RANKED: Software You Need for a Photography Business

starting a photography business can be complex and confusing and overwhelming you might not know where to start or what to do or what things you need to buy or subscribe to in this video I want to outline the software that I think you need to have in order to run a successful photography business I've organized this into four separate categories so starting us off in the must-have section the first thing you're going to need is a Google account my recommendation is to use your personal Google account the reason for this is that when you get into using a studio management software system you are going to need to integrate your personal calendar your personal schedule so that it can check against it most software systems don't allow you to connect more than one Google account so you're going to want to stick with one and then run everything through that you're also going to need your Google account to set up Google analytics and your Google business profile if you haven't set up your Google business profile yet you really need to do it today you need to take control of your information for your business that's out there on Google your hours are of operation your address your contact information photos that are associated with your business you want to have control of your Google business profile that's very very important next you're going to need to register a domain for your business and get a domain email for your business you don't want to use an at gmail account for business Communications you want an email that is maybe your name at yourbusiness.com you want to register and have your own domain my preference for this is to use hover hover.com excellent domain management very simple to set up very simple to use I have all my email connected through hover and it just runs right into Gmail and uh it's very simple to set up it's also very simple to connect hover to the next thing I'm going to mention which is a website you absolutely need to have a website my choice of website platform is Squarespace I have a number of videos on Squarespace it's very secure it's very robust it's very redundant and well maintained piece of software it is much safer than a WordPress website and it is very easy to use very user friendly especially for photographers like us who want to have nice good visuals displayed on the website in a very clean easy to see easy to use intuitive interface Squarespace is fantastic the next things you're going to need are payment processors you need to be able to accept payment from your clients and if you set that up online through a studio management system you're going to want to use either square or stripe personally I like square but Square doesn't function in as many countries as stripe does I prefer the interface on square and I run all of my transactions through square but if you live in a country that can't use Square then stripe is your next best option if you are someone who travels a lot and accepts payment in multiple currencies then stripe might be the way to go I strongly only caution against using PayPal I have heard so many horror stories about wedding photographers and other photographers who end up losing a lot of money because they they get bad clients and those bad clients want to reverse their charges through PayPal PayPal makes it so easy for somebody to scam you I used to love PayPal but I absolutely refuse to use it nowadays sign up with square or sign up with stripe use one of those too you will be much much happier the next thing you're going to need is a raw image processor you need to be able to process your images my image processor of choice is Capture One Pro I highly recommend everybody use Capture One Pro I prefer it over Lightroom the image quality is just significantly better so capture one takes higher priority for me than Lightroom and Photoshop the next thing that you're going to need in the must-have section is a two-factor authentication app you need to have two-factor authentication set up on your website you need to have it set up on all of your socials you need to have it set up anywhere that enables you to have two-factor authentication I've heard too many stories about people losing their Instagram accounts or having the WordPress sites get hacked set up two-factor authentication and feel much more secure knowing that your primary business assets your primary marketing assets are safe that is why two-factor authentication app is in the must have section now taking a look at the should haves first in line is Photoshop Adobe Photoshop definitely you should have this so you're going to have to subscribe to adobe's Creative Cloud photographers package at the least you should have Photoshop to finish all the retouching and if you're an architectural photographer or Interiors photographer you're probably going to be doing a lot of Luminosity masking and so you're going to need Photoshop to do that next you should probably have a studio management system I use Sprout Studio to handle all of my bookings my contracts my online galleries email Communications automations workflows Sprout studio is the best studio management software where on the planet it has its flaws and I think there are some things that could definitely be improved but hands down the the automations the workflow automations the contracts the booking templates booking proposals the built-in schedulers it's such a robust piece of software hands down it is the best studio management software system in the world next up you're going to need an Instagram account every photographer needs to have an Instagram account no matter what the naysayers say about Instagram you have to be on Instagram you have to be publishing regularly on Instagram photos reels stories you need to use Instagram you're also going to want to register and make sure that you have representation on other social platforms that are right for your business that could be Pinterest if you're a wedding photographer if you're a commercial photographer you'll want to have a behance account and a commune account if you're an Interiors photographer or an architectural photographer it would be a good idea for you to have an account set up on house where you can display the projects that you photograph houses a great website for you to be able to connect with your clients such as interior designers interior decorators Architects maybe Landscape Architects people who will want to hire you to make their business look better next you want to make sure you have analytics accounts you'll want to have a Google analytics account set up and connected to your website this is exceptionally easy to do with Squarespace and I'm also going to recommend that you set up and embed a metapixel on your website this is also very easy to do with Squarespace two more reasons why I highly recommend Squarespace meta is the company that owns Instagram and Facebook you should definitely have a metapixel set up on your website so you can take a look at your audience and get to understand them through their insights a lot better the last thing I'm going to mention in the should have category you'll want to sign up for a password manager I use nordpass and I don't know a single one of my passwords a lot of my passwords are 60 characters long and uh just a jumbled scrambled mess of characters which is incredible secure whenever I need to log into a website I can just click on the icons to get nordpass I can open the app on my phone and copy the password paste it in the Box it's ready to go nordpass is exceptional and inexpensive and it's the best password manager that I've used I don't recommend using LastPass LastPass has had a couple of security breaches and incidents that made me switch to nordpass now we're going to head into the good to have category I'm going to start off in the good to have category with accounting software my personal