Oct 2 • Free Courses
How To Turn Free Portraits Into $2,280 Profit in One Afternoon
Here's a case study of what a typical Saturday afternoon of taking snapshots produced in profits. And this was years ago. Today I charge more. You can too. It's not hard, you just need to take action.
Back on Nov 23, 2013, I ran one of my favorite simple promotions: Every week I generate dozens of leads — names, emails, phone numbers, and street addresses — just by running a free portrait contest.
It’s the offline version of a squeeze page: people enter to win a free portrait, and I get a list of warm leads. That Saturday, I spent 90 minutes shooting simple snapshots (nothing fancy — full auto mode on my camera, pop-up backdrop in the client’s yard).
I then:
- Outsourced editing — Paid my photo editor $25 to turn my plain snapshots into beautiful portraits.
- Created short reveal videos — Uploaded each child’s photos to YouTube (set to unlisted), then switched to private after parents watched.
- Presented & sold via screen share — Invited parents to go.mikogo.com so they could watch my screen as I showed their photos. Each family got to pick one free portrait… then I simply shared my price sheet for extras. (Today I use Zoom)
The results from 3 short sessions:
- Family #1 — $970 package
- Family #2 — $920 package
- Family #3 — Digital images + free print — $555 total
Total sales: $2,445
Costs: $25 editing × 3
$90 printing/shipping
Total costs $165
Net profit: $2,280 for 3 hours of photographing + 2 hours of reveal calls to show & sell.
Why it works: It’s the exact same psychology as internet marketing:
- Online: give something free → capture email → upsell later.
- Offline: give a free portrait → wow them → offer upgrades.
Except here, the sales happen fast — usually within a few days of shooting — and the profit margins are huge.️ If you’ve ever dreamed of running a photography side huge!
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How To Turn Free Portraits Into $2,280 Profit in One Afternoon
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