Julie,
I remember your discount and it worked well. I'm trying to capture the folks when they are spending their $$$ and they spend when they're at the National. The week after, they're waiting for the credit card charges to come due and fretting. Kinda a combination of show photographer and vendor where I get the commitment and the payment at the point of capture. We'll see how it works. If not, I'll still consider offering an "order by date" discount.

I'm still trying to figure out if there is some way I can legitimately delay the images I provide to the National Committee until I actually get the orders. That freebie and the one for the newsletter really cut into sales. The fact that TRMM is going to offer an advertising discount for the May issue will help generate sales but the longer I can keep the images off of the website, the better my chances for making more sales. Any thoughts?

Jim

I don't know Jim. My one foray into this sort of photography convinced me I am much better suited for custom portraiture. Its too much stress and too much volume for me. The infusion of $$$ was good and I am glad I did it. I could not do it for a living. It was one of those life experience things for me. The way a friend and mentor(in dogs) put it was "Your talents were wasted". So, at the 2011 national, I have a booth for portraits. I probably should have done so for the 2010 national in Tuscon, but, that is so far, I'd have had to fly and fedexed my equipment. It just seemed too hard to deal with. I am sorta regretting it now

Jim,

Can you negotiate a better time frame for yourself or perhaps an "unofficial" image on the website to be replaced by an official one on such and such date? Perhaps with an "UNOFFICIAL" watermark or something even?

I know magazines want images immediately. That was one of the first things I had to do was get magazines images. I had to give winners photos that evening for the pdf newsletter that went out daily.

Jim G, I don't know if there is a way around it.

Oh, and I am excited to see Dottie made your website! That is my favorite movement shot of her ever! She is so beautiful...

Julie, Jim P.
I'm not sure if there's a solution here either. I've discussed it with the Show Chair and her position is that she wants me to make as much $$$ as possible. Jim, I shoot all my formals without the sign so I could post the winners sans signage and watermarked but that smacks a bit of protectionism -- which, of course, it is . I'll discuss that approach with the Show Chair when we get there. Always better to discuss stuff face-to-face.

Julie, I'm with you when it comes to either shooting the formals or having a portrait booth. Next year's National may be done in conjunction with the Colonial Rottweiler Club and they always use John Ashbey. So, I think I'll plan on having a portrait booth. I actually might enjoy it more.

And I'm glad you don't mind my using the Dot moving shot. I love it, too. Perfect balance moving. Pretty girl!

Jim

We offered a 20% discount on pre-orders and finished up with 55 orders all pre-paid. More to come on those orders since we only asked folks to pre-pay for the first 8X10 print. Tomorrow there's the Sieger Show and we expect a fair number of orders from that with over 189 entries. Yesterday we started at 9 a.m. and finished up after the Top Dog Evening at about midnight with 24 gigs of images to download. Finished up about 4:30 a.m. and we were back on the job on Best Of Breed day at 8 a.m. Yawn!!!

Once we're done tomorrow -- probably around 7:30 in the evening -- we'll try to get into the Rockies for a day. Yesterday, we had snow. Today, high winds. Hopefully it will normalize by Monday. Expect to get home by May 1. I'll share some pics as I get a chance to process them.

Our bottom line: the discount was VERY will received and folks really came in for photos knowing they would receive a 20% discount on the entire order. I expect some very BIG orders based on the number of shots we took.

Jim

Jim, great work. . . I think it's a wise move to offer those discounts . . . I do have something to say about offering fake sales . . . it was brought up by Jim Poor (im sure he was not serious about it, but just in case anyone is thinking about it as a real option - I'll weigh in) . . .

"Raise your prices $5 and then offer 25% off" not only is that completely unethical and immoral, it's illegal and punishable by law, fines, and even jail! If you artificially inflate the price above retail and call it a sale, and your caught, you will lose your business. . . .

It's an antitrust violation and taken very seriously . . . . You can find cases where this practice is happening all over the country, but if you decided to use this ploy and youre caught, you will lose everything.

I watched it happen to a friend of mine in the retail shoe business . . . a woman came to the store to buy a pair of special shoes, they were advertised as a sale but really they were retail and the person who owned the store inflated to retail price and discounted the shoe and advertised a "sale" the woman later found out and filed a suit. The business owner lost the business. Anyone, can file the suit and unless you can afford the lawyers, you'll lose your business - remember your business insurance wont cover this kind of action. . .

Hopefully, the big smiley face gave away that I wasn't serious.

Sounds like it went / is going well Jim.

My show this weekend felt like a ghost town. 100+ runs short of full. I've been told that folks are "boycotting" the facility because of the running surface.

Tony,
thanks. I agree, fake discounts suck in a lot of ways. This discount is real and the folks taking advantage of it really understood the value of it. I'll get more add-on sales as a result. But the PR value was tremendous and people truly appreciated someone offering them a deal for multiple wins.

The Sieger Show ended up at 7 p.m. in failing light and cold, windy, rainy conditions. We still managed to get over 25 formals plus ring candids so it was a good day from a business perspective. Right now, I'm cold, tired and can't wait to get some sleep. Tomorrow it's off to Estes Park for something very different -- the mountains and maybe a horseback ride. Can't wait! BTW, we've been traveling with Sundance (135 lbs.) and Max (132 lbs.) and they have been incredible companions. Not one disparaging word and lots of ear-licks. We could not be happier with the two of them. At night, Sundance sleeps with Linda and Max sleeps with me. Max's owners will not be happy when he comes back home . Time for some fun. I'll report about it in detail later.

Jim