recommendation for accounting software is freshbooks it's great for expense tracking and they even have invoicing if you want to skip over having a studio management system right away I don't recommend you do that I would recommend getting the studio management system first Sprout Studio includes expense tracking you can add your expenses you can track your mileage you can set those to be relevant to specific jobs so you can track your Revenue versus your expenses on a job to job basis next up in the good to have is an international banking account I use Wise Wise is incredible you can get a physical card that you can use with 50 currencies pretty much anywhere in the world it's a Visa debit card it has Chip and pin security it also has tap I can add it to my Google Wallet you can add it to your Apple pay and I'm I'm over the moon with wise if you're a destination wedding photographer you should have a wise account it will make your life easier you can use 50 different currencies when you're traveling I'm going to Costa Rica in a month and I'm going to be using this in Costa Rica the best thing about it is you can transfer money into your wise account but if you're anywhere in the world you don't need to convert the currency before you use it you can have your account sitting with your default currency and if you happen to be in Costa Rica and tap that card to pay it'll handle the currency conversion and the payment no problem you don't need to worry about it check it out get yourself set up with a wise account my next recommendation is design software I use canva to do a lot of my designs outside of website design I used to use InDesign I used to use illustrator and Photoshop and and I have the full Creative Cloud Suite but I prefer to use canva it's really simple it's easy to use it's easy it's fast it's great if you need design software canva is fantastic they have a ton of templates to help you create marketing materials social ads posters anything that you think you might want or need canvas got it it's really fantastic it's free you could get a pro account and establish your brand settings your brand colors your brand fonts and a pro account gives you access to a lot more images and elements to use I think a pro account is worth it but you do not need a pro account you can start with a free account the next thing is a recommendation for me in the good to have category but personally I can't live without it and that's automation software I use zapier and if this then that IFTTT zapier is phenomenal I do so much with it you can start off with a freeze app your account and a free IFTTT account you can do a lot with those things to create automations that work and help you in your business zapier here is one of the things that next to my website it is an absolute must-have for me but I think when you're starting out you don't necessarily need to pay for it as your business grows and you start to realize everything that zapier can do to help automate processes in your business I think you'll end up on a paid tier with zapier because it is absolutely phenomenal piece of software next on my list of good to have software is jpeg mini I run absolutely all of my images through jpeg mini I have jpeg mini pro because it comes with an extension that allows me to run all of my exports from capture one right through jpeg mini and you can do that with Lightroom and Photoshop as well with the pro version of jpeg mini jpeg mini really makes your jpegs a lot smaller saves a lot of space if you're uploading client images to a gallery service where space is at a premium then use jpeg mini for sure it's also fantastic for helping to reduce the file size of images that you put on your website which allows your website to load faster it's a one-time payment but if you choose to upgrade you will have to pay for those upgrades but you can just get it once and keep using it forever it's not an absolute must-have but it's definitely a good to have my final good to have recommendation is otter.ai otter is an app that you can download to your phone and when you're having client meetings it can transcribe what's happening in the meeting real time and then it can upload it to the auto server it can detect different speakers you can go to your desktop computer you can open up the conversation you just had with your clients and ask it to summarize the conversation for you you definitely need to check the laws where you are to make sure that you have consent to record the conversation though if you're meeting with clients it's very easy for you to just ask them if you can record the conversation right now so that you can listen back to it later so you're not taking notes at that time and you can really focus on having the conversation and engaging with them most of them will say yes if they say no just go back to taking your notes the old way I was using it religiously in every meeting I had with all all my wedding clients across Canada we are a single party consent country so if one person consents to recording the conversation that's all we need so I can record all the conversations that I have with my clients so that I can go back and refer to those notes later and this brings us to the honorable mentions section first up in the honorable mentions section for me is airtable I use it for so many things I've built my social media calendar into airtable I use it to handle the database of my industry contacts I track my gear in airtable I have so many databases set up in airtable that really work and function incredibly well and because it's a database you can link back and forth through different tables and you can have different views you can have kanban views you can have a grid sort of like a spreadsheet view that you can then group and then and it functions like a table air table is phenomenal and it's free check out the link below just go sign up for it and you start using it I you'll thank me later trust me also coming in and for honorable mentions I'm going to group these two together and these are AI assistants if you are a wedding photographer and you're processing a lot of images programs like after shoot and Imogen AI are fantastic to help you very quickly process your shoot they can look for closed eyes blurry photos and they can rate the images and color code the images for you then you can take those images from after shoot put them into Lightroom put them into capture one and then if you're using Lightroom then you can send your catalog up to Imogen AI you can build an AI profile based on your editing style from past sessions past weddings past catalogs or you can use one of their preset artist Styles it's really fantastic I think it's a really great tool if I was still shooting weddings a lot I would be using both of those programs religiously they would be much higher in my grouping but right now because I'm not using them regularly I think they deserve honorable mentions because they're both fantastic pieces of software and finally closing out the video the last honorable mention is is WhatsApp yeah if you're in Canada you you're probably like me you probably don't use WhatsApp in many parts of the world they use WhatsApp as their primary method of communication they use it more than they use actual phones I know for some places you can only communicate with them through WhatsApp I've heard of situations where if you are in a hotel and you want to get in touch with the front desk you have to contact them via WhatsApp there's not a phone that you can use or a phone system that you can use you have to use WhatsApp let me know in the comments if you think there's software that I've missed software that you think is a must-have I should have a good to have or an honorable mention I'd love to find out about new software or things that I might be missing that can help my business as well let me know in the comments and I'll see you in the next one take care