Alain Briot Fine Art Photography

The Marketing Mastery Workshop on DVD

A comprehensive tutorial detailing the how and why
of Marketing and Selling your photographs

The Marketing Mastery Workshop on DVD goes much further than the Marketing CD
by providing you with information that I have not shared previously

The Marketing Mastery Workshop on DVD is now available
to members of the pre-registration list.
To join this list simply email me with
"Marketing DVD" in the subject line.

You will receive an email right away
and you will benefit from a unique special offer.

An upgrade path is offered to current Marketing CD owners.

September 21st
I forgot something
I forgot to mention that the new Marketing Mastery Workshop on DVD comes with a $100 off coupon for any of the workshops taught by Natalie and I. This coupon is mailed to you after you place your order. If you already placed your order, this coupon will be mailed to you shortly.

Also, some of you asked if we offer a payment plan for the DVD. Yes, we do.

We can charge the cost of the DVD isn three separate installments. What we do is divide the cost of the DVD by three, charge one payment to your card when you order it, then charge the 2 other payments a month and two months later. We can also do 4 payments if this works better for you. The reason for the 3 payments is that this works great for most photographers.

If this is of interest and will work best for you let us know. There is no extra cost for this option and you get your DVD immediately. You don't have to wait until all 3 payments are made, we ship your DVD immediately after we receive your order.

Right now we have only a few Marketing Mastery Workshop on DVD packages left at the special offer price. This may be your last chance to take advantage of our special pricing, don't delay placing your order.

Right now the Printing Mastery Workshop on DVD is offered to members of the Pre-Registration list. If you are not on the list and want to have a chance to benefit from this promotion email me with "Marketing DVD" in the subject line. My email address is alain@beautiful-landscape.com.

September 19th
The DVD is now available. An announcement was sent to all the members of the pre-announcement list. If you are not on this list yest simply email me at alain@beautiful-landscape.com with Marketing DVD in the subject line.

September 5th
The DVD is now complete and I plan to release it following our Navajoland Workshop which starts this Friday. I am very excited at the contents of the Marketing DVD because this content exceed my goals for the amount of materials I planned to include. I ended up including much more content and many more materials than I originally thought. This resulted in some delays but I am sure you will agree that it was worth it as the extra content really make the DVD a comprehensive tutorial on learning how to sell your photography in as many different venues as are available including galleries, stock photography, the web, your site, stores, representatives, wholesale, retail, consignement, you name it.

A FAQ is now available for the Marketing Mastery DVD. You can read this faq by clicking here.

September 2nd
I am in the process of editing the recordings for the DVD. This is taking me longer than expected due to the amounts of recordings I made (I have over 30 hours of recordings about how to sell your photographs). At this time I have about 10 hours of recordings left to edit and format.

The good news is that I continue to add new information that I did not think of including at first. For example I now have a section on Artist in Residence programs and on selling your work to National Park giftstores and bookstores, a process that is very specific to the parks and quite different from other wholesale sales.

If you have not emailed me yet to request that your name be placed on the pre-announcement list for this new DVD tutorial, doing so is easy: simply email me at alain@beautiful-landscape.com with "Marketing DVD" in the subject line, and your name will be added to this list right away. There is no obligation to buy, you will simply be the first to be notified and you will benefit from a special offer, a lower price and other exciting opportunities that will be announced when the DVD is published. An upgrade path will be offered to Marketing CD owners as well.

If you have not read my essay on Marketing, you can do so now by clicking on this link for the Marketing essay.

August 27th
Printing Mastery Workshop on DVD update
I have now completed all the recordings for the DVD and I am working on editing and formatting the files. I plan to have the DVD ready before the Navajoland Workshop. The DVD will then ship either before or just after the workshop.

The contents are very exciting and I continue to add new material that I find to be indispensable. I have not totaled the length of the recordings yet but I believe that they are well in excess of 20 hours total. I will have a complete, detailed list of the Marketing DVD contents when it is officially announced.

August 20th
Marketing Mastery DVD Update
I am about half-way done with the completion of the Marketing Mastery DVD. This is a huge project and I am very excited at the prospect of announcing it. I decided to include much more information that I planned at first on the DVD and this is making completing this project take longer than I expected. My goal is to offer you a course that enables you to study how to market your work in a way that is as complete and as comprehensive as I can make it. The good news is you will have a marketing course more thorough than anything else currently available. The goal of the DVD is to enable you to find all the information you need to sell your work by covering every aspect of being in business, of marketing and of selling photographs. All the venues you can use to sell your work are featured on the DVD and described in detail. Tips are included, based on my personal experience using these venues and based on my students' experience as well. These venues include the web, galleries, stock photography agencies, magazines, publishing and more. No stone is left unturned, and you benefit from the knowledge I amassed over the 10 years that I have run my photography business successfully, networking with professionals in the industry, teaching thousands of students, and learning from marketing professionals through 1 on 1 consulting, classes and conferences.

If all goes well I plan to have the Marketing DVD ready at the end of August or early in September. If you have signed up for my pre-announcement list, you will be notified the very day the DVD is available.

August 15th
PAbout the Marketing Mastery DVD
Ten years ago I started selling my work full time. During these ten years I learned an enormous amount about marketing and running a business. My goals in this new DVD is to share this knowledge with you so that you can benefit from it and run a better chance at succeeding selling your photographs. My emphasis is on selling fine art prints on the web, in galleries, at shows and in other venues. However, in the DVD I also talk about selling stock photographs, licensing your photographs, selling wholesale, and in many other venues. In fact, I try to address all the possible venues through which you can sell your photographs.

