Charming Business

Hi,
I'm new to the forum and saw a couple of your posts on starting a business in photography. I'm very much interested in this topic and was wondering if you had already posted some links, suggested reading material, etc. on this topic to get more up to speed. I want to spend the necessary time trying to develop a solid plan before even thinking about starting a business in this field. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Xxxxxx

Just so you know... again... I am getting paid ZERO, ZILCH, NADA, NOTHING for the endorsements here. It's just people or sources