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Integrating IRIS to Your Business

Lesson 9 from: Lifestyle Newborn Photography - In the Home

Emily Lucarz

Integrating IRIS to Your Business

Lesson 9 from: Lifestyle Newborn Photography - In the Home

Emily Lucarz

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Lesson Info

9. Integrating IRIS to Your Business

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction

06:18
2

What is Lifestyle Newborn Photography?

09:47
3

Why Are You a Photographer?

04:20
4

Why Shoot Lifestyle Photography?

07:32
5

Integrating Lifestyle Photography into Newborn Sessions

05:24
6

Strategies to Gain Lifestyle Clients

18:07
7

Utilizing Your Website to Book the Right Clients

23:13
8

Booking and Prepping Your Client in IRIS

14:58

Lesson Info

Integrating IRIS to Your Business

Here's what Iris looks like, we kinda set up a fake, like a pretend account, you know? So I could show you the back end of Iris, okay? Here's your dashboard, when you go to clients, I wanna show you, Emily Lucarz Pretend Shoot, okay? So this is the pretend shoot that's up and coming on February 18th, but I wanna go ahead and show you, I'm just gonna go ahead and pull this up. Clients, I think Kenny put her in as, Kenny made a fake thing, okay, Jennifer Smith. Luck Jennifer Smith, okay. This is what's gonna happen. When they fill out the client questionnaire, okay, all of this is gonna be filled out, the children, the spouse, the phone number, it's gonna show you all of their upcoming sessions if you've had past sessions with them, notes, now, where I, what I do in the notes section, you can put your own notes in here, is please do not put on social media, because I naturally just start doing sneak peeks all the time, and I'm always asking myself, gosh, I wonder if they were one of the ...

