RED ERIC KIM by CINDY NGUYEN

Ok, more thoughts on how to get people to sign up for your workshop… specifically, how to advertise and market yourself.

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Part of PHOTOGRAPHY ENTREPRENEURSHIP 101 >

Branding is Overrated.

The concept of a “brand” is a modern and recent one.

I think “branding” is a good idea for big companies. But not for you as an individual.

Why? Because you are a human being,,, not a brand.

Why turn yourself into a soulless brand, when you can exert your own individuality, personality, and humanness?

Email newsletter

I still find email the best way to contact your audience. I recommend using Mailchimp.com as a service, that is what I use.

Typically the “best” time to send an email is (assuming you’re in America) around 12:00pm time (noon)… based on my personal experience for the highest “email open rate.”

Social media is overrated

The hard thing about marketing your workshops on social media：it will be buried in the stream of noise.

I don’t recommend spending money on Facebook, Google, or other forms of social media marketing… because I’ve done it and to be honest, it doesn’t work.

What I mean is this: the return on value of investment on Facebook and other forms of social media, google, etc are quite low. Better to market your workshops directly on your blog or email newsletter, rather than trying to waste time, energy, focus, and resources marketing on social media.

How to market your workshops on your blog

Ok, we have already established the following：

It is very hard to get people to signup for your workshop.
It might take you at least 1-2years to get people to trust you enough to sign up for your workshop.
The best way to build a following is through your photo blog.

So let people know about your upcoming workshops using the “After entry” widget in WordPress, or by mentioning it beginning, during, or after your blog posts (as hyperlinks, directly in the text).

General information you want to use to market your workshops：

Why they should signup for the workshop.
The benefits they will gain from attending the workshop.
Minimize risk：offer students a 100% money back guarantee, to lessen the barrier to entry.

Focus on a small niche

When you’re starting off, it is better to be a big fish in a small pond, than a small fish in a big pond.

What is unique about your style of photography? Or how could you market it to a more specific niche?

For example, when I started teaching workshops, it would have been a bad idea doing a general photography workshop. I succeeded because I focused on street photography, both in terms of workshops and blogging. Now, I am focusing on photography entrepreneurship, making articles like this, and also Photography entrepreneurship workshops.

How to identify your niche

What do you know what niche to focus on?

My suggestion：be your first customer.

What kind of information, education or knowledge are YOU hungry for?

For example, I was passionate and interested in street photography, but couldn’t find any information online on how to shoot street photography. So I started to research on my own, and blogging along the way, while I was learning.

The same thing with photography entrepreneurship… how the hell do you make money from photography? And is it even possible? I thought it was impossible to make money from photography and blogging. But after 7 years of hustling, I’ve been able to (with Cindy) break the $200,000 USD yearly income ceiling.

So on a piece of paper or your phone, try to figure out what kind of photography YOU would be interested in attending.

This is your ideal niche.

Conclusion

To wrap up, realize that getting people to learn about you, and who you are is really really hard. It will take a long time. At least 1-2 years. For me, it took me 7 years of hustle (2010-2017) and 2,700+ blog posts.

You will probably fail — but are you gonna let that get in your way?

BE STRONG,
ERIC