Yup – I jumped on the Groupon bandwagon. Sort of.
Last September I ran an ad for a 1 hour session and 3 digital files for a ridiculously low price. I already had a headshot special for 1 hour and 2 files, so I based the price on that and then discounted it 50%. Mistake #1.
My already low prices, discounted even further did not give an excellent “perceived value.”
I had done oodles of study on photographers who had used Groupon and thought I did a good job of determining what was done right and wrong. I did. Sort of.
I learned that I needed to place a “cap” on sales or else I was going to wind up with thousands of deals purchased that there was no way in heck I had enough time to fufill. Or so I thought. I put the cap at 200 and did all kinds of wonderful math in my head at what I would do with the money from the 200 sales that I was sure to get.
When it was all said and done, I had 24 sales.
OK, I could deal with that. I only knew 1 of the purchasers, so that meant that 23 brand new clients would be walking through my door.
One of the main problems with my particular situation is that I am located 45 minutes south of the metro area I advertised in. Groupon did not have a metro area for my city…err….town…err..village.
So – if someone that far away was going to buy my deal, it meant that they were a bargain-hunter. They didn’t come to me because they had heard of me. In fact, only 3 of the session-buyers actually looked at my website prior to making their purchase.
All of my dreams of upselling were dashed. Two clients wound up purchasing a disc of selected shots. None of the rest opted into any of the upsells I offered,
Two of the client sessions resulted in competition-level prints for 2011. One made it into the PPA Loan Collection and the other made it into the PPA Showcase Collection. OK, that’s some serious Wootness!™, but not enough to have made the venture worthwhile.
Several of the sessions were very nice, I had fun with ALL of them, but I did grab hold of a couple of doozies.
One session was for a young girl (under the age of 10). Her mother brought her in for modeling headshots and in the course of the session decided that she wanted me to do topless photographs, a la Annie Leibovitz. We had a serious discussion about the definition of child pornography. She was not a happy camper.
Another session was with a couple who was fun, but the wife would NOT take the gum out of her mouth. Of course, when they viewed the proofs, the husband jumped all over me about the white spot on his wife’s mouth in all of the photos and demanded the final files be retouched.
Several of the sessions were canceled, rescheduled, canceled, rescheduled… you get the picture.
All in all, it was a pain in the ass. I didn’t even bother adding up the hours I worked on those sessions and figuring out the net profit from them, because I knew I didn’t even break even and didn’t want yet another reason to kick myself over this mis-adventure.
The old saying is true – if it seems too good to be real – it probably is. The next time you think of some plan that is going to make money hand over fist – ask your BFF to slap that idea right out of your head. Or come to Ohio and I’ll do it for you.
NOTE: I hesitate to say “Don’t Use Groupon” because I know that there are some photographers out there who have made it work for them. I will say that my location had a LOT to do with why not many were sold and the caliber of most of the clients I did get. Tread carefully and do your homework.