Need a little extra cash? The good news is that for most photographers, the holidays offer a cornucopia of opportunities to generate new revenues. Whether you're just starting out or you're a veteran photographer, now is a great time to build out your portfolio and extend your business reach.

This week, we'll look at the first five of 10 ways to engage your clients during the holidays and even into the New Year. While some of these ideas may seem obvious to some of you, they are all-too-easy to skip in the holiday rush and thus worth highlighting. To keep costs down, much of the outreach can occur via email instead of snail mail.

1. Create a "Year in Review" Gallery & Newsletter
   Create a "Year in Review" Gallery within LicenseStream and send to existing and prospective new clients. Include some of your best work from the past year (for more information on showcasing your work with Galleries, see below). In your email to clients be sure to highlight your plans for the coming year, and include a calendar of your upcoming events, including workshops, exhibitions, open studios, or any high-profile photo shoots that you can mention.
   
   
2. Send out a Photo Greeting Card or Photo Calendar
   Include some suggestions for gifts, including holiday family portraits, holiday pet portraits, photo greeting cards, photo calendars, even photo advent calendars. Use an image from your LicenseStream gallery and include an embedded link to drive traffic back where clients can view similar images or galleries in your LicenseStream store.
   
   
3. Offer Specials for Business Referrals
   Invite existing customers to visit your LicenseStream store for year-end specials. On the front page of your store, offer discounts to existing customers who refer business to you, and promotion codes for new customers who come to you via referral. Such specials during the holidays open the door for repeat customers.
   
   
4. Build and Send Special Lightboxes to Clients
   Build and send to appropriate targeted clients a year-end greeting with a lightbox of images for each of your specialties. Be sure to select images that differentiate you creatively from other photographers who work in those niche areas. When appropriate, invite clients to view work within a related specialty or sub-specialty. For example, if you're targeting clients who typically purchase images of landscapes, invite them to see images of wildlife, plants and flowers, or of specific types of scenery (for example, "deserts") or region (e.g. "Coastal California"). 
   
   
5. Promote Special Photography Packages
   Promote multi-generation family packages to include separate children, parent and grandparent portraits as well as pictures of the entire family. Provide a link to a LicenseStream gallery that shows samples of your work and backdrops. After the portraits are taken, suggest that customers provide links to additional friends and family who may want to purchase some of the images or arrange portrait sessions for themselves or other family.
   

Finally, be sure to include a personal year-end message of thanks to your client base on your home page. You might do this by adding to or editing your bio on your home LicenseStream page.  

Check back next week for five additional ways to engage with clients during the holiday season -- and beyond.

Showcase Your Work with Galleries in LicenseStream

LicenseStream galleries are a great way to Showcase a variety of work to your existing clients and generate interest in your work. As mentioned above you may choose to put together a "Year in Review" newsletter. A great addition to this is to create a LicenseStream gallery with a selection of images that show what you have been working on in 2009.

Create a New Gallery

Before you create a LicenseStream Gallery please make sure the images you are adding to your gallery are already added to your LicenseStream Store.

To create a new gallery you will need to follow these steps:

1. Go to "Manage Content"
2. Click on "Create new Gallery" on the right side of the page (1.)
3. Enter Gallery name (suggestion: Best of 2009)

 Add Content to Your LicenseStream Gallery

1. Go to "Manage Content"
2. Mouse over the thumbnail to select the content you would like to add to the Gallery
3. On the right side under "Actions" choose "Add Selected to"(2.) and select "Gallery" from the drop down list.
4. Select your new Gallery from the list:

Manage Your LicenseStream Gallery

Once you have created your Gallery and added content, you can access the Gallery to customize it by clicking on the Gallery name on the right hand side of the page:

You can:

• View the content in the Gallery
• Sort the order of the images in the Gallery
• Edit the Gallery name
• Create a direct link to the Gallery
  (i.e., store.licensestream.com/[storename]/[Galleryname])

Your Gallery will automatically be added to your Store Front and you can include that URL or the direct link to the gallery in your end of year newsletter.

Please note: You must use the Gallery Grid template for your Store Front to display the Galleries as per the screenshot below. To change your Store Front view, please go to your Store Manager and from the 'Store Front' tab select 'Template 2: Gallery Promotion with Gallery Selection Grid'.

For more information on this process and other helpful tips you can visit our online help guide and browse topics in the "Manage Content" section.