? Realistically, you cannot.

My idea：

Seek to get a few people to really really trust you. Then they will be willing to spend a lot of money with you.

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If I teach a photography workshop or experience and charge $2,000 USD a person, I only need 5 people to signup to have a profitable workshop. That would be an income of $10,000 USD. After expenses, I might make a profit of around $6,000 USD. Which for me, is about two months of living expenses.

Just consider… you just need to find 5 human beings, in this world of 7 BILLION PEOPLE to signup for your workshop, to make a profitable workshop. That’s pretty realistic in my eyes.

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How to find those few people who really trust you

Ok, let’s think about this like a relationship.

Nobody will have sex with you on the first date. Generally this takes building up a relationship, over a very long time, with love, trust, mutual respect, etc.

The problem that a lot of photographers, marketers, bloggers, try to do is to have sex with you on the first date (by trying to market their product to you).

Things that marketers, bloggers, and photographers do which annoy me:

Have a fucking annoying-ass pop up that blocks my screen, asking me to signup for their newsletter.
Having cluttered websites, with millions of advertisements.
Making it hard for me to access their information… for example having to signup for their newsletter before I can download their free ebook, or whatever.

My solution:

Treat my viewers like myself. The golden rule. I have all my downloads easily accessible via direct download links via Google Drive, Dropbox, or directly from this site. No fucking stupid email newsletters.
Clean website user interface, without annoying advertisements.
Photos, images, without copyright or water marks… full resolution, easy to download or access.

To sum up, the best way to build trust with your user or viewer… TREAT THEM LIKE YOURSELF.

Don’t bullshit people

People can smell bullshit from a mile away.

Don’t bullshit your viewer, or your potential student.

Don’t make claims that YOU personally don’t believe in.

For example, I’m doing a lot of these workshop, business, and entrepreneurship articles. My mom has been scammed by AMWAY in the past, therefore I try to be fucking really raw, and brutally honest.

To reiterate,

You probably cannot make a living from teaching photography workshops. However, it is POSSIBLE. With enough hard work, sweat, hustle, innovation, ingenuity, and luck… you can make a lot of money from teaching photography workshops, or from photography education.

I feel more of life needs warning labels, to be more ethical.

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Always be NEW

Ok, part of me believes in consistency, and part of me doesn’t.

But I know this for a fact, if I check my own media consumption behavior… I always love the NEW.

I’m addicts to newness, innovation, and novelty. For me, it is a bias. I assume what is new is better than the old… which is actually false. Often, what is old is better than the new.

However still… when I read blogs, I prefer to have NEW and UPDATED information. I want an advantage of information, by having access to NEW information, faster than anybody else.

I love using beta software, even though it is buggy. Why? It is more fun, dangerous, and exciting.

So if you want to always have an audience, keep giving them new stuff.

If you’re a musician, you gotta always put out new music. This is why JAY Z, KANYE, and KENDRICK LAMAR inspire me… they keep innovating, driving their music, art, culture, and ideas forward. They keep producing new music.

With Apple… if they kept releasing the same iPhone, would people buy it? Hello no. We want new shit in our phones. New cameras, new features, new gadgets, new widgets.

So if you want to make a sustainable living for the long-term in photography workshops, some ideas：

Never stop blogging. Keep blogging new ideas, new photos, new videos, and keep pumping out the stream of ideas, knowledge, and information.
Experiment with new photography workshops and courses. For example, I’m doing street photography workshops, curated photography travel experiences, ZEN photography experiences, and plan on doing photography entrepreneurship and business workshops in the future. If there is anything I learned from biology from nature is this: DIVERSIFY OR DIE.
If you’re not growing, developing, evolving as a photographer or an artist… you’re dying.

BE STRONG,
ERIC