How did you start in photo restoration
Q. I want to start my own photo restoration business how did you do it?
Starting a photo restoration business
Starting a photo restoration business is relatively simple to do but it does take planning. The first I did was form a business plan even before I had a name. You can go to your local small business help centre or a free seminar on starting your own business. This should give you a good starting point on how to develop your plan.
Make sure you have the photo restoration skills before you start! Ensure that you can sit above the rest when it comes to your workmanship and that you go the extra mile to be the best. Without providing quality work then there are many other photo restoration businesses out there that will get your customers through reputation and word of mouth or written reviews (I will talk about these later)
Next, decide if you are going to do your own accounts or have someone do them for you. Hopefully, you can do this yourself as you will have little or no funds to start with.
I then contacted the Inland Revenue and filled out the relevant forms for my new employment status, self-employed! It may be that you only do this part-time but you still need to declare the income to the Inland Revenue.
Already put off? Not surprised It is pretty scary setting up your own business.
A logo
The next step I took was to get a company name a logo and then a website. Buy your website name, something relevant like “photorestoration.com” this helps people find you and know what you do, “peterspictures.com” would not be such a good name as it doesn’t really say much about your main service. Your company name and website name should be the same. Buy yourself some webspace and decide what package to go for, with or without email, shopping or e-commerce site if you are hoping to sell frames and other image-related goods.
If you design one yourself then there is a learning curve on making sure that it is friendly for the search engines and that they will pick up the phrase “photo restoration”. You can use a template or an off the shelf site but you still have to optimise it, so that the search engines will find your fist.
SEO
This topic of SEO or search engine optimisation is a HUGE topic and can take much of your time as a start-up business. You should think of outsourcing this so you can concentrate on the other tasks involved with launching a photo restoration business. I designed mine myself and learned the long hard way that it wasn’t right for the engines but over time it evolved to abide by the web design rules and favour the search engines. Getting noticed on the web for the right reasons and will hopefully help you be seen above the 276,000,000 (two hundred and seventy-six million) results when you type “photo restoration” into Google.com
Promotion
So now I had my website I had to promote it. This was done by creating original and engaging content, writing a blog, participating in forums, notice boards, writing web articles, entering competitions. Listing your business in business directories and exchanging web links with relevant partners on topics in tune with photo restoration. Avoid links that bear no relevance to photo restoring or photo restoration as they do not help at all. Make sure you have a “FaceBook” page, “Twitter” account, “LinkedIn”, “Pinterest” page and “Flickr” feed. Make sure you keep these up to date and input daily into them. Account Other strategies that I took were to read everything I could on promoting my business on the web, going to family history fairs, if your skills are worthy then Who Do You Think You Are? exhibition and other shows asking to put posters up around the local area and advertising on local radio.
Making sure you get online reviews is another good idea, to get them through your work has to be good and then people are going to want to say something nice about you. The more you get the more people will find you! Don’t fake these, even this can be spotted in today’s ever-increasing technological age. Don’t steal others work either and pass it off as yours, the amount of cross-referencing that gets done by us vigilant restorers and search tools, you will get found out.
Copyright
Be prepared to have your hard work copied, plagiarized and stolen. I have filed many copyright claims, this process takes up lots of time and if you don’t want your hard work to be downgraded in the search engines by Google because someone else has copied it, then file those claims. This is the most unfair part of the web. Your site will be penalized for producing duplicate content even though someone else did it. You may even have to sue for loss of earnings.
Hardware
Invest in some hardware. Digital files and digital cameras and images are getting forever bigger. Buy a machine with at least 16GB RAM but go for 32GB and you should be future proof for a while. Never think you’ll need 32GB of RAM, think again. There will come a time when a client wants a big file restored, your machine won’t handle it without the RAM. You’ll then be restoring slowly if at all and the job will end up costing you more than you have been paid. Get a scanner, not an all in one printer scanner copier, you may as well just redraw the photo instead of scanning it, these produce truly terrible results. Get a dedicated scanner and a good one. You cant produce good results without it. TOP TIP get a Graphics Tablet, after purchasing mine and two days of practice my productivity went through the roof and I was able to take on much more work.
Unless you have unlimited funds you most likely will have to do all this yourself, if you still want to start your own photo restoration business and the above doesn’t put you off then good luck.
Banking
Get some business banking.
Banking for photo restoration
I’m not about harping on what you should and should not do with your money but I recently changed my business banking. Why? it was time for a change. The most significant observation was when it came to inserting “what your business is” into the relevant drop-down box.
When I applied to business banking way back when it had been filed under “photographic services” there was no option for “Photo retoucher”. Well, this time around the option was there and not only a photo retoucher but a combination of photo restoration and retouching! It amazed me as this occupation has obviously got so popular they even have a business banking category for it!
To all you fellow restoration artists and retouchers out there we now have a place in the system! It may be a bad thing for some but now I feel whole. I’m no longer a floater of trades in no set niche!
