A client contact me today about his portrait clients asking, “You keep the images don’t you?” and how to respond to this question.
In reality, these clients are testing to see if they can delay part of their order, as they would like to have more images than they believe they can afford right now. Depending upon how much a client values them, they will associate a value right now.
Reality is that if they are able to purchase at a later date, they will place less value on what they will purchase, right now. This causes them to purchase less with us… right now.
We all know that a very small percentage of people actually come back to order the rest of the images. In fact the percentage is so small, most of us running businesses can actually remember the few exceptions that actually did come back. We then convince ourselves that it actually does happen and accept it as normal practise.
Keep it in perspective guys and gals, these are the exceptions in most cases.
So what do people tell their clients in this situation??
You absolutely need to be honest with your clients and tell them the truth. The truth is that you really can only guarantee 100 year archival quality on anything that is printed and finished by your studio.
Yes we back up. And it is always the client that comes back to order the 8×10 at a later date, that makes you drive to your archive, climb over boxes, dig deep, only to find that that. is the only disk you cannot find, or, it is also the file on the disk that you found that cannot be read. It is also the file that was corrupted and you now have a copy of a corrupted file on your hard drive and backed up copy of that corrupted file on two other DVD’s.
DVDs are not a reliable backup and have a short life expectancy, with files eroding over a few years and becoming unreadable.
Ask your clients if it is about the money, and tackle the real problem. If they were planning on coming back in 6 months, offer a payment option that allows them to make a decision now, and ensure that what they have created with you, can be treasured and handed down to their children.
Its simple, explain the facts. Nothing is guaranteed. Digital media is changing so rapidly that there are no guarantees, unless you have it printed and it is safely hanging on your wall.
I proudly backed up all my family photos and have a stack of floppy disks that I can no longer read (does anyone still own a computer with a floppy disk reader by the way). It does not seem that long ago that I though that they were guaranteed also.