Categories: Podcasts

#080: Selling Albums

EPISODE #080

Selling Albums

Guest: Priscilla Klingler

Office Manager, CAO | Vision Art
Marshalltown, Iowa
https://www.visionart.com/

DATE: February 23, 2023

Many photographers love the IDEA of albums, but when it comes to actually selling them they find themselves lost in a sea of confusion.

Confusion about:

-What album sizes to offer?
-What types of cover material to use (leather or photo cover)?
-What type of pages or paper?

And we all know that when there are too many decisions to make, we often make no decision at all.

And this is all BEFORE we even talk to our clients about albums, which is a whole other story!

At ATJ Photo, we love albums. It has taken us years to curate and refine our offerings and I get a lot of questions about how we sell our albums.

So, I wanted to bring an album expert onto the podcast to help you navigate your own album dilemmas. Today’s guest is Priscilla Klingler from Visionart Albums and she is going to share her hard-won expertise on how to best start selling albums in your portrait studio.

In this episode, you’ll learn how to:

Stand out with fine art albums.
Avoid common mistakes and misconceptions.
Appropriately price albums for clients.
Show your clients the power of print.

Here’s a glance at this episode:

[02:12] – Visionart Albums are customizable fine art albums.
[03:35] – There’s so much to choose from right now when it comes to products to sell. What makes you stand out?
[04:28] – One common mistake with albums is cramming them with too many photos on a single page.
[06:15] – Albums can and should be presented as the wow factor.
[07:15] – People don’t know where to start and they won’t order albums without guidance. Get a studio sample to show them.
[08:51] – You don’t have to offer everything. Curate and pick the materials that represent your brand.
[10:19] – At Visionart, everything is custom made in-house.
[11:36] – Pricing can be hard and Visionart provides a pricing guide sheet so you can have all the tools you need to sell it.
[15:32] – Allison breaks down the pricing of albums and why they should cost more than regular prints.
[18:04] – At shows, Priscilla likes to show off new materials and big sellers like slip cases.
[20:38] – Albums can be beautifully customized using things like wedding invitations and themes important to the client.
[22:38] – If you’re thinking about albums or you want to reinvent your album, it’s important to just start somewhere. Start simple.
[24:29] – Priscilla shares some new prints they have started and how Visionart is focusing on photographer education this year.