It’s hard to part with the money needed to launch a marketing campaign, especially when you are just starting out or business is slow.  When I’m sweating the expense I look at the total cost of the campaign and compare that with how many average sized jobs I need in order to break even.  This puts my output and input into perspective.

Jenna Close tries to break everything down into manageable bits.  You can find her examining the pieces at www.p2photography.net.

How often have you been pulled away from an important task to read an unimportant email that just dropped in your Inbox?  Messages that don’t contain a hot new project from a client or a valuable piece of information?

Studies show that switching between tasks requires an extra fifteen minutes  (above and beyond the time you take to read the e-mails) to restore full concentration. So, checking these messages every ten minutes means you could spend your entire day not giving the important tasks the attention they deserve.

I’ve set up a series of rules to route incoming emails. Anything with the words Facebook, Twitter or unsubscribe is automatically routed to a separate folder and marked “unread.” Once a day I read, and respond to, these messages. This keeps my inbox reserved for messages from real people like you.

To our readers for making this work meaningful.  To our contributors for providing inspiration, information and wisdom.  To our vast and ever-changing profession for giving us good reasons to come together here and learn something new every day.  Thank you all.

We will take a short break for the Thanksgiving holiday and return on Monday, November 28th with a week of posts on Portfolio Development.

This year marks the tipping point of a major technical revolution. According to the Economist  there will be more tablets and smartphones sold worldwide than desktop and laptop computers.

How are you positioning your business to profit from this change in the way we access our news and entertainment and stay connected with friends and family?

These days Jay Kinghorn spends a lot of time juggling his iPad in one hand and his sleeping infant in the other.

My friend Kat has a large collection of images, paintings and postcards tacked above her office computer.  I like the fact that her workspace is a constantly changing collage of things that inspire her.  I also like that the collage is not on a computer.  I know that the very process of collecting these items is beneficial, now that I’m starting something similar at my place.

Jenna Close collects books, passport stamps and DVDs of TV shows with good acting (this is harder than it sounds).  You can find her at www.p2photography.net.

Email is a valuable tool I rely on every day to conduct my business, coordinate with clients and correspond with friends and family. As a result, I’ve become very careful about what I permit to enter my inbox and what can pull my attention away from other, more pressing (and more interesting) things.

To help keep my inbox clean, I unsubscribe to every e-newsletter I haven’t personally subscribed to. This simple act helps keep me on task and my mind focused on moving my business forward.

Jay Kinghorn will be exercising his time-management skills to complete a series of marketing projects before the end of the year.

Make photo copies of your license, passport and credit cards and leave in each of your travel bags. You don’t want to end up stranded if your wallet goes missing.

Kevin Lock is a current national director of ASMP. While Kevin does not get stranded he has been to change direction in mid trip so he hardly ever checks his luggage.   

After Steve Jobs died I read over and over how he brought something extra to every product because Apple is a company of creatives as much as engineers.

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them”, he told Business Week in 1997.

Jobs didn’t sell products the way most companies do – by giving customers what they expect.  Apple’s customers don’t always know what to expect, and that becomes part of the act of selling; their customers are active buyers, anticipating that they will love whatever it is they get – maybe even before they know what it is.

The takeaway?  Give customers something they don’t even know they want and they’ll hire you again.

Barry Schwartz is a photographer, writer, and designer in Los Angeles who wants (nearly) everyone who’s hired him to do it again. www.barryschwartzphotography.com

Recently my partner and I headed out to a job very similar to many we are hired to shoot.  Mere hours into the trip the new marketing director called in a panic because he had just found out we needed safety gear to be onsite.  ‘No problem’, we said, ‘our goggles, safety vests, steel-toed boots and hard hats are already with us’.

If you routinely shoot a certain type of job, invest in the non-camera gear you will need.  It increases your value and makes you look like a pro.

When not advancing the world of haute couture safetywear, Jenna can be found at www.p2photography.net.

“There are no small decisions in moviemaking.”  – Sidney Lument , Director

(pg 112 MAKING MOVIES by SIDNEY LUMENT Vintage Books)

If you change “moviemaking” to photography, well you get the picture. This to me summarizes all my decisions from art, to craft to commerce. Every action has a consequence, or a purpose or a reason. Whether in the frame, in the concept, in the production or in the budget. If not, get rid of it, move it out of the way, or hit delete.

I live by this quote everyday.

Richard Kelly is a photographer and immediate past president of ASMP.