Angela Pointon is an inspirationalist and advocate for professional photographers. She is a monthly columnist for Professional Photographer mag and offers Photo Business Renovations to photographers everywhere. Her brief e-book, “The Art Of A Photo Business: what every photographer wished they knew before starting their photography business” is available for download in all digital formats. Follow Angela on Twitter or Facebook.

DesignAglow recently posted a question to the photography community on Facebook:

“What is something you still want to learn how to do?”

The overwhelming majority of responders who said “how to juggle life and a photo business” snuffed out the occasional “learn Photoshop techniques” or “how to pose newborns”.

I firmly believe that if you're talking about struggling to juggle, there is something concretely wrong with your business. It might be something huge, or it might be something small. I suppose it all has to do with the severity of the needing-to-juggle feeling.

So I figured I'd put together a few tips. They're just plain old things that have helped me. Hopefully you'll find them extremely simple and adoptable.

1. Figure out your desired lifestyle, first.

I follow a ton of entrepreneurial business leaders, and I feel bad about not being able to credit the single person who gave me this advice early on.

Because the advice was awesome and impacted the decisions I make greatly.

What they said was, “figure out the lifestyle you want, first. Then build the business to match it.”

As I was personally contemplating my own business, I was ever so grateful to have had the advantage of learning this right from the beginning.

For me, my weekends were sacred. They were focused on family, and, since both my husband and I work, it's the only time that we can all be together. Work, therefore, is off limits on the weekend. I could not build a business that required working on the weekend, or it would break a fundamental lifestyle rule for us.

I also wanted one day per week where I could focus on something mandatory for my family or me. I have one day set aside for cleaning, organizing, doctor's appointments, or whatever else is required to keep life moving, in general. This day is reserved for these types of activities so I don't feel guilty for doing them when I “should” be working.

2. Crunch the numbers and build a budget.

Jumping into a business headfirst is awesome, and in some cases, really exciting. However, not knowing how much you need to make and how the business will impact your ability to juggle it all is a huge mistake.

As I started crunching numbers for my business, my first pass included a plan for only working two days per week. That first pass, however, proved to not make me enough money. I either had a pricing problem, a frequency of work problem, or both. I eventually struck a balance and figured out how much money I had to make per day I worked.

This exercise greatly assisted me in a few ways:

a) I could see (quickly) how pricing myself too low was going to kill me. I was just going to have to work too much to make what I needed to make.

b) I could play around with working 2 days vs. 3 days vs. 4 days per week, and see what lifestyle sacrifices would gain me, financially.

c) I knew exactly why I couldn't make less than my final scenario illustrated. It made turning down business that was priced at a lower rate way easier.

3. Plan to occasionally turn it all off.

I highly value driving, reading, shooting and watching videos. More times than not, when I allow myself pockets of time to do these things, grand business ideas or ideas for books I can write myself, come to be.

Without pre-planning time to think, shoot for no reason, read or just plain think, I'd never get to do those things and my business would ultimately suffer from a lack of creativity.

There is a misnomer that if you're so busy juggling, you have no time for time off.

Wrong.

Constantly juggling is going to get you nowhere. Taking time off (albeit carefully planned time off) can take you to amazing places with your business.

4. Know what works, what doesn't, and continuously refine.

Nothing is more meaningless and wasteful than doing things that have little impact on the greater good of your business. Whether it's pushing a service that isn't profitable, a marketing exercise with a low return, or being a member of a group you don't gain anything from.

If there is something in your business that isn't getting you to your goals, stop it or change it. Quickly.

Don't be shy or scared to hurt someone's feelings, either. If it isn't working, be upfront and take the time to explain why. As fellow business people, we should all be able to understand this.

5. Let go and know what to outsource.

You cannot do it all.

Yes, we're all perfectionists. Yes, no one edits like we do. Yes, no one handles client calls like we do.

But it's possible to train people, and you might be surprised. If you pick the right person to outsource to or take the time to hire the right person, they might actually do it better.

What things have you found or done in your business to help you juggle it all?

It's almost April and taxes are due. Trust me, I am feeling your pain. Well, almost. This year, for my new portrait business, I chose to work with a bookkeeper and an account. You see, numbers and I are like oil and water. We rarely mix, so outsourcing something I didn't like to do simply made sense.

