5. Never stop learning.

The moment you think you’ve come far enough and become stagnant, you WILL be left behind. Make sure that no matter how busy you get, you always make time to stay ahead of the curve. Amazing advances are happening in our industry right now, and there are new people getting into it all the time. One advantage new photographers have is plenty of time to be looking at the latest and greatest. Why? Because they don’t have a big backlog of work built up.

Set aside time to always continue educating yourself. Put it on your to-do list and calendar. Once that time is on the calendar, don’t push it back because other things come up. Innovating may not seem important at the time, but it will seem really important if you don’t do it. You’ll come to realize that things have advanced so far so fast that you don’t even know where to begin and will feel like giving up before you even start. Don’t let this happen to you!

What are some ways you can keep learning today? Assess your strengths and weaknesses and determine the areas you’d like to focus on. Then, take a look around to see what avenues you can use to improve. Workshops, conventions, forums, webinars, and educational blogs are a great place to start. Give yourself an allotted time every week whether it be 30 minutes or a few hours. Some tools are free and some you pay for; but something that is always free is practice! So you’re not good at shooting in harsh lighting conditions – grab a friend and practice in the harshest light you can find. Find a technique you’d like to implement on an educational blog and try it out. Search out threads on forums where people are talking about topics that are of interest to you. Engage, take initiative, and make things happen! There are many ways to stretch yourself and learn at your own pace, with the time you have at hand. The main thing is this: Get out there and do it.

So—what are you waiting for?

4. Consistency is key

Make sure you are striving to deliver a complete high quality body of work for each and every one of your clients; not just shooting for one or two “money shots.” Think about it from the bride’s perspective; chances are that your clients have looked through featured galleries on your website of your favorite work; maybe they’ve met you in person and seen a couple of albums that are the best ones you’ve put together. This is how they view you and your work and this is what they hired you for. They probably aren’t thinking about the 99% of your work that they haven’t seen, and how maybe that might not measure up to what you’ve featured.

What happens when you share the images with your clients from their wedding day, and there are one or two shots that match the quality of what you presented before they booked you, but everything else is lackluster by comparison; when it’s all just “the rest”? It’s like buying an album with one good song on it. You usually leave that transaction feeling like it was a waste of money, right? It’s disappointing.

Take a look at iTunes and how $0.99 for picking and choosing just your favorite songs has completely turned the industry on its head. What if every song was the quality of the singles? What if every photograph was meaningful? What if every photograph was great quality?

Delivering a huge variety of fantastic images is really going to set you apart and your clients will love you for it. Is this tip make-or-break? Probably not if you’re at a lower to mid range price point—assuming that you are delivering a body of work that’s technically sound, of course. So no, this isn’t a must—but just remember: These are tips on “How to be a Successful Wedding Photographer” not tips on “How to Be a Decent Wedding Photographer”

3. Network with other vendors

The truth is that ads no longer work like they used to. We’re inundated with them. For real success, you need to be building relationships. And the best part is, the more you help other people, the more they will help you.

I realize that everyone is saying “network” right now, and I feel like the word “networking” has got somewhat of a bad feeling attached to it. I think that one of the reasons for this is people are just going through the motions because someone told them to. Often times they don’t really care about making real connections or really helping someone, it’s just about passing out as many business cards as you possibly can. Have you been to a corporate sponsored “networking event” where someone rushes up to you and says “Hi, my name is John, here’s my card, will you refer me?Thanks!” and then they immediately move on to the next person without another word? I intentionally left no space between the question and “Thanks!” because they didn’t even leave a second for you to even respond to them.

When I say “networking,” I’m not referring to the cold, lifeless cousin of speed dating that I just mentioned. I’m talking about real relationships. Have you had success in your business? Can you help another vendor who is struggling? Can you make some time to get together with other vendors and just go do something non work related? How many of you have essentially become your business? It might be a huge help to you to just go out and have some fun, and at the same time it could be a big gift to another vendor in your same situation who just needs someone to show up and make it happen for them.

What do you do with all of those extra leads that come in for days that you’re booked? Leads that are outside of your travel area? Leads that are outside of your beginning pricing? Make a strong recommendation that they check out your friends. It’s one thing to just send an email that says “we’re booked, good luck calling XYZ photography.” What if you actually talked to the potential clients to find out what drew them to your style? What if you found out some more details about their wedding—where is it? What sort of budget are they working with? Tell them you’ll make some calls and find someone who’s available for them, rather than sending them on the never-ending vendor search.

We’ve had people we’ve gone the extra mile in making personal recommendations for, and they were so thankful for the extra time we spent with them, that they referred their friends to us later, even though they didn’t hire us. This does take some extra time, but it’s more than worth it. We’ve also been developing the world’s first intelligent networking tool for wedding professionals that is designed to do exactly this, but it removes the legwork. I’m not going to go into details on that right now, but we’ve been beta testing for a few months now, and it’s been nothing short of fantastic!

I have ridiculous amounts of ideas on the specifics of how to go about networking with people, and I will be sharing those—this topic could go on forever. In the meantime, to get you started, just keep in mind the foundation: that it’s about real relationships, and really helping people out. “Go out to lunch” with other vendors is a great start that I hear all the time; but don’t expect that because you ate a sandwich with a wedding planner that they are going to magically start sending you a mountain of referrals.  Invest time and effort into people, and they will invest time and effort into you.