Episode 27 - How to Sell Albums
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Today we’re chatting with Daniel the CEO of Pixellu and if you’re a photographer, you DON’T want to miss this! In this episode, we go over the importance of offering albums to your clients, why it’s important for clients to actually get physical copies of their images, and how you can make a profit from selling albums to your clients. So if you wanna hear some amazing new strategies & practical ideas on how to sell more albums, this is for you.
EC: Daniel, tell us a little bit about yourself and your entrepreneurship journey!
Daniel: I am an immigrant from the former Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, my family moved around a lot and eventually made it to the U.S. when I was 11 years old. I had to learn a new language, a new everything. Eventually, I bought a camera and started playing around with photography. I started doing it for free for friends and family, and then started learning film photography and videography and started charging clients. I was able to eventually photograph weddings, was teaching and traveling internationally for photography. I had a friend who was a developer and wanted to collaborate on a project together. We eventually released Smart Albums in 2013 as a way to create a more seamless way for photographers to create albums (rather than using Photoshop which was the only option at that time). Now, 9 years later, we released two other apps and we are a team of 40 people across the world.
EC: Tell us all about Pixellu- who is it for, what is it, what the products are, etc.
Daniel: Back in 2013, we wanted to solve the problem of album design for photographers. As photographers, we created a product for ourselves and since then, other people have loved it too. The first product we launched was Smart Albums, and the second product is Smart Slides. Smart Slides was a solution to create seamless slideshows with music, which is perfect for anyone in business. Essentially, the tools are made by photographers to solve photographer’s typical problems: designing an album and making a slideshow.
EC: What sets Pixellu apart from other album creating companies?
Daniel: From the very beginning, myself and my partners took a trip to a town in the mountains and prioritzed figuring out what Pixellu is and what we valued. We found the three things we value: 1. Reliability: Meaning no bugs or crashing. The second thing was as photographers, we are perfectionists and have a hunger for beauty. We wanted to albums to be beautiful. Lastly, is simplicity. We do not like complicated software that is complex to use. We want anyone to be able to use our program.
EC: What are some strategies that photographers can use to sell more albums and add to their income?
Daniel: I’ve been to workshops where photographers have given specific strategies, which I never found helpful. If you never say or show that you offer albums, clients won’t know you offer them. By starting to promote them to your clients, you will start to gain traction. Start to mention them to clients before they ever even book you. Once someone books you and is done using your services, it’s really difficult for clients to then purchase albums from you. It’s nice for clients to hear their options ahead of time before they ever even book you. Regardless of whether they purchase an album or not, create the design of the album nevertheless and let them decide whether or not they want to go through with it. As long as you keep it at 10-15 minutes of creating the draft, you have nothing to lose.
Ultimately, we hope that this gave you ideas to offer services outside of just photography! If you don’t already sell albums, start to buy some prints and albums for yourselves to see what the process is like and if it’s something you’d like to offer.
