If you are a family photographer that is looking to make a full-time income from your family photography business, you may want to consider preschool and daycare portraits. Before you run away screaming, stop for a second though! This is a great way to get paid to market to your ideal client during a slow season. Win, win!
In this blog post, you will learn how to organize profitable preschool and daycare portraits by:
- Establishing a connection
- Creating flyer/permission form
- Creating set (keep it simple)
- Shooting
- Selling images (share Pic-Time code)
- Upselling mini or full sessions
Step One: Establishing a Connection
Your first step to being able to offer preschool and daycare portraits is to establish a connection with a local organization. The first preschool that I worked with was the preschool where my children went. They didn’t have a photographer that worked with them, so I was able to offer my services and have been with them the last four years now.
What if you don’t have kids in local preschools or daycares? You can ask friends if their children have photographers who already come to their schools and reach out to local daycares and preschools via email to offer your services. Your biggest sell is that it costs the organization nothing to bring you in. Not to mention, parents are thrilled to have the opportunity to have pictures done while they are at work. Use this to your marketing advantage when chatting with local preschools and daycares.
Step Two: Create a Flyer and Permission Form
Once you have established a connection, your next step is to create two very clear forms. The first is a flyer, advertising when you will be going to the daycare or school. This should be one page, have a sample of what families can expect and include your website so they can see your work.
The next is a consent form for families to agree that you are allowed to photograph their children. Be sure to have them write the names of each child being photographed. You will also need permission to use their child’s photo for marketing. Finally, provide a space where they can opt into your email list so you can send them future information about booking mini or full sessions in the future. Don’t have an email list? Now is the perfect time to start one (I use Flodesk – see my code here).
Step Three: Create a Set
Once your paperwork is in progress, it’s time to start planning your set. I like to keep these very simple. First, decide if you are going to be outdoors or indoors. If you’re going to be outdoors, you may want to scout the location at the right time of day to ensure you have the best lighting at that location. If you don’t, you may want to use artificial lighting indoors.
Step Four: Communicate With Daycare and Preschool
Before the day of your daycare and preschool portraits, be sure to ask if a teacher can assist you day-of. Ideally, they will brijng the kids to you and help you keep the consent forms in order so that you know which child is which. I like to ask the teacher that is assigned to me to number the consent forms and write a quick note as to what the child is wearing so that I can quickly identify kids.
Step Five: Photograph the Preschool and Daycare Portraits
When the day arrives, be sure to get as much variety of images as possible so that you can upsell your galleries. Remember, families didn’t pay for a sitting fee, so you want to make sure that the portraits sell themselves! Provide a great client experience to these kiddos so that they go home raving about you to their parents.
Step Six: Selling images (share Pic-Time code)
After editing the images, it’s time for you to sell them to the parents. I try to do a fast turn-around on these since the lighting is pretty consistent and parents are super curious to see how they turned out.
Personally, I use PicTime (feel free to use my discount code here). The images are watermarked so that parents can’t screenshot them and I have prices listed – $25 per image, $75 for full gallery. After doing this for five years now, I have an upsell success rate of 93% since the images are affordable and adorable! You may want to be strategic about the time of year you do these as well, since they make great gifts for Mother’s Day/Father’s Day.
Step Seven: Upsell To Full Sessions or Family Mini Sessions
After the carts close, now is a great time to share with families other opportunities to work with you. I like to schedule these preschool portraits right before I release my mini-sessions for the year since I can offer families a discount code. While this doesn’t necessarily bring you a ton of new clients, I have found that I get consistent ideal clients from the preschool each year. This helps me to create a foundation of repeat clients that rave about me.
Preschool and Daycare Portraits: Conclusion
And that’s it! Preschool and daycare portraits are my favorite way to ensure that I am working year-round. In addition, once you do them once, you have a simple, profitable process that you can rinse and repeat. Once you have a good flow, you will then be able to expand to other daycare and preschools to offer them portraits as well.
If you want to see if preschool and daycare portraits is the next right step for you, be sure to check out my quiz: “Are you ready to scale your business?” to find out if this is the best way to focus your energy right now.
Choosing Sharon As Your Photography Business Coach
You are in the right place if you’re looking for a family photography coach who:
- Is all about concrete, action steps
- Went from a full-time teaching job to full-time photography
- Has been a stay-at-home mom, a work-from-home mom, a home-daycare- mom, a full-time working mom and now a small-business mom!
- Can help you implement strategies to help you grow your business quickly without getting distracted by all of the shiny things
- Will push you to try new things in your business to say good-bye to slow season forever!
- Want systems and action plans you can implement on your own
Want to see if we’re a good fit? I totally get it! Fill out an application here and we can schedule a no-pressure meet-and-greet to see if I can help you get where you’re going quickly.
Still not sure? Last year, I wrote a book to document my personal growth journey that helped me (and my business!) get to where it is today. You can check it out on Amazon here.