Of course there are a lot of cons to setting up your own business.
| “Cons | Description |
|---|---|
| Crowded Space | Competition is high when it comes to your photograph restoration business, so it’s important that you spend a good amount of time analyzing the market and understanding where the demand lies. |
| Longer Sales Process | A photograph restoration business can be a big time and money investment for your customer, so it’s important you plan and predict a longer conversion funnel and stay in communication with potential customers. |
| Work can be inconsistent | As a photograph restoration business, the amount of work assigned to you and schedule tends to be more inconsistent, which may make your income less stable. It’s important to set boundaries and budget accordingly based on the amount of work you plan to have. |
| Lack of benefits | With a photograph restoration business, you are typically self-employed and responsible for finding your own insurance, which can be quite costly and time-consuming. |
| Isolation | Often times, as a photograph restoration business, you typically work alone and do not have much face-to-face interaction with other team members. |
| Taxes | As a photograph restoration business, you typically pay self-employment taxes which can be quite high. It’s important to understand what you will be paying in taxes each year so you can determine if the work you’re taking on is worth it. |
| No safety net | Typically, as a photograph restoration business, you do not receive a consistent pay-check and instead earn money based on your transactions each month. During the slow periods, you typically take away less since the job is based on commission. It’s important to budget accordingly for the slow times. |
| Stressful work | This line of work can be stressful for both you and your clients. This type of transaction is a significant financial decision for your client, so expectations are very high for you. Although this career path can be very rewarding, it also comes with its challenges and stressful moments. |
| Time commitment | With starting a photograph restoration business, all responsibilities and decisions are in your hands. Although this is not necessarily a negative thing, work life can take over at times. This can place a strain on friends and family and add to the pressure of launching a new business. |
| Be prepared to get out of your comfort zone! | Although this is exciting for some entrepreneurs, it can be a big challenge for others! You may find yourself in uncomfortable social and business situations, jumping into tasks and responsibilities you aren’t familiar with, and pushing yourself as far as you can go! |
| Minimal physical activity | A big part of starting a photograph restoration business is sitting at a desk for the majority of the day starting at your computer. Some may enjoy this, but others may struggle with sitting for the majority of your day without much physical activity. |
| Learning Curve | When you start your own business, you no longer have upper management to provide you with a playbook for your roles and responsibilities. You should know the ins and outs of every aspect of your business, as every decision will come down to you. |
| Easy target for criticism | Since your photograph restoration business has the ability to reach a large audience, you’ll need to be able to handle criticism. The internet can be a cruel place, and regardless of your intentions, many people will disagree with you and even take their criticism too far. To survive in this industry, you’ll need to have tough skin (or at least learn this along the way). |
| The job can be demanding | This is one of the major disadvantages starting a photograph restoration business. It’s important to understand that you may need to make yourself available on a 24/7 basis.” Scoure https://www.starterstory.com/ |
Please don’t email me for advice on starting your own photo restoration business as I am not qualified to do so, talk to your business advisor and get help from your local small business centre and may your new photo restoration business thrive.
Good luck from the photo retouching and restoration man
Thank you for the great input. I have been setting my own Photo Restoration Service up here in the south of England. It’s been a lot harder to attract clients than I thought possible. I had lots of interest in the photographs I was fixing and even colouring and a few comments about how much I charged for such a service. At the time I never saw it as a career path, but after some time and effort I went ahead and set myself up doing something that I truly love and enjoy. Since setting myself up though, getting the web pages, the portfolio and even the business cards made up – very little interest from the public is the main thing I am seeing. I have tried fine tuning my client base to older people who may have images to restore, but at the time of writing I haven’t had any clients. I know in part its a waiting game, but after nearly 2 months of running my own business I am getting a little disheartened.
If it is your only job it is tough. I had to supplement two jobs through my early years.
So chin up and keep your finger in many pies just in case!
Kind Regards
Hi there,
I am looking into setting up a photo restoration business and understand it is quite a competitive business to get into. I intend to set up online. I have recently published a book on kindle entitled No Nonsense Guide to Photoshop, so have a fair knowledge of this software. Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated.
Hi.
My advice would be everything in the post you have commented in and be original. Create a site that is different from all the rest. Don’t plagiarise, it’s easy to do it without even thinking, even down to menu choices and page names and website sections. Everyone has the same, be different but relevant and Google will love you for it. The web is very clever these days. Paraphrase someone and they will find you copying their stuff. Its not like it used to be where websites all copied each other, you get found out and have to take it down. Being original means this wont happen. originality and quality content is Google’s number one! Sign up to SEO news and bulletins, read everything on building a site correctly. Dont expect it to come easy, i’ve seen some long standing artists who have been in it for years give up as they became frustrated with ranking and web positioning. Spend nothing if you can, you’ll understand why soon enough when every penny you make goes into paying for your bills and food. Get a loan if it helps.
Of course if you are doing it weekend and evenings like many other businesses you’ll already have a job and won’t need to worry. However if you don’t work at it (promoting) 24/7 you’ll never be able to work it full time as you will not have enough business.
Sorry that’s all i have !
All the best and god luck!