While I fought with myself and said I could take care of tracking my mileage, reconciling my books and itemizing my receipts, letting go really felt liberating. I could now return my focus back on making images.

But if you are just starting out, or you have attempted to keep your own accounting straight and you are disciplined, I have something for you that might quickly ease your frustration.

Most of us have to keep accounts somehow. Some resort to Excel spreadsheets and some use online or offline software programs. If the word: “QuickBooks” makes you shudder in fear, consider QuickBooks For Photographers, a series of step-by-step video tutorials that will walk you through the program, setting you up and bringing you peace of mind.

Jenny and Josh Solar are the brains behind this and the other programs I am going to tell you about today. Not only were they super helpful through the video series, they also resolved the questions I had after I had watched the program. The reason I am recommending this and their other programs is because they are well organized and useful from the get go. While I had off-loaded my QuickBooks work to my bookkeeper, I still went back to my desktop program to see if I could follow along and set things up as I was instructed. It was super easy and the fact that I could see the results right away made it all the more useful to me.

QuickBooks For Photographers is available for both Macintosh and Windows users. So, rest easy people!

Mastering Tax Time E-Book for Photographers is also something I would recommend to you, so that you can be prepared for next year's taxes. Right now Mastering Tax Time E-Book for Photographers is on sale for $19.00, saving you $10 right off the bat. If you are a pack-rat like me, hoarding receipts for years (but not being able to track them), you will get much relief in hearing how the Solars keep track of everything and can easily find all those pesky bits of paper when you absolutely must (that is, during tax time).

“This guide is designed to help you get organized and stay organized with all things tax related. It covers everything from bookkeeping to mileage, home office deductions to equipment lists and more!”

Lastly, there would be no numbers to plug in if you didn't have any sales, right? Well, you may have a ton of expenses, but it's always nice to run a business in the black, not red.

The Solars have a product called In-Person Sales. If you have been posting your images to an online gallery and haven't seen an uptick in sales, this 29-page guide book is for you. Given Jenny and Josh's long experience as wedding and family portrait photographers, I trust what they have to teach me about this topic. In fact, In-Person Sales is one of the books I am consulting right now as I structure my portrait business in Connecticut.

Here's the deal: If you Solar power your business and buy all three products mentioned above, I'll give three (3) of you 1/2 hour of my time ($150 value each) via a Skype video call. We can talk about your business. We can talk about specific photography issues you are encountering. We can talk about how you are using social media. I am not promising you that I know everything, so if you stump me, I'll either figure it out and let you know or will direct you to someone who does. So, come back here and tell me you bought QuickBooks For Photographers, Mastering Tax Time and In-Person Sales. I'll confirm with the Solars and then I'll pick three names out of the hat. Deal?

My photography business is Solar powered. Is yours?

Travis North is a Landscape Architect and freelance fine art Photographer out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with over eighteen years of experience. He is the founder and editor of Shutter Photo Magazine, which has been a source of photography inspiration and wisdom since 2008. Follow him on Twitter.

Photography as a medium can be described a great number of ways. It’s a creative release, inspiring and emotional. For many, it’s a source of income or a private business where you are your own boss. And Photography is expensive. It doesn’t matter how you cut it down, by the time you add up the cost of all your equipment – and let’s not forget the accessories right down to the camera strap – the bill would make your accountant cringe. Now it’s one thing if you’re been lucky enough to make a substantial income from your art. But every photographer I know (even the most successful) is always talking about the next product they’re thinking about buying. If money wasn’t the object, there would not be “thinking”, you would already have that new $1,400 USD lens. So in this article I’d like to focus on a very businessman’s term: ROI, or Return On Investment. Worry not, we’re not going to talk strict numbers – we’re going to talk gear. We’ll talk about where you get the biggest returns and what gear is ultimately important. But most of all, we’re going to talk about where you can cut corners for the sake of ROI.

Focusing on the Deliverable

When it comes down to determining the value of something, you ultimately need to focus on what is expected in the end: What is the deliverable? If you are working as a fashion photographer and your works are expected to be posted on billboards throughout the urban landscape, then you might have a case for buying yourself a high-end medium format camera. But if photography is more of a hobby and your supplemental income is in the form of post card sales, that would be the opposite end of the spectrum. Now I’m not trying to simplify the context too much, but the end product ultimately drives what type of equipment you have and use. It’s a simple philosophy, really: Use only the tools that you need to use.