ones that the contract got changed. So, if you have a client that needs to not be on social media, you need to put it somewhere, 'cause what's gonna happen if you accidentally post 'em on social media? Big bad trouble, okay? And we forget, it's natural to forget, so I put that in the notes right there, okay? So we're gonna go to the activity. Here's what's happening, recent activity, email sent, time of booking, okay? It was sent to the client. Newborn lifestyle information form was filled out by the client, okay? So we're gonna go ahead and pull that out, this is the questionnaire, okay? Here are some questions that I have. Hello, sibling ages, what are you hoping to get out of the session? Any specific shots et cetera? What are your favorite types of photos you've seen in my lifestyle sessions? Any you don't love? Do you have pets? And if so, do you wish to include them? Where do you plan on hanging, that kind of stuff. How'd you find me? Okay, whatever you wanna put in your questionnaire, you need to have in here, okay? Just anything you, any question you have. You can tweak this as you go, okay. So invoices, you can go to, and I just wanna show you some of these things. New invoice, okay, we can select a client, let's just put me, let's say due date is, here. These are so easy, okay, this is what the invoice looks like, you can add tax on here, add row, okay, family session fee. This holds your family session, it's a description, you'll see this. Quantity one, so let's just say it's $150. Is that taxable? No, session fees are not taxable in Missouri. You hit save, okay, you can add discounts on here. And you hit send, the minute they pay it, you go to invoices and it says paid. You go to their little portal and you go to activity, you see invoices, it says paid, so you know the session fees been paid. Okay? Just to clarify on that, this is for Scott Himes, So can people pay their invoice through Iris? Yes. Do they, so they get an email and then they can actually Go to Iris This invoice at This invoice actually goes to your clients email address and they can click PayPal, Stripe, no they can-- they pay PayPal or credit card, but you can use Stripe or Square, whichever one you're using, or PayPal, and then it automatically gets paid, oh it's huge. And then, that gets sent to QuickBooks. Which is like, even better! So, it's a game changer. Now that they were ShootProof too, I'm like, 'cause Meredith when she first started Iris, she has a whole gallery section in here, and I'm like, Meredith, I can't use the gallery, it's 'cause I'm kinda in love with ShootProof, but I can't leave 'em for my galleries. And so what did Meredith do? Called ShootProof. She's amazing, you guys. And so now they're integrated with ShootProof, 'cause so many people loved ShootProof, so now they're integrated so like, you know, that's the good thing about some of these companies that are a little bit smaller, is they listen, you know, so if you do start with Iris, you know, you get a free trial for a month I think she does, ask her if you're wanting to see somethings done, 'cause she will definitely try, okay? Like I said, Iris, we went into a lot more detail on the other class, and if you wanna see more information, it's in the family class, okay? Just a couple more questions on Iris. Yeah! If, before we do that. So, Daniella Harlington, is Iris connected to your website? Or do you use it separately? No, Iris is not connected to my website. You can connect it to your website though, there's an actual link that you can, it's like the back end code, you can put into the contact me section, and I'll show you that. So, if you go to clients, new lead, when you get an email, it will go to your new lead section, and it automatically populates in there as well. We just already have our flow down with Kenny doing the emails, so we just have it all sent to our email, just 'cause that's what we're used to, but you can integrate it to the contact me tab to send everything automatically over to Iris. The problem for me, is I have so many photographers emailing me wanting to know when my workshops are coming up and I don't want all of the photographers in here. But if you're not somebody that has a lot of photographers emailing them, it's a really good thing to put in here, for your clients, okay? Question from Daniel Ray, do you have to already have a website set up to use Iris? No. 'Cause it's a separate-- Totally separate, it's just studio management. Emails and all that fun stuff. Studio management program. I thought of this question when you were going through the survey, and I don't know if you're gonna cover it later, or if this is a good time, but I do surveys, I'm analog on everything 'cause I don't spend a lot of time on my computer and I should, but I have a real problem getting parents to fill out information on surveys such as the names of all of your other children, their ages, I ask for birthdays and anniversaries, because I wanna send cards. And no one ever gives me that information. Or they say, why do you want that? And I'm like, 'cause I wanna send you a birthday card or an anniversary card, and then it gets awkward. I think it comes back to the anniversary might be, people might wanna know why you want that, I mean it's not like you're asking for their social security number, but it comes back to attracting the clients that you become close with, right? So I don't get that, and I think it's because, all of my clients are excited and happy and that's just what I've attracted. So I think when you start getting the right clients, you're not gonna see that as much. And I think if you prepare them and let them know, so within the first email that Kenny sends out, he has in there, just so you know, at the bottom of this is a questionnaire, and it says, and this is in the email thing that is included, so at the bottom it says, you will be getting a questionnaire, this questionnaire will put you into our system, and it will get us to know all about you. And because we're gonna get to know about you, we're gonna have better session. And that's all in that first email. So I think you have to think about everything as coming back to explaining why you're doing something before you do it, and I think that will help. 