As a professional photographer, you can offer more than electronic delivery of image files or an initial run of physical proofs and custom print orders.
In fact, there are many other ways to increase the income stream of your photography business.
An excellent option is the mini photo album which you can have produced for you by Printique, Adorama’s premium photo printing service.
What is a mini photo album? What type of clients or genre of photographer should make mini photo albums available? Is there a trick to getting orders for mini photo albums? How else can a photographer use a mini photo album?
I’ll answer these questions ahead!
Table of Contents:
- What are Mini Photo Albums?
- What Type of Client Wants a Mini Photo Album?
- What Genre of Photographer Should Offer Mini Photo Albums?
- How Do You Price a Mini Photo Album?
- Using Photo Books for Self-Promotion
- Recommended Photography Gear
What is a Mini Photo Album?
Mini photo albums are actually small photo books. As produced by Printique, a mini photo album is a small, softcover, premium quality photo book made with archival inks in a lay flat style.
Lay flat means that when you open up the mini photo album to any page from front to center to back, there is no page curl due to spine stiffness. The lay flat design is one way that you separate your photography books from the competition, making your photo books stand out
The mini photo album printing option from Printique is a 4 x 4-inch or 5 x 7-inch softcover photo book with 20 pages of photographic printing included. You can add more pages as needed, and you also have control of where in the book your images go and how they are arranged. The print wizard helps you design the perfect book for your client.
What Type of Client Wants a Mini Photo Album?
Almost any type of client might like the option of a mini photo album, though there are some genres of photography that tend to lend themselves seamlessly to the idea of photo books.
Portrait and wedding photographers are used to making physical printing options available for their clients. In fact, a lot of clients, especially for wedding photography, will actually expect to see the availability of physical photo books or photo albums.
Families getting portraits are another group that will already be thinking in terms of photo albums. Some sub-categories of family portraits that may appreciate a mini photo album are newborn photos, the kids growing up, individual portraits, and environmental portraiture.
In addition to formal wedding photo albums, mini photo albums could be made of the highlights of the day that the couple can pass out as gifts to wedding party members or family and guests of the newlyweds.
Don’t forget the engagement photography portraits and events surrounding the proposal or the showers, dinners, and receptions involved. If you provide any boudoir styles of photography, wedding-related or otherwise, a mini photo album can be a welcome add-on.
Your school and senior photography customers would also like to see their cherished images presented in this style of photo book. Pet photography is another branch of portraiture that can be targeted for promoting your mini photo album products.
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What Genre of Photographer Should Offer Mini Photo Albums?
The type of client you shoot for might be families getting portraits or a couple wanting to have a special memento of their wedding or another event, but we’re not limited to people or event photography to create and sell a mini photo album.
Travel photography and commercial real estate photography are a couple of genres that can benefit from offering clients a mini photo album of the images that you’ve already created. A hotel chain or a fancy restaurant at a popular destination resort can always use a mini photo album to show off their place.
Food photography fits this idea, too. A mini photo album of an up-and-coming chef and their dishes is a great idea. An architectural firm may wish to have an album of the buildings, homes, or special areas they’ve designed.
Since there are multiple ways to arrange the images in a mini photo album, you could make a panoramic view with a two-page spread, or you can make a collage with different sizes and shapes of images. You can even add text to the pages for those clients that want to tell a story or label things.
How Do You Price a Mini Photo Album?
Pricing can be done in two ways. You can simply try to make a small amount of profit on the mini photo albums, or you can try to maximize the profit from a stand-alone sale or somewhere in between.
The mini photo albums from Printique are very reasonably priced, so you can assign a competitive price to what you either sell on their own or include in a package or as add-ons to another photography gig.
It pays us well that we’re not simply adding a markup to an item as though we’re a retailer buying wholesale goods. Our photography work deserves to be included in our calculations for how much we want as profit from selling mini photo albums. Naturally, we would probably want to make more off of a single sale but could keep our pricing down when including these as part of a package.
Using Photo Books for Self-Promotion
Mini photo albums can fit into a marketing plan we may already have that includes using photo books. If you use an office or studio, print several mini photo albums and spread them around the waiting area. Take some with you when meeting with a prospective client in any type of photography, from real estate to wedding planners. You could use them as promotional material in a contest, too.
Another benefit is that these people will already know what you mean when you offer them a mini photo album of the work you did for them.
The point is that a mini photo album is a wonderful way to promote yourself as a professional photographer to gain more clients, so head over to Printique today to see how a mini photo album might fit into your business’ marketing!