There’s an interesting story about the space race back in the 1960’s. The problem was that a traditional ink pen does not write in zero gravity, and so NASA allegedly spent thousands, if not millions, of dollars researching and developing a pen that can write in zero gravity. In contrast, the Russians used a pencil. Now the story may not be true, but it makes the point: The simplest tool that does the job is the one you ultimately should use. On a personal note, I use a Nikon D80. It is not the best camera on the market. And to be fair, it’s not the best camera that I could be using for the type of photos that I create. But photography is not my primary income and so I have to weigh the ROI vs. my gear lust, and I couldn’t justify spending the money on the camera I really wanted. Instead, I took the money I saved and funneled it into gear that gave me the better ROI; like better flashes, better tripods and better lenses. Of course as my income from photography increases – or if my photography business moves in a direction that warrants it – then I may revisit the camera body upgrade down the line. But my current deliverable demands do not require such an upgrade at this time.

Planning for Upgrades

The hopes are, of course, that your work and your scope will evolve. Your client base will grow larger, your income from photography – be it primary or secondary – would increase and then you will be able to revisit the ROI considerations again a year from now or two years from now. Ultimately, the hope is that you will be looking to upgrade your photography equipment down the line. You’ll need an upgrade plan. You probably have some idea of where you would like to go with your photography, and you should create your upgrade plan to compliment your photography goals. You can expect that the plan will change as you evolve or as new products come to market. But every upgrade, every accessory, needs to be thought of in advanced. I have three simple rules when considering gear upgrades:

1) Avoid proprietary features that would channelize my upgrade path.

2) Quality is worth extra cost, but it must be justifiable.

3) I must have immediate and continued use for the product.

These three rules apply to every product I consider, from the camera body all the way to my camera bag.

The first rule is the most abstract, so let's speak on that briefly. Basically, I don't want to be locked into any single proprietary format, nor do I want to limit my options down the line. The exception is camera systems because that's unavoidable. There’s a very strong reason why I most often recommend Canon or Nikon products: Between the two companies, they control more than 70% of the market. Both manufacturers make great products, and they tend to be neck-and-neck in terms of advancement. In short, you couldn’t go wrong with either brand. But the real reason I suggest those brands more than any other is the simple fact that every other photography-related company on the planet wants to tap into Canon and Nikon’s market. That means that you can find compatible products – from remote triggers to lenses – for either brand. Not only does that yield a massive amount of options, but when companies compete, you and your ROI win.

So let's talk about where you get the biggest bang for the buck. The answer could be different for each photographer. A photographer specializing in landscape photography may want to look at a more premium, full-frame camera to take advantage of wide-angle lenses. Sports photographers are going to want to spend their money on lenses. Macro photographers may be interested in bellows systems or extension tubes. Personally, I shoot a lot of ruins and work indoors very often. While I would love to have a camera body with better high-ISO support, the reality is that the best investment for me happened to be off-camera flashes and accessories. Your case will be unique to your own style of photography. So you'll need to evaluate and weight your options to determine where's the best place to spend your money.

Quality vs. Cost: Taking Advantage Of Small Margins To Save Costs

The most innovative and best products are not always from one of the big brands. And even if they are, the cost difference is in many cases beyond the point of diminishing returns. In other words: If the quality differences between two products is not discernible without the use of a testing lab, go for the more economically priced product. Because the truth of the matter is that if you can’t tell the difference, your client certainly won’t be able to either. To illustrate my point, let's talk about lenses.

It’s at this point that I would like to remind everyone that Ansel Adams was working with lens technology far inferior to whatever you’re using right now. With the advancements in lens technology over the past twenty years, the quality comparisons have gotten so tight that the margins aren’t even measurable without adding extra decimal places. We fixate on these tiny details and make exaggerated claims that one lens’s sharpness is “far superior” to another when in truth, we’re arguing about a 0.1% difference. Is it really worth it? No. And it certainly isn’t worth the cost difference.