'Cause so at the bottom of that email, like I said, just again, the questionnaire will put you into our system, it'll also let us know what you're looking for in a session and how we can best, you know, work with you. So I think that might help. And just once again, for people who aren't familiar with ShootProof, can you explain just a little bit more about what that is and how it integrates into the system of your business. So ShootProof is an actual, it holds galleries, it holds client galleries, right? We all need to load our client galleries somewhere, after we take our pictures, so for them to view them. If you're doing in person sales, some people might not use this, they might just show them in person or you can load them to ShootProof and show them in ShootProof in person. I personally like to let my client see their images at home, in a comfortable environment, just 'cause that's just me. First before they come in for their ordering session. So you load the galleries on ShootProof, and you send the gallery to the client, and they can view their photos, they can favor their photos, and this is huge because a lot of my mini session clients I'll say I'll edit 30 photos, but included are 10, so they can favor their 10, and then I can go in there and I can see what they've favored and after they've paid their invoice, I can say, click, to send to client, and Shoot Proof automatically sends a zip file of their favorite 10. And that's been a game changer is being able to send their favorites, right? 'Cause how many times are we sitting there trying to like put their favorites into a file, they don't have to do that, they favor it in ShootProof, we click send, and it sends the zip file. So it's huge for mini sessions, or any session actually. Whatever you're doing with favorites, right? Some people might be waiting for their flash drive in the mail, I send flash drives. But while those flash drives are being processed, if they want me to send their files as a high res through ShootProof, you can do that. Okay, so you can send all of them high re-- all of your images high res through ShootProof. And then also within ShootProof there's an ordering system. They can order their own prints if they would like to do that. If you wanna put that out of your hands, that's what I used to do when I first started, I didn't do any ordering sessions, they ordered everything there. And then it also, you can create an app with favorites. So they can favorite 40, and you hit create app, it sends in this little link, downloads it onto their phone, and they can share that with friends. And that's instant advertising for you guys, okay? And then ShootProof will now be linked, so when somebody signs up through Iris, if you're linked with ShootProof, all the details are gonna be coming soon, they just let me know that they just integrated, this was like, it just happened. It will be in their, let me show you. In their galleries, it'll be linked down here. So down here, galleries, and then, you'll have a shoot, see right here? ShootProof galleries? You'll be able to click ShootProof galleries and get to their gallery through Iris. Okay, so everything's gonna be in one stop. The whole point of this is you wanna make your studio run efficiently, you wanna have all of your clients information in one place, right? You want things automatically sent, you want things automatically uploaded, the invoice thing is huge, you want things automatically recorded, so you're not gonna have to record things, you're not gonna, you're gonna know if they've paid. You know, there's due dates, and you can resend invoices at them like, hey, don't forget you owe me money, you know? Like that kinda thing. It's wonderful. So here's, this is under the sessions page now, we've moved over to the session page. Okay? In-studio newborn sessions, these are what I offer, okay? In-studio, I have a thing for bulldogs, if you guys don't know that. This dog's name is Apple. In-stdio newborn, and do you guys see what I chose to put on there? A non-posed image. 'Cause I want people to know, that we don't have to pose in the studio. There's so many people that will reach out for lifestyle sessions that just are nervous for me to come to their home for whatever reason, and I want people to know that we can also do naturalized stuff in the studio, okay? And I describe this, lifestyle newborn sessions, okay, lifestyle newborn sessions are the perfect way to capture your new baby in your home, in a relaxed way. This is a great way to get images in your new nursery with pets, et cetera, okay. We were asking about description, so people know what to expect. During this sessions we will capture your family in a way that you can look back on and remember how you really were. Okay, you're trying to grab at their heart right now, okay? Siblings do great in this situation as well, allowing us to capture authentic moments. No posing! We set us up for success right now, right? We don't want us showing up at the house, and they're like, where's your bean bag? No posing, either of the baby or family is done in-home. Just gentle and relaxed direction, okay? 'Cause when you say there's no posing, parents are like, but I don't know how to sit on the couch! I don't know what to do! So we say, we're directing them, okay? We're very descriptive. Which allows for natural connection, and interaction to occur. All family members are included. I put that on there because people are like, how many are included? I put everything in here that I've ever gotten a question about. Lifestyle sessions can be booked as your full newborn session or Emily offers them as add on lifestyle sessions to full studio sessions. Emily prefers newborn lifestyle sessions to occur two to four weeks after birth. How many times do you get emails, where it says, I think my baby's too old for a newborn shoot, they're three weeks old. And if you educate parents, if you educate your potential clients, all of those things will go away, okay? You won't get those questions any more, and parents will feel comfortable emailing you. I think a lot of new moms are scared to even email that far out thinking they've missed the boat. 