Starting out in the business of making money with photography means that you will encounter other photographers, and other solutions, that are attempting to solve the problems that your potential clients are facing.

All photographers would all love to sail into an ocean of generous clients who love what you do and pay you without carefully considering their options. 

Even if you did find that ocean of clients, it would not be long until a bunch of other photographers were also fishing around in there trying to catch all of those customers. 

Realistically, you are not going to invent a novel type of photography, which no-one else can compete with. You are going to launch your photography into a world where lots of competition already exists. 

You have to deal with the fact that there is stiff competition out there for every assignment you take on and every image you sell. Almost every client that you come across, whether they are buying a picture from you, or booking you for an assignment, is going to compare you against several alternative options to solve their problem.

It is easy to think that your main competition will be other photographers. Often they are, but sometimes you will compete against solutions that are not even photography.

As well as photographers, clients will be comparing you against non-photography options such as not doing the photography at all, buying a painting instead, asking their friend to take the photos or shooting it themselves on an iPhone. 

This means that there are two different types of competition that you have to deal with.

The first is called direct competition. 

Your direct competitors are other photographers who are trying to reach the same customers as you, and they are trying to solve those customers’ problems in the same way as you, with photography.

You need to scrutinise how you can stand out against other photographers who are trying to attract the same customers as you.

Hopefully, by clarifying your niche, developing a bulletproof portfolio, and understanding the problems, obstacles and benefits that your clients experience you are already in a good position to rise above your direct competitors.

If you do all of those things well, it will lift you above the intense competition you will face if you try to create non-descript photography for a broad audience without understanding what your clients find valuable.

But, you cannot operate in a vacuum. You must have awareness of the other options that clients have and work out how you will compete against them.

You are not going to win every client, but you have to give yourself the best chance of beating the competition. 

Different factors will be considered by potential clients when choosing who to work with:

Do they like your photography? Does it look like it will solve their problem?

Do you seem like a person they can work with? 

Can you provide the photography at the right time? 

Are you available? 

What do you charge? 

Where are you located?

Do you have a good reputation?

And many more. 

A multitude of factors come into the decision about whether a client chooses you over another photographer. At the outset, you do not really know what the important factors are for a client. But by understanding what your target audience finds valuable, and by understanding what your competition offers, you can give yourself the best possible chance of being chosen.

The key is to understand the important factors that clients in your niche consider when thinking about solving their problem. And the way to beat your competitors is to offer your photography in a way that means that these concerns and requirements are dealt with.

The most powerful way to find out what is important in a client’s decision making process is to ask them. When you work with a client, or they buy an image, ask why they chose you.

Equally as importantly, whenever you don’t get chosen by a client, politely ask why. You may be surprised at what you find. Often price is not the deciding factor, and you will learn that other things like reassuring clients about the process you follow, or the speed of your reply were important. Information is key in beating competitors. The more you have, the better.

Alternative solutions, where the client’s problem is solved by something other than paying a photographer, also need to be considered as competition. People take photos themselves, or ask a friend. Maybe they will buy some stock photography, or use a painting or drawing. Perhaps they will decide to do nothing at all.

Although these options may be harder for you to foresee, you should consider these alternatives alongside other photographers because they are your competition as well. You should be able to find ways to emphasise why using your photography is better than the alternatives.  This too comes down to knowing your clients problems, obstacles and expected benefits.

Here is a sensible approach to assessing your competition:

Find three direct competitors to your main product that you are thinking of offering. That is three photographers or companies who provide a similar service to you to the same set of customers.

If you are thinking of selling photography as art, look at three photographic artists. If you are offering event photography, look at three different event photographers. 

Also, look at this for at least one different solution for what you do. Perhaps somebody buying a different type of art, maybe a painting, graphic art, or a poster from Ikea. For event photography for example, it could be that the client uses last year’s photos, shoots video instead, or asks a marketing assistant to do it instead. 

For each competitor that you look at, write a summary. Include their name, the location they serve, what their website is and how long they have been around for.

Then look at the types of customers they work with. You might be able to find that just looking at their website, people often mention who their customers are. Try to get an idea of the type of customers that they do business with. Are they corporate, personal, charity, rich people, young people? What type of customers are they generally serving? Where are those customers located? Are they all over the world? Are they local?  Do they have any mentionable customers? This will give you an idea of how much they overlap with the customers that you are trying to work with.

Next, consider how much work you think that person or company does. How many sales do you think they make? Or how many commissions they get? Try to work out how many jobs you think they do in a given time frame and the value of the jobs that they do. What is the amount of money that they make in a given time period? 

Then examine the services that they offer. What is their pricing structure? What are features of the service? Do they promise to do something in a certain time or provide something in a certain way? Consider framing, sizing, prints, image quality, turnaround times, number of images. What is the quality of their work? Is it high end? Is it low end? Is it a mass market? Is it niche? Do they offer any packages? 

Then look at the profile of the person or the company. How many online reviews do they have, where are those online reviews? How good are those online reviews? Look at what sort of social media presence they have. What awards have they won, if any? Have they been mentioned in any press? Have they had any exhibitions? 

Analyse how they do marketing. Are they listed on any particular websites? Does their website rank highly in Google? Do they run ads that you have seen on Facebook or in magazines.

Do they have a particular partnership with anyone?

Are they represented by anyone?

What sort of content do they have on their blog?

Have they written a book? Have they written for magazines?

How do they acquire their customers? Do they provide offers?

Do they get a lot of referrals?

Do you think they have any special ways that you can find that they actually find their customers?

Do they do a lot of networking?

Do they rely on inbound enquiries?

Do they have a lot of repeat business?

What are the ways that they acquire their customers? 

Finally, write down what you think their unique strengths are. What are they really good at? 

And, do they have any weaknesses? Where are they less strong? 

That’s a lot of information to gather, and a lot of work, but a hugely valuable investment of your time.

It will focus your mind on the other people that your potential customers are looking at, and the other solutions that your customers are considering. 

Hopefully it will identify some opportunities for you. Perhaps it will motivate you, and give you confidence that you do something better than everybody else, that no one else is doing. You may spot things you know is important that you know people find important.

It will also give you a baseline of the services you need to offer and the photography you need to provide if you want to compete.

Remember that you can outdo your competition on factors other than photography. The way you offer your services, your insight and your targeting of your niche all help you overcome the competition. As does your service levels, pricing, location and speed. 

And if you really know your audience you will understand what they value to you can ensure you do that better than your competitors. You should also perceive the obstacles that stop your audience from getting the photography job done, so you can do that better than the competition too.

Perhaps assessing the competition will make you realise how hard it is going to be to win clients. If there are lots of strong competitors offering amazing photography at low prices, how are you going to compete with them? If you can carve out your own segment of customers, great. But if it seems too much of a stretch for you, maybe you need to reassess your niche, or spend longer honing your skills.

As a minimum, assessing your competition will give you some ideas about pricing and what minimum level of photography and services you need to offer. It will give you a guide as to how many photos you need to have on your website.

It will give you an idea as well of how competitive it is out there and how hard you are going to have to work to stand out and get into this niche that you are thinking of entering. 

Lots of healthy competitors can be a good sign, it means there are enough customers to sustain them all, and you should be able to claim some of them for yourself. 

Very few competitors can be an indicator that there are only a tiny amount of customers, especially if it looks like they don’t do a lot of work. In this case you may need to broaden your target audience.

Understanding your direct and indirect competitors will enable you to make things better for customers by doing something that is unique and superior.

Andrew Mason

Andrew is a professional photographer and the founder of the 36exp Photographers School plus the London Photo Show.