So, you're a photographer, and you're busy. You are making money, capturing beautiful memories, and building clientele.

BUT! You're exhausted. You have photo shoots filling up your weekends and evenings - not to mention a home to take care of, dog to walk, church or social activities, etc. - and all the while those photos are sitting on your computer waiting to be edited. You're stressed, not getting enough sleep, have clients calling you asking when their photos will be ready, and all you want to do is pull your hair out!

This is where outsourcing your photo editing comes in. It can give you HOURS (maybe even entire days) of your life back. This means sleep, sanity & maybe even a movie out now and again!

So WHY should you outsource?

1. It gives you a chance to focus on shooting.  Outsourcing your editing will give you back so much time in your schedule, that you can feel good about all the shoots you schedule. It will allow you to not feel rushed through photograph sessions, and give you the freedom to shoot & send your photos off to an editor - and when you get them back, they are beautiful and ready to deliver to your client!

2. Because someone else is doing the editing for you, you can deliver to your clients much faster. I know how it is to be on the opposite end of the photograph session - when you're the client, you can't WAIT to see your photos! It's normal for clients to text, call, email, Facebook (and any other way they can find to get ahold of you!) asking - when will my photos be ready?!  Sending your photos to me means that because I don't have weekends filled with photo shoots, I have time to spend solely on editing. (This also ensures that I get each portrait just right!) For a portrait session, the turnaround time is 4 days or sooner for me. Can you imagine taking your clients photos on a Saturday, and sending a link to their FULL online gallery on Monday or Tuesday? That means you are making money faster as well. Time really is money!

3. It’s totally worth the money. Let’s do some math. Let’s say you spend 3 hours editing a session. You have 5 sessions. That is 15 hours of work! How many more sessions could you schedule during the week if you had 15 free extra hours? Assuming the average session is about 2 hours, you could do 7 more full shoots. If you charge $300 per shoot, you’re making an extra $2100. Now 7 shoots is a lot, but it means that if you even schedule 4 more shoots a week, you will have some free time on your hands – and that is AWESOME! As you’re sitting in the movie theater munching popcorn and watching Captain America fight off the bad guys – your photos are being edited for you, and you're making more money to boot!

Should you outsource? YES! I know that outsourcing brings up a lot of questions, so in my next blog post I will address some of the questions I’ve heard. Stay tuned!