'Cause everybody says you have to photograph a newborn baby by 12 days, you know? No you don't, they're still newborn, they're still little, right? Unlike pose sessions, a little bit of an older newborn is perfect for a lifestyle session, as they tend to have better ability to connect with eye contact past the two week mark, okay? If you have all of this on here, parents are gonna be comfortable and they're gonna be excited, okay? They're gonna have some time to kinda decompress after the birth, they're good, they're not rushed, okay? So within all of these sessions, we just have all of these in here, the different types of sessions that I offer, within each of these sessions we show how, you know, everything is very descriptive on the website, okay? Lifestyle photography sessions, we offer lifestyle newborn, lifestyle child, lifestyle family, okay? And it just says some information about each of those you guys can head over there and read the website later, I'm not gonna read all of this right now. Same thing with all of this. Okay, I wanted to come over here and show you, some of these other things on here. The more open you can be on your website, about as much information as you possibly can, the better off you're gonna be, okay? And I put on here what's lifestyle photography all about, when you look back at your parents albums, hold on. Just what is lifestyle photography all about. We're still in the sessions. When you look back at your parents albums, you know, the ones they kept of all of us when we were kids. They are those big flip albums with that clear sticky stuff holding the photos to acetone paper, okay? All the photos would yellow. They would all smell funny, but did you care? Of course you didn't! You saw Rainbow Bright and He-Man and remembered that time in your life. Do you guys see him describing lifestyle on here? You want people to relate to you, you want to relate to whatever you're putting on your website, okay? Did you see a photo of you snuggling your mom as a small child? Your mom looking at you as you looked at her, but no one is ever there to document it, right? I'm gonna cry, because I have so many times, where my kids are snuggling me, and I'm like, where's Kenny? (laughing) Right? And you want that, moms want that! Like, your babies love you right now, I get goosebumps, I'm gonna cry. Did you care that your face was not perfectly lit and perfectly smooth? Hello, we smooth everybody's skin, do we need to? No, okay? Do you see a photo of your dad tickling you in the bed, and remember that moment, as now your dad is older? And a grandfather, okay? That, is how you have to think about lifestyle photography. Real. And I have this on my website, okay? That is on the lifestyle page. So when Kenny is emailing somebody back, he says, hey, we do these lifestyle shoots, Emily kinda, you know, likes 'em, here's some information, it's kind of her thing. Check it out, okay? And he sends 'em here. Okay, and then it says what kind of lifestyle sessions you can have. Does anybody have any questions on my transparency on all of this? Yes, given that you do work in the studio and also do lifestyle sessions with mini add ons as well, how do you manage your time to shoot at both of those, since some clients will have a studio session and then later a lifestyle, and then have time to handle the editing afterwards? So what I do for that, the posed sessions, I only take six newborn studio shoots a month. And limit my pose studio sessions, because those are a big time commitment. Posing is time consuming, right? And they're not my favorite thing to do. I do them because there's some that I adore, and I love a good frog pose. Like, I know people think it's weird, but some of 'em I love, right? So and I wanna still do some of them. We are so flexible with time with lifestyle sessions, it kind of alleviates all of that pressure to get them in right away, and what we have found, by actually putting that on the website, that we have up to a month to do this, is we have so much flexibility with time. And it's been fine, because we do have that flexibility, you know, we're not trying to get them in in a certain window. So it's been fine. And I tend to shoot in the mornings and be done by lunch. So, it's kind of a good time. And most parents are off work. I do say, and Kenny does say in my email, Emily photographs newborns on Mondays through Thursdays, straight up right away, so they know, no weekends. I keep my weekends for my kids. So I never shoot families on the weekends unless, I have some clients that are, you know, in some jobs that have to be done, but I do one weekend a month. So we have one weekend set per month for the clients that absolutely have to have, you know, single moms, a lot of 'em will need weekends, those kind of things. So, and we always try to be a little bit flexible. Does that help? Yeah, thank you. Do you find that parents want the pose shots before you even finish the lifestyle session, like they want 'em for announcements, or things like that? Yes. Like do you, how do you handle that then? I edit them right away, and we'll have our ordering session and they'll tell me. So you'll have an ordering session for the pose and the-- And they agree that they're gonna be getting all the digitals from the other shoot too. Okay, so it's all So, it actually is Kind of a good selling to do it first, 'cause then you know they're gonna get all the images from the lifestyle shoot too. I've never had anybody not get the digitals, maybe like two in seven years, so. 