How’s business?

Thanks to everyone who participated in my quick, 4-question survey (request posted on ASMP Pro/Student and APAnet forums). The results are in. There were 100 respondents, so this is by no means extensive, but it’s probably a decent sample.

When asked how business in 2006 has been (total billings), 49% said they were up this year over 2005. 37% said they were down and 12% said it was about the same (note, total is not 100% because someone didn’t answer). The largest group was those who said they were up 26-50% over 2005 (17%), which sounds like good news to me. On the down side, 13% said they were down by more than 25% for the year. Ouch.

For October 2006 compared to 2005, 43% said they were up, 22% said “the same,” and 32% said “down.”

On the open-ended question about how the respondents thought the rest of the year would be, and why, the answers were mostly positive, with neutral next and then a few negatives. However, the negatives were highly negative. For example “all I hear is that budgets are low or non-existent” and “dizzzzmal [sic] at best. A lot of companies are going out of town” are two of the negative comments.

On the positive side, one photographer said s/he was expecting a $2 Million year (bravo!) and several others said that their marketing was paying off (ex. “We […] have repositioned ourselves in our markets, targeted new markets and are rebuilding a client base. This has been successful and we are growing steadily.”).

As for what kind of photographers responded, here’s the breakdown (note, multiple answers were possible):

Advertising   60%
Corporate    53%
Editorial     48%
Weddings/Event     18%
Other, please specify  27% (mostly architecture, portrait, and a coupe of fine arts people)

While there weren’t enough data to do hard interpretations, my general sense is that those who were working their marketing plans were correlated to those who had more positive results and/or outlooks. Whether this is because people with plans generally feel more in control of their businesses (and thus are more positive in attitude) or not, as I said, there’s no sure way of knowing.

Thanks again to everyone who participated!!