Alright, so, we all know that the first rule of photography is "Don't discount yourself". We also know that doing deals like Groupon and LivingSocial shouldn't happen.
Well after feeling hopeless and not getting business, even after guided direction from pros in marketing, after 8 months of hard work, I gave in. I did a deal with LivingSocial. I originally said no when the guy contacted me, I told him that it was entirely a ripoff and I would have no part it in. However, he was a very convincing salesman and after a half hour of being on the phone with him he got me to change my mind.. especially since I had a photographer friend who did amazingly with her LivingSocial deal, she made a profit, had fun, built her portfolio...
He convinced me that 99% of their clients upsell people easily and that's how they make money off of the deal, he even showed me ways how I could upsell and what I could do. So I said ok, fine, I'll do it - an impulsive decision. I signed the contract, sent it back, then immediately felt sick to my stomach.
I realized I was literally giving my work away and that this entire thing was purely for marketing only and nothing else. I would not be making ANY money off of this deal. I capped the deal at 35 sessions - high for me, low for them. They tried to convince me to cap it higher, I said no way and explained why 35 was even too high.
I sold out in 3 hours - I did however, book two additional sessions who saw the deal sold out and they purchased for regular session prices.
What I learned about this;
#1 - They take a ton of the money. I'm embarrassed to even admit how much I discounted for, but after they took their cut I ended with $20 a session. 20 bucks. Barely covered gas - and if I needed to hire a babysitter I was out money. PS - my first EVER paid session was $25 - yeah, please forgive my stupidity.
#2 - Only a single person was upsold on products other than what was given in the deal.
#3 - Some people who buy the deals are genuinely awesome and appreciated the deal. I met a couple of people that I just adore, out of those awesome people, only one rebooked me for a future date.
#4 - I made more money with the 2 regularly booked sessions than I did with the entire 35 livingsocial deals.
#5 - Most of the people were bargain hunters and felt that they were owed everything in the world because they paid oh-so-much-money (no, you really didn't), in my opinion if you got a single good image you should be happy. I did my best to provide at least 15 proofs for each 1/2 hour session and I honestly didn't care if people were happy about that amount because it was WAY more than fair. Way more. But in fairness, I expected that to happen - I know about bargain hunters and who they are. I was doing it for more of the hope that some people would love their images and refer me to others.
#6 It's great if you need to portfolio build quickly. Book everyone in the same areas for the same days, do 3 shoots within 2 hours and voila - super quickly updated portfolio.
#7 People procrastinate and wait until the last 3 days of the deal to say "oh hey... I want to schedule this now. I paid for it. I don't care if you're already booked, figure it out." - Sorry dude, not my problem, learn to book in advance you had 6 months (just to be nice though I've honored them past the date).
Overall, it was a good experience. Why? How could something like this be a good experience? Because, sometimes you just have to learn for yourself why things don't work. It did give me an updated portfolio, but nothing else other than a general idea of how to get myself noticed.
One thing I learned was that half of the people said "I searched forever for Cleveland photographers and you never came up in the search engine!" when I realized I had optimized my website for my general area, and not the "Cleveland" area even though Cleveland is only 20 minutes away and whenever I do searches I search for "Cleveland" not for my area. I was like "oops!" so I redid my website to optimize it and that was a good thing. Was it worth all of the time and effort I spent? No.
Was it a good experience? Yes.
Would I do it again? No way.
Valuing your work is important. People don't value close to free and after making more on 2 sessions than I did on 35... I realized that I should have just waited for those 2 sessions.
Oh! Another thing it helped me with; I learned to say "No" or "I'm not available, book now." - good marketing tactics to get people to book ASAP.
So, there you have it. My experience with LivingSocial.
Be smart; undervaluing yourself as a business only gets you disrespected and not learning from other people's mistakes is another mistake - I had read all about other people and didn't care, this wasn't about other people, it was about me!
The only people I can see this benefiting at all are new photographers who would like to quickly build a portfolio.
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