'Cause we're story telling, right? Nobody wants to pick one or two. Okay, so that's the transparency of the session pages, okay? I just wanna show you how easy all of this is, okay? Do you guys notice how it's really easy to find everything on the website? And you know you'll go to some websites and they're like pretty graphics all over, and it's like how do I get below the graphic to get to the contact meat? And they're beautiful sites, it's just you need to be user friendly. This isn't fancy, right? But it's fun, and it's me. Here's my studio, this was taken before we had stuff in there. So see those things behind the wall, those are all full of thank you notes now, that's where all my thank you notes hang, those are old window frames. We were in Mosey Magazine, so we had to get these pictures to them quickly before we finished the studio. We're gonna be taking some new ones. So here it is, the studio of Emily Lucarz, welcome to our happy place. Feel like you know me still? Are you guys noticing my theme through this whole website? Okay, here's a peak into my amazing blah, blah, blah studio. We're located in Chesterfield, down in the valley. People know that, 'cause it flooded. It's not gonna flood anymore. My studio's where all the beautiful fun happens, I shoot everything from clean and classic to colorful and crazy, right here, in this all white incredible space. Okay, I want people to know that we have options, essentially. Very transparent. Kenny and I stand about 20 feet from each other while we work, it's a blessing to be able to have a business I love so much, and to be able to share it with the person I love so much. So right away, people realize, Kenny and I are standing next to each other, and we're still married, right? (laughing) But like I say it, in a happy way. So here's my shooting area again, we have more stuff in the studio now, scroll through, so I want you guys to kinda get this feeling of how my site is, scroll the through the photos to see all of the areas where I shoot, however, know that it's simple. I am not a prop person. I do not want people emailing me for sessions based upon props, I want them emailing me for sessions based around connection, okay? And I keep saying this theme throughout my website this is how you guys are gonna get the right clients, okay? When you plan, or when you visit my studio, plan on interacting with your loved one. If you're bringing your baby or child and having a simple session, plan on them being captured how they are, how they act. I do not force moments, rather capture you and your family as you are. So you can see how I'm integrating my lifestyle brain into the studio, okay? So a lot of the lifestyle images that you guys think are lifestyle images at home, they're not, they're in the studio. And we tell people this. We can still capture lifestyle imagery, so if you guys, even if you don't have a studio, you know, I know this applies of some and not to others, so I want to make sure I talk to both of you. No matter what you're doing, if you're talking about your studio, if you're talking about yourself, if you're talking about your children, if you're talking about how you're shooting, you need to phrase everything on how you want to be a photographer. And for me it's connection. I don't want to tell you guys what to write, 'cause this isn't gonna be the right thing for everybody. But this is why I book the clients that I do, okay? Because it's all very transparent on my page, okay? So let me keep going. My goal for these sessions is to capture moments you can look back on and remember how you were at that point in time. Snuggles, smiles, hugs, laughter, and tears, 'cause it happens, and we want them to be okay with it, captured beautifully, okay? Babies cry, toddlers cry, sometimes those are the favorite shots that we get. Moms with the, you know, snuggling their baby crying in the studio. And I take them. And they're like, why are you taking my picture? I'm like, just trust me, it'll be good. Okay. But do you see how I'm very transparent? Okay, wardrobe and prop closet. Okay, I was very hesitant to write prop closet. We went back and forth, so I added wardrobe, to make me feel better. But we do have a handful of props. You need to have some props to put a baby in, right? You can't just lay them on the floor all the time. And so I have you, this is what I put on here, I have you covered, I promise. Everything you can possibly need for your newborn or maternity session is in here. And this photo only shows half of my closet. Years of vendors, years of declaring my style with classic hats, wraps, headbands, blankets, et cetera. Like, no turtles allowed. Okay, that's kind of what I'm saying. Like, please don't bring big massive like ladybug outfits. Just not my thing! I love them in certain situations, it's just not my style, okay? And, when done correctly, they're gorgeous. Just not my style. So I gently put that in here, 'cause I get a lot of people saying, oh I got all these really cool outfits for our newborn, could we put 'em in the, thing, you know? I do not shoot with many props. I am not a photographer to turn your child into a turtle, a flower, et cetera. (laughing) I put it on there! Because, you know, it's kinda funny, right? I'm trying to stay light hearted. If you're looking for classic imagery, timeless photos, you're in good hands. Having a wardrobe filled with timeless items will guarantee your pho-- oh typo, your photos will stand the test of time. Okay? I keep talking about this test of time classic imagery stuff. Client lounge. Need a nap? You have a spot! This client lounge is in the back of the studio. And then I'm just still kinda fun with my client lounge. This isn't really applicable to what we're doing. But I wanted to show you the tone of my website, okay? So also, we have the mounted television with Netflix. What's a client lounge without Netflix, Mickey Mouse for the win, okay? 'Cause our kids, you know, the two year olds that lay back there during newborn sessions, so they have a place to stay. I know all of you guys don't have client lounges in studios. The whole theme of this, is come back to you. Come back to making your clients feel comfortable. Okay, that's the whole point of this. You don't wanna come across snobby or like, you know, you just wanna be approachable, okay? Coffee bar, new parents equals sleepy, okay? In the client lounge, Ken and Emily built an area that's full of coffee. Everybody's gonna ask, so I'm gonna say it now. Yes, that is an Organic Bloom Frame that we converted into a shelf. (laughing) 'Cause everybody's gonna ask later. My designer friend Kelly did that for me. Her husband made it, isn't that fun? Okay, and then we come down here, what do I have on there? Are you ready to book your session? Okay? Now that they've read that, they feel like they know me a little bit and they're like, I really wanna book a