Fasten Your Seatbelts

The famous quote made by Margot Channing (Bette Davis) in All About Eve seems particularly applicable these days:

Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.

The economy in the US (and elsewhere, but I’m just focusing on the US) is not doing well. In fact, it’s probably in a recession and, depending on whom you believe, things may be much worse than we’re being led to believe by the main-stream media and government. Regardless, even the rosiest of prognostications are barely pink these days. And what does that mean for you?

It means business at all levels is very likely to slow down. For some photographers, 2007 was already worse than 2006. 2008 is likely to be hard for everyone.

Take the time now to figure out how you can cut your costs without negatively impacting your business. For example, if you do not need a studio, when your lease is up, get out. Or find a studiomate if you only barely need a studio. Put off buying a new Mac if yours is still expandable–instead max out the RAM or update the motherboard perhaps. Increase your deductible on some insurance policies to lower their cost. There are lots of things you can do–now is the time to do them–preferably before you really need to.

One place where you should not cut back is your marketing. This is a common error with businesses–sales slump and the first department to get cut-backs is the marketing department. For you that means two things: 1) you are probably under-spending on your marketing already and any cuts will significantly decrease your visibility; and 2) there will be fewer opportunities for projects (because of client cuts to their marketing depts.) so it is even more critical to keep in front of your targets’ radar to have a chance at the projects still available.

Not everything is doom and gloom, though. There will be projects–there always are–and, even better, if you have been licensing your work (and if you haven’t, now is the time when you’ll see what a bad idea that was!), don’t be surprised to see an increase in relicensing existing work for the original clients. This is what happened after 9/11 (when new work really did dry up)–clients relicensed work all over the place and that saved a lot of photographers from going under. Remember to price that re-use fairly (there is no reason the Usage Licensing Fee should be any less than the it was in the past) and hold on…

…this downturn too will eventually end.