When I started my business ten years ago I did not know any of this. In fact, I had never taken a business course and I did not know that I would need to learn how to market and sell my work. I thought that all I needed was to have nice photographs, show them to stores and friends, and wait for them to buy them from me. I did not know that photographs have to be sold and that people do not simply buy them because you place them in front of them, no matter how beautiful your photographs are.

My first business move after trying to sell my work to friends was to place my work in galleries. At the time I lived in a very small town and there was only one gallery that I thought would be appropriate. Looking back, there were several of them, but I did not realize it at the time because my concept of where my work could be sold was very narrow. In other words, I passed upon other potentially successful outlets because they did not fit my "cookie-cutter" idea of what the ideal gallery was.

The gallery I chose did accept my work, in large part because they had just opened and needed to build their inventory. Plus, the owner didn't know that much more than me in regards to selling photographs and thought my work would do great because it was beautiful. I still remember our mutual excitement while we looked at my work spread on a table in the gallery. We were already counting the money that we were going to make. This was going to be big! We thought I should start printing more images right away so I wouldn't run out in what was bound to be a huge success!

A year later most of my work was still in this gallery, unsold. Some did sell, but slowly and painfully. Something else hit me: at the end of the year, when I tallied how many pieces I had sold total, I realized that I had sold more pieces myself than through the gallery. Furthermore, since I received 100% of the selling price on the pieces I sold myself and only 50% on the pieces sold by the gallery, I had generated more income on my own than through the gallery. This convinced my that I should start selling on my own and forgo the gallery route. However, to do so I had to start selling my work full time, a decision that was quite scary at the time because it involved quitting was I was doing and starting in a different direction.

I did take the decision to do photography full time, and in the process of running my business I realized that I absolutely needed to study how to sell and market photographs if I wanted to survive. I read a number of books on the subject, but I could not find any that focused on selling fine art photographs. Most focused on stock, or on publications, or on other venues. Most had information that was superficial rather than practical. A lot of the information was outdated. None addressed selling on the web.

I also could not find tutorials on selling art directly to clients, a venue which I had found to be one of the most lucrative. When customers had questions, or objected to buying my work, I did not know what to say to them. I had not idea how to answer their questions or address their objections. I was left standing there with customers walking away, telling me that they would be back, and me believing that they would.

I finally found, by accident, a photographer who offered marketing courses and one on one consulting. I decided I could use his expertise and decided to study with him. This took several years. I started by purchasing his tutorials --which were priced at several thousand dollars each-- and I continued with one on one consulting --spending even more money than on his tutorials. The reason for doing one on one consulting was that this photographer's specialty was portraits and not landscapes. I therefore had to work with him to adapt his marketing and selling techniques to selling landscapes instead of portraits. This took a long time before I was able to perfect my approach and I couldn't do it from printed materials. I had to do it by talking to him, by asking questions and by working with him finding answers to the problems I was having selling my work.

To make a long story short the outcome of this process proved to be extremely successful. In a matter of a few years, about 5 or so, I went from selling a few pieces to selling tens of thousands of pieces. In doing so I had to solve a number of problems as my business grew and my priorities changed.

The process of learning how to sell my work was long and arduous. I like to call it the school of hard knocks. While I sold my work I met many photographers and by talking to them I realized that I was not alone having difficulties selling my work. I realized that most artists, and most photographers, have not studied marketing and salesmanship. They are doing photography because they love it, not because they know how to sell it. When these photographers decide to make a living with their work, they find out --like I did-- that the going is tough.

I Like to share what I know. I like to share because the more I give and the more I receive. As I give what I know, more knowledge comes to me. The knowledge that I give is replaced by new knowledge that I never thought existed. As a consequence of this process I have realized that the true key to knowledge is to teach and share your knowledge because the more you teach, the more you will learn.

I started sharing my knowledge of marketing and salesmanship about four years ago when I published the Marketing CD. The Marketing CD was a big step forward. However, it is far from featuring everything that I learned about marketing photographs. Therefore, three years ago, I started offering the Marketing Photography Seminar. This is a two-day course in which we cover just about every aspect of selling your work.

Finally, about two years ago I decided to make a larger version of the Marketing CD that would feature everything that I know about selling photographs. To this end I started building up a library of all that I learned and all that I think one must know to market your work efficiently and profitably. As I did so, I accumulated a very large amount of materials which for clarity's sake I organized in different categories. When I was done with this process I had 28 separate categories which I organized in logical order. I called each category "steps" because each category represents one more step towards success.

All 28 steps are featured on the DVD. Together they represent what I consider to be the most comprehensive tutorial about selling photographs that I know of. These steps include theory, practice, suppliers, products that I recommend, marketing venues, selling venues, and much much more.

At this time the DVD is in the completion stages and will be released soon. To help you be the first to have the DVD I have opened a pre-registration list. To join this list simply email me with "Marketing DVD" in the subject line.

The advantage of being on this list is that you will be first notified when the DVD is available. You will also be able to take advantage of a unique special offer reserved to members of the pre-announcement list.

If you already have the Marketing CD, or if you are buying it now, please know that an upgrade path will be offered to all Marketing CD owners.

Thank you for reading this rather long description, or story, about the upcoming Marketing Mastery DVD. Additional details on the Marketing DVD will be posted to this page soon. so please bookmark this page and return often to make sure you do not miss important new information.

I wish you the best with your photography,

Alain Briot