session. You don't want them to bounce off the page, right? They may go back over to Amazon and start shopping, okay? So, you want them to book right away, okay? Alright, so that's that. We went over the sessions, the blog, so my blog right now, it's still kind of in, join hundreds of photographers, which one are you? Photographer, non-photographer. We have a pop up actually that comes up, it's cookie based for photographer newsletter. You wanna get as many people in your newsletter as possible, because when you say, hey, guess what! We just had an amazing lifestyle session! These are so amazing to gift your wife for Mother's Day! How are you gonna get that point across? Newsletter. Okay, so if you have a newsletter, once social media platforms disappear, 'cause they might one day, right? You need to make sure you can still access people. So I do this a lot of times. We'll do lifestyle mommy sessions, like maybe baby sessions in their new room at home, okay? And you can ble-- This is a really good way to start building portfolio for lifestyle sessions, okay? As you are gonna be doing all of these newsletter blasts with fun ideas, okay. But you need to get people on your newsletter, so it needs to be on your website. Michael last night texted me, he goes, so your newsletter just went live and we already have people signing up. Like, people are on there looking for, and I had no clue that people were really looking for ways to sign up, 'cause I just never made it, you know, obvious enough. Okay, my favorite thing's Iris, Kelly Moore bag, ShootProof, you know. So this is the blog. So this is where I'm gonna be posting any of my shoots that I absolutely adore and wanna feature. What kind of shoots am I gonna be posting? Lifestyle. Lifestyle, lifestyle, okay? Are we good? Okay, alright, so those are what I'm gonna be posting in the blog. And then what I'm gonna be doing with these images? Or these sessions that I post on the blog, what am I gonna be doing with them? Sharing them, right? Share your blog posts. Within you blog post direct them back to your lifestyle page, keep the traffic on your website as long as you can, okay? So we're gonna keep that SEO going for you, okay? So these are ways for you guys to start incorporating lifestyle newborns on to your blog, take your blog posts, put them on to social media, have people share them, sponsor the ones you love, don't put up the images you don't like. You can still send 'em to your friends, but just don't blog them, okay? 'Cause we all have images that aren't the best, because it happens, right? We're not perfect. You're gonna have weird ambient lighting situations, it's gonna happen, okay? So that's that. I wanted to kinda show you the blog. Yes. Question about blogging. A lot of people get overwhelmed when thinking about having to regularly create content. How much for SEO purposes or otherwise do you need to write verses using images? Is there kind of a secret to that? So, funny you ask. We are all told to think that the more you blog, the more you write, the more you say, Saint Louis Studio Photographer, Saint Louis Family Photographer, Saint Louis Baby Photographer, it's gonna help. What happens is it actually goes against you, okay? You need to write like you're writing a friend, okay? Google needs to see your information on your blog and see that it's real and that you're not spamming them, with overusing the same content over and over and over again. Just pretend your not even talking about photography, okay? This is kind of a trick that happened. My Google was not doing well in Saint Louis. And it was weird, like I was blogging all the time, like I'm like, I'm featured in a lot of sites, I had a lot of back links going on, we had people talking and you know, I have a lot of followers and I have a lot of traffic, I was spamming my own site with information. And all Michael did, is he literally took my old site, he reorganized my drop down menus like this. I hadn't blogged in like six months, 'cause I knew our new site was coming up and I just, life happened. I shot up to number one. I didn't even touch my blog. All he did was reorganize the information in a way that Google was able to, you know, map. This is the thing, I'm not an SEO guru, but if you find somebody that is, it is well worth your investment, okay? 'Cause there's a lot of talk going on, of course you want people not to bounce off of your website, which means you want people to stay on your website and navigate and stay on a page long enough to read some content, right? That's important. You wan, and you want traffic. You don't want high bounce rates. But, you don't have to blog all the time if your website is laid out in a way that makes it easy for Google to crawl. Okay, that make sense? And I know I'm probably getting yelled at over there on the internet somewhere. This is just what's worked for me. (laughing) Okay? I'm not pretending to be an expert, but find somebody who is, it's well worth the investment. Okay? Great, and could you just talk to, a little bit about your newsletter for folks. Yeah. And what are the concepts that you do in there? What are the things you talk about? How long is it? Some kinda highlights. Okay. So I do not, this is very important, I do not spam you, a lot of you guys are probably on my newsletter. A lot of you 'cause I add people as names come in. A lot of you, a lot of people will unsubscribe from newsletters on a regular basis if they get sent them to frequently, right? So you need to be careful. There's two big newsletters that I have. The one newsletter, and this is the most important newsletter, this is the newsletter that you guys all wanna have, is a newsletter of local potential or current clients, okay? So you wanna make sure that when anybody inquires, you ask 'em permission, okay? You have to ask permission. Ask them, hey, would you mind if I added you to my website? Because sometimes I have specials and I let my newsletter people know first, because they fill up. So this way you guys can get a seat before they're gone, right? So I put anybody who inquires on there and then all of my clients are also in my newsletter, which they appreciate because then they get, sunset is what fills up