Twenty years ago, when Canon and Nikon were the clear front-runners in the lens market, third party lenses weren’t a consideration to pros. Third party lenses were a consumer product. They weren’t built as well and the image quality wasn’t strong. But they were significantly cheaper. Pros could justify the cost, but a consumer could not. Fast forward to 2013. In my opinion, some of the strongest innovation comes from the third party lens manufacturers, and their still carry a significantly more economical price tag. My favorite comparison is the Sigma 24-70mm F/2.8 vs the Nikon or Canon version. On paper, they are all essentially the same lens. All have great image quality, all yield the same amount of distortion at the wide end and all are built very well. The images created with either lens are interchangeable. The quality differences between them is immeasurable outside of the lab. The primary difference between these two lenses is not image quality, it’s price. The Nikon (about $1,700 USD) and the Canon (about $1900 USD) are each more than twice the cost of the Sigma (about $825 USD). And so I ask, is the Nikon or the Canon worth the extra cost? The cost difference is simply beyond the point of diminishing returns. Is that fraction of a percent in image quality worth twice the cost? I would say no. Not even for the full-time professional.

And the discussion could go into any topic, from remote triggers (Pocket Wizards vs. Radio Popper) to Tripods (Gitzo vs. Manfrotto – they’re even under the same parent company) or hot-shoe flashes (Nikon vs. Nissin or better yet, Nikon SB-950 vs. a used Nikon SB-60). But if you can keep that point of diminishing returns in focus, and if you can clearly keep an eye on how tight the quality margin is between two products, you have an advantage. You don’t need to buy the Nikon 24-70mm or a Gitzo tripod when the Sigma and Manfrotto versions will serve you just as well at half the cost. Simply knowing about what options are out – and knowing that the ROI is going to be much greater – could really change your gear upgrade plan a great deal. Heck, you may even be inclined to start with a different camera body from the start.

Final Thoughts

Of course the purpose of this article is not to take business away from the giants, nor do I intend to promote specific third-party brands. My hope is that this article got you thinking about justifying your equipment purchases. I would encourage you consider my three rules every time you contemplate product purchases. Ultimately, what I really want for you is to have a better return on your investment. And that starts with buying smarter. So continue to analyze your options beyond a reasonable doubt because, let’s face it, we’re all gear nerds. We find joy in reviewing such data. But keep the quality differences in perspective with your ROI and buy the product that makes the most sense for your needs and budget. Good purchasing habits will only help you and your business.

Look, I get it. Timing is everything. But what trumps that is planning and doing.

In 2001, I saw the editorial market fade. I started photographing weddings as only a real photojournalist would, which is to say I had no freakin' clue how much to charge clients, what to offer them, how to follow up with vendors and lastly how to grow my business. I got into this spin cycle that involved creating some amazing images but not sharing them with my clients in a timely manner and then signing on new clients and on and on. The excuses simply piled up and I found myself not really enjoying the process any more. All that to say a little bit of planning and strategizing back then would have helped me a great deal.

Now, I bet a lot of you are looking at the new year as a new point in life, perhaps your square one (which in itself is kind of refreshing if you think about it), to start your photography business. I know I am with my new venture, Amata Pictures.

So, I am starting with a business plan. While Todd & Jaime Reichman have helped me define my WHY, I'm working with Eric O'Connor of Agile Photog to come up with systems and processes. Having mentors like them goes a long way.

But if you are starting out or been a photographer for a couple of years, you need a road map or else you will do what I did initially and get totally lost. Just make sure the plan is flexible and scalable. That's important too, in my opinion. Don't believe for one second that a plan is etched in stone and that once you write it out, you have to stick to it. Quite contrary, you should be able to try things, test them out and spit them out if they don't work for you. There are ways of doing that without wasting time or your other resource, time. At the end of the day, your business plan should speak to you and whom you plan on serving, what Todd Reichman defines as your “rightest” clients.

I am an unabashed fan of the folks at PhotoShelter. They actively publish guides that help to elevate the photography industry. I was honored to attend their Luminance conference last year. For 2013, PhotoShelter has just published a new guide called The 2013 Photo Business Plan. It costs nothing and you do not have to sign up for their services. All they do require is your email information so that they can send you the guide.

Lots of good information in there including tips to:

– Market your photo business with Facebook
– Attract readers to your blog
– Improve SEO traffic
– Get more work from old clients
– Create a lasting photo brand
– Manage your finances and get smart with taxes

So, go here to get your 2013 Photo Business Plan workbook. It could just be your road map to success.