Hey Friends!!

As a self-employed photographers and videographers we wear a lot of hats to keep our business running! We work as our own bookkeepers, client managers, editors, bloggers, and technical support! With so many roles its so important to have good systems and tools in place to keep everything running smoothly and make sure we have enough time to enjoy the freedom that comes with being self employed! So today we are sharing 5 programs that we couldn’t live without! These programs save us time, make our processes easier, and just help keep everything in our business organized! They are all essential in our photography business, and if you’re not using one or all of these, definitely check them out as they will change your workflow drastically!

1.) Dubsado

First up is the probably the most helpful program of all of these, Dubsado! Dubsado is a CRM, a Customer Relationship Manager. There are a lot of different CRM’s out there, but we’ve found Dubsado is the most suited to our needs as Wedding Photographers At its most basic it keeps all of your clients and leads organized. But Dubsado has so many other features that save us SO MUCH time and make sure that nothing is slipping through the cracks when it comes to our clients! The list of things Dubsado does is pretty huge but here are some of our favorites:

• Lead Collection! – Every lead from your website goes here, and Dubsado will create a client profile for them
• Automated Emails – This is a HUGE time saver, you can set it up to know exactly what emails you want to send based on where you are in the workflow
• Electronic Contracts
• Invoicing + Online Payment
• Client Portal – You can create questionairres, store emails, contracts, basically keeps all of their info organized for you!
• Automated Workflows! – This one is essential for us. You can set up custom workflows for yourself. You can create to-dos, reminders, automated emails and contracts, all based on where your client is in their process! So as they move from an inquiry to delivering photos to beyond that, dubsado is tracking them and keeping up with them for you! This will ensure nothing slips through the cracks, and will save you SO MUCH TIME.

If you use this link, you can get 20% off our your first year with Dubsado!

2.) PhotoMechanic

If you are not using PhotoMechanic yet… RUN to their site because this is a game changer. PhotoMechanic is a media browser that lets you view, organize, and manage your photos. Basically, it allows you to view and cull the photos super quickly. If you’ve ever tried to cull in lightroom, you’d know that lightroom can move slowly and sometimes the images take a second to render. Photomechanic allows you to really quickly flip through all the images and shows you clear previews so you can decide what you want to move to edit! This is our first step in post processing. We pull all the photos from a session into PhotoMechanic, and we cull them there!

3.) JPEG Mini

If you don’t know what this does, JPEG Mini is a photo optimization technology that can reduce your file size up to 5X while preserving the full resolution and quality of the photos. This is a game changer when it comes to saving storage. If you’re like us, you probably have a ridiculous amount of Hard Drives!

• Saves you money! Storage is expensive. Whether that’s buying new External Hard Drives, Paying for online storage, or paying for your gallery delivery storage. Making your files smaller will save you space, which saves you money!
• Faster uploading! If you’ve ever gone to upload a wedding to your gallery delivery website, and it says it’s going to take 6 hours because the wifi isn’t super fast… your not alone. JPEG Mini will save you in this!

4.) Smart Albums

If you want to sell albums to your clients, this is essential! Smart Albums is a album design software that is SO easy to use! We can design a beautiful well thought album SO quickly because of Smart Albums! Pro Tip- If you’re not selling albums yet, you should check them out! We are really passionate about wedding albums because they are tangible memories from your day, and can tell your story for generations after you!

5.) BlogStomp!

We really love BlogStomp because it makes creating blogs SO much easier. It’s a really user friendly, just a drag and drop situation! And you can pick from all the different collages! It saves us a ton of time and makes our life a little easier!

So now you know! Those are our top 5 favorite programs, that we think could really help you in your business! Let us know your favorite programs in the comments and head to the Blog for business tips, our favorite sessions and more!