so fast for me, because my sunset spots, because you know sunsets not year round in Saint Louis. So, those go pretty quickly and I only take three a week. So we take 12 sunset shoots a month, and, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and I live the rest for rain. And then weekends for my family. So, I have that particular newsletter. The other newsletter I have is all photographer based. And that one is for anybody who's interested in workshops, anybody who's purchased my action sets have an option to sign up for my newsletter, anybody who just wants to know when I'm doing a fun events, like Creative Live, you know, is on there. So then I'll send out just informational newsletters throughout the year. Probably, like eight to ten a year? I don't do a lot because every single time I send one, you lose a bunch of people. No matter what you do, anybody will. It's just normal. Some people just don't wanna be emailed. So, it's just, those are the two big ones. Can you explain again, you talked about the, how the drop down menu organization was helpful to Google. We had somebody ask if you could clarify, or not really understanding what you meant by that. So, when Google is looking, if they see a big mess of not organization, so if you look under here, there's actual words. So pricing, so Google's gonna see pricing, and Emily Lucarz, Studio, Emily Lucarz. Portfolio, Emily Lucarz. All of those things, Google likes organization, that's the only way I can explain it without, I'm not an SEO guru, I'm not gonna try to go into it. This is how Michael explained it to me. He said, Emily, I promise you, when I organize your headings, your Google's gonna shoot up. And I'm like, no it's not, I have to blog. And he's like, oh no you don't. And then it shot up and he was right. So, just by organizing it. Try it, see what happens, give it a few weeks. I wanna shoe you the contact me tab. So here's my shop right now, we're gonna have an internal shop here pretty soon. Right now it just goes to my big cartel shop. Again, social media icons up here, right? Contact me. I'm gonna show you this. A lot of, if you have a studio, I've found this to be really helpful. For some reason Google has decided my street doesn't exist. (laughing) Even though I'm in the middle of a massive shopping center that's been there for 15 years. So it has an interactive Google map at the top, okay? Which has been kinda fun. Get in touch with Emily. Before you visit us, check out the studio. Okay, so I have a link right here, where you guys can see the studio, what can we help you with? I'm not a robot. So, this is important to have on your, don't just put your name and your email. What happens when you just get an email? One out of five times they typed their email wrong, right? Do you guys find that? It's not just me? So we now have phone number because if you get an email that gets kicked back because they typed their email incorrectly, we put their phone number on, little business tip. And then what can we help with, so you have some information about them, sometimes you'll just get an email back, newborn. Okay. (laughing) Like, a lot of people write what they're looking for, and it really helps, okay. Does anybody have any questions about website stuff? This question is from C Walker, who says, what do you do to protect your website images from people taking screenshots? I know this is often a common question about watermarking and not watermarking, he says, if you, or she says, if you give online galleries before sale sessions and giving mobile apps with images, aren't you giving everything away? How do you protect your work? Okay, so let's tackle the website first and then we'll move to the ShootProof. On the website, in the back end, nothing can be right clicked. You can always screen shot anything, wherever you go, but I always have my logo on everything. My logo is on everything. That being said, my logo is removed all the time. I just found a profess-- I'm not gonna give the name, but I just found a professional site using one of my images in their templates that they're selling. The logo was removed, and I have been in contact with them, and so we are in dispute right now. That happens all the time, and that's why you have the PPA, the Professional Photographers Association. They will protect you if anything were to happen, and somebody steals your image like it did in my case. It's a very wonderful organization to look into to join, the PPA. Now, in terms of ShootProof, my online galleries, I have on ShootProof, when they view their images, it says Emily Lucarz, clear across. From the bottom to the top. Okay, granted it's not as dark, you know, it doesn't cover the face, you can see it. They cannot get any images without a massive Emily Lucarz stamped on their face. And I do not give them the mobile app or any images until they purchased. So you don't send the mobile app before they purchase, 'cause that'd be silly. In your portfolio where you have the full session, the link, is that a link to the blog post about it, or is it a separate-- Page just for-- It's a separate page. So this is my portfolio page, so this actually replaced All the scrolling All of the, yeah. So yeah, you don't have to keep, so you instead of having a one image portfolio, you have a massive portfolio. So I haven't really seen this done yet, so we were kind of excited about this. I don't know, I kept telling Michael, you know, I wish I could show, like six images from this shoot, and he's like, you can. I'm like, what do you mean I can? And he kept trying to explain it to me, and I'm like, oh, this is amazing! So, I mean 'cause then you hover over it too, you know, so like here's a studio, so I put on there, mini studio session, people wanna know what a mini session really looks like. You know, they wanna know that there's more than one image. So, when I'm loading these, I'm uploading portfolio page, portfolio page, and I asked him, like is this gonna mess up my volume? And he assures me no. So this is just like a mini session, you know, and it just shows, you know, 10 pictures. You know, isn't she darling? Just, and they get to see what is a mini session entail, okay? Just, simple, simple, simple!

Class Materials

Bonus Materials

GearList

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Example Client Email
Newborn Questionnaire
Shot List

Ratings and Reviews

JennMercille
 

Oh my goodness!!! This was such a wonderful class. Not only is Emily a very gifted pro, she is the personable mentor that makes learning simple and the fun big sis you want to be around. She is a wealth of information and a total open book about it all. Being in her studio audience was so much fun, and the time flew by way too fast. I highly recommend this class not only to newbies trying to find their style and refine their technique, but also to seasoned pros looking to tweak their art with a creatively authentic perspective. As a newborn photographer with an established studio business model, I cannot wait to infuse what I have learned into my style and incorporate her business genius into my session and pricing structure. Thank you Emily Lucarz for sharing your creativity, knowledge and uplifting energy with us both in the class and behind the scenes! You are awesome!

Jessie Fultz
 

Buy this course! If you are at all interested offering lifestyle newborn sessions, whether you are a new photographer or you have been in business for years, buy it! It's 100% worth your time and money and you won't regret it. Emily is so fun and genuine which makes learning from her such a joy! Not only does this course go over troubleshooting different scenarios that are bound to happen during some sessions, but Emily also gives all sorts of other tips that you wouldn't even know you needed to know until she offers up the advice. It's fun to watch her interact with her clients to ensure that she is able to make beautiful pictures in such a natural setting. Thank you Emily and CreativeLive for coming together to make this course happen! I am beyond thrilled that I was able to watch these last two days and learn SO much!!

Hiba Alvi
 

Emily is amazing! I love how detailed she is and tells you how it is. It is nice she shares her personal journey and what she does - which is great! Love it and would highly recommend this course! I don't have a studio, and normally travel to clients home to do photoshoots - so all the tips here are more than helpful! I am so excited to do my upcoming photo session this weekend - can't wait to put these tips to use!

Student Work

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