Welcome to Part 2. We’re now going to head straight into creating your competition, and one of the first things you need to do is create this irresistible offer. It needs to be a high-value prize that drives people to participate in your competition – something eye-catching, something that makes people feel it’s worth signing up.

Main prize details

We always start with a high-ticket prize value: £1,000, £1,500, even £2,000, depending on your costs. I would always suggest wall art, canvases or framed prints, something that doesn’t cost you a fortune but has a high perceived value.

In a moment, we’ll go through the main prize examples for both Level 11 and Timeless Images. One very important point: do not include any digital files in your main prize. The hope is that your main prize winner will still want to buy the digitals. Everyone wants digital files, so fingers crossed they buy them later, which means you can potentially cover the cost of the prize.

What we offer

At Level 11, we offer Nphoto canvases with a package value of £1,500. The prize includes one large canvas (around 36×26 inches) and five small canvases (16×12 inches). We have two canvas packages in our studio: one with one large and two small, and one with three small canvases. The smaller canvases are 16×12. I always choose the nice thick canvases – the 40mm depth – because they look expensive even though they’re fantastic value.

We also make sure our runner-up prizes look attractive. For runners-up, we remove the session fee entirely, so you’re waiving the booking deposit or session fee. If you operate with a booking deposit system instead of a session fee, you would waive the deposit (which would normally come off the client’s final order).

In addition, we give a physical product. Our runner-up prize is a 40mm thick 16×12 canvas from Nphoto. It costs about £20. So, aside from any Facebook ad costs, that £20 canvas is your only fixed cost for a runner-up.

Rose offers a framed print using DSCL prints, Cotswold mounts and her local framer, so she can keep costs consistent.

Tracking everything

I strongly recommend keeping track of all your competition results. I meticulously track mine. In the addendum for this part of the course, you’ll find my full tracker. There’s a copy of the one I’m currently using, with names redacted. I keep one tracker for each competition at all times so I can compare year on year – changes in costs, average spend, number of entries and how many actually turn up. You’ll also find a blank tracker for your own use.

Tracking helps you monitor marketing costs, product costs, additional sales and profit per client. If you want to go further (completely optional), you can calculate your hourly rate. I do this; Rose doesn’t.

On my tracker, I include:

· Session time per client

· Editing hours

· Viewing and ordering preparation time

After each part of the client journey, I log the numbers. I do this because sometimes you’ll have an unusually short session with a high profit, and if you don’t track it accurately it can skew your averages.

For example, I once had a runner-up client who only wanted the free canvas they’d won plus one digital file. I charge £100 for a single digital. Their session lasted under 10 minutes. Editing took 20 minutes maximum. There was no in-person viewing; I simply uploaded the two photos (one of baby alone, one with siblings). Because I tracked this accurately, the hourly rate still made sense. If I’d logged it as a standard 4-hour workflow, it would have ruined the numbers.

Tracking hourly rate matters because our time is usually our biggest cost.

So I track everything: hourly rate, customer spend, costs and expenses (including album costs if they buy albums), and final profit. When I quote earlier figures like £16,000–£17,000 net profit, that’s with all cost of goods and ad spend removed. It doesn’t include studio rent, but it does include everything directly related to the competition.

Provided resources

In this module you’ll find:

· An example spreadsheet (with names removed)

· A blank spreadsheet you can use

· A note about VAT considerations

I’m not VAT-registered; Rose is. There’s a small video about how to factor VAT into your tracker if you need it.

Next steps

Next, we’ll talk about how to prepare for your newborn competition so everything is ready for launch – all emails, templates, landing pages, automation, everything. This is literally “competition in a box”: you just take it, personalise it, and launch.