The Benefits Of Becoming A Niche Photographer

When I first started out on my photography journey, I knew I wanted to be a wedding photographer. I had no interest in shooting families or babies or corporate headshots. Family and friends told me that I needed to keep my options open and to take work wherever I could get it. I thanked them for their advice. And I carried on doing it my way. I knew that I only wanted to shoot couples and weddings. And as early on as a few months in to my journey, I realised that there were definitely more specific types of weddings and certain types of couples that I connected with more. I slowly started to aim my marketing towards the kinds of clients that I wanted to work with, and every now and then, I booked on. It was only when I started working with a business and mindset coach that I realised that it was a very specific area of the wedding industry that I wanted to work in. So I decided to focus on this new direction in my business and the benefits of becoming a niche photographer started to become evident within a few months.

What Are The Benefits Of Becoming A Niche Photographer?

Every photographer works out sooner or later in their business that not everyone is their client. For the first two years of my business, I worked with almost any couple that would hire me. Some of them were awesome and I came home from their weddings feeling excited and inspired. Others were just not the right match. They still got great pictures that they were happy with, but I came home feeling stressed out, drained and like I knew that someone else would have been far more in line with what that couple wanted than I was. And while I was shooting a good number of weddings, I didn’t have a lot that I wanted to show on my portfolio. In 2017 I went full-time in my photography business and I knowing what kinds of weddings I wanted to be shooting, I decided that my best path was to establish myself as a niche photographer. And when I decided to make this change and focus 100% of my energy in to my niche, I noticed massive changes in my business.

As I got clearer in what I wanted, my message suddenly became so much clearer too. I stopped trying to create content to appeal to everybody and I started to create content that spoke to that small sector of the market that I really wanted to work with. The small sector that I feel like I understood, and who understood me. For me, that was the adventure wedding market.

After two and a half years of generic enquiry emails and price haggling, suddenly I was getting enquiries that not only wanted me, and me alone. But they also paid my prices without questioning them. People saw my value, because I came across as an expert at what I do. And they hired me because my message spoke to them directly. By trying to attract less people, I started to attract more. But this time, they were the right people.

So Why Does Going Niche Make A Difference?

Going niche makes you stand out. You’re no longer the photographer that does everything. You become the photographer to go to for one specific thing. You become the expert in your field. And if you were your clients, would you rather hire the all-rounder or the expert?

p.s. You still can do everything if you want to. Just have it on a different website 😉

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Do you want to stop shooting things that don’t excite you and start booking your dream clients?