Welcome to our course on how to run a profitable newborn competition.

Out there, you’ll see plenty of things telling you how to make more money from photography and how to get more leads. One of the biggest questions we get about our newborn photography competition is, does it really work? And the answer is yes — it absolutely does. In this course, I’m going to explain how it works, why it works, and how we can actually prove it.

So, myself and Rose have been running a newborn competition for about six years now, twice a year. One of the most important factors for us is data collection and timing. We run a newborn competition in December, and then again in July. That gives us one competition that fills the first six months of the year with bookings, and another that fills the following six months. We’re constantly collecting data that we use for lots of different reasons, which we’ll talk about later in the course.

So yes — December and July are your key times.

Let’s talk about cost versus profit. Our Facebook ads cost around £160 per competition, each. And in terms of net profit, our Christmas competition usually brings in about £17,000. The mid-year one is slightly lower at around £16,000. The average customer spend for these clients is between £399 and £499.

In this course, you’re going to get everything: every Facebook advert, every social media post, every email, every mailing that we use. It’s suitable for all photographers, even if you’re just starting out. We’re going to show you how to grow your database, secure bookings all year round, and create a competition that is so easy to repeat that you can just open it back up twice a year without rebuilding the whole thing.

The long-term benefit is huge. Running this competition twice a year gives you a reliable, predictable customer base. It reduces the pressure of constantly chasing bookings because you’ll already have a good chunk of your diary filled. For myself and Rose, the brilliant thing is that every year we know we’ve got that £16,000 to £17,000 coming in every six months from these competitions. It takes away the stress of an empty diary and gives you a solid foundation to work from.

On top of that, it expands your reach and grows your database year after year. Even the people who don’t book immediately are added to your system, and you can use that throughout the year for other marketing. You’ll also find that many families come back again and again — I’ve got lots of clients who are now on their second or third baby, and they originally entered as runner-ups in one of our newborn competitions.

So, next, we’re going to get you set up to run your own newborn competition. We’ll set it up once, and then you’ll be able to relaunch it twice a year with only about twenty to thirty minutes of updates. That’s why we love running it this way — it’s literally a competition in a box that you can open and close whenever you need it.

In the next chapters, we’re going to go through how to structure your competition properly. Over the years, we’ve ironed out every bug, refined every piece of phrasing, and tested exactly what works to build trust and increase bookings. We’ll give you all the emails, all the templates, and all the guidance you need.

So, carry on to Chapter Two.