Living Social thoughts?!?

[janikphoto]

What are your thoughts on Living Social? Who has put up an offer before? This one seems pretty extreme:

The Best Daily Deals in Austin - Photography Package for $55

I'm guessing she/he is not planning to make ANY money off the deal, and they're hoping to build referrals and future clients from it? I don't really do family portraits, but I might be able to offer a good headshot type of deal on there?!?

[jeffro20]

Make money by upgrading the customer to more sales once the session is complete....at least they hope so.

If the upgrade doesn't happen, certainly makes some for some good advertising and planting seeds for future needs by customer.

[brad]

I think that its another form of craigslist photography.

Usually the photographer deals I see are something like "2 hours, on location, 20 images delivered on CD for $69" and they get 100 or more purchases... on the surface, that sounds like a cool $6900 in your pocket but Living Social takes 40% of that (yes, I've talked to them - that number is accurate) so now you're down to $4140. Figure if you're JUST doing a shoot and burn (no photoshop), that's a minimum of 3 hours per purchaser or $13.80 an hour... on top of that, you probably aren't going to shoot more than 2 of those a day - so it will take you 50 days to fulfill all those purchases. Even if you worked (and could schedule all those people) every day, 7 days a week until you are done, you are looking at a month and a half of work.

For that month and a half of work, unable to make the time to do much of anything else, you will make $4140... that's barely above poverty level.

And if the idea is that you are going to convert those people into future clients - remember that these customers came to you because they got a deal - not because they liked your work or style. They see photography as something they can get cheap - they were shopping on price, so the next time they want photography, they are going to do the same thing... shop on price... I'd be surprised if you were able to convert 10% of those people into regular clients.

Now .. its up to you, is that the market you want to chase? If so, then Living Social is for you... and probably so is Craigslist, Groupon, or any number of places where you can offer deep discounts in an effort to gain customers.

[janikphoto]

Well, I was skeptical when my wife pointed this out to me, but I do see some potential here (for certain businesses). I think it would work best for a photo mill sort of studio, like a Kmart portraits type of place. They don't make anything on the front end, but upsell the customer on the back end, as Jeff pointed out. 40% is a pretty steep piece of the pie... I wonder if anyone here has actually done a LS sale and has info to offer on the entire process, beginning to end?

[dmbusch09]

I think it depends on what stage you are at in your business...I did a Seize The Deal, my price point was $100...Seize the Deal took 50%. I sold 19 and have so far shot 11 of them. I made an additional sale (between $100 and $300) on 4 of them. One client referred 3 of her friends after our session and they purchased full sessions. I have had 3 additional people say that they loved me and how I treated their children and will use me for future photo sessions. 1 person has already booked another session.

I have been incredibly busy the last 2 months balancing this work with my normal clients, but I have also gotten to photograph a lot more and have found that my photography is improving drastically.

I have been contacted by another deal site to do another one and I am on the fence. On one hand I didn't really make that much money, but on the other hand I got a lot of experience. I offered a CD with mine, I don't know if I could offer prints. Although the editing of a CD is costly as far as time goes I didn't have to pay anything out of pocket.

People are going to definitely have their own opinions on this, but I think you have to do what works best for you.

[Tom]

I think you can make it work, but not when you are giving away images on disc.

If I did it, I would give one or two prints, all shoots have to be at my studio and limit them to ~45min sessions.

[ChristopherCoy]

Originally Posted by Thomas Campbell

I think you can make it work, but not when you are giving away images on disc.

If I did it, I would give one or two prints, all shoots have to be at my studio and limit them to ~45min sessions.

I definitely wouldn't give away a cd of images, but a few 8x10's wouldn't be bad. They wouldn't be mounted as they would be at normal prices though.

I could see this working for my dog photography, because dogs dont require much editing if any at all, especially when they are on a seamless background. I dont have to skin smooth, and if I have to remove blemishes its usually as simple as a stray hair or something.

I would NEVER offer this for people photos though just based on the sheer amount of editing involved.

[brad]

Originally Posted by Thomas Campbell

I think you can make it work, but not when you are giving away images on disc.

If I did it, I would give one or two prints, all shoots have to be at my studio and limit them to ~45min sessions.

When I talked to Living Social on the phone about possibly doing this, they weren't interested. They wanted me to do deals like "other photographers" had done - giving away 20 or so images on a CD for a sub-$75 price. I told them that I wasn't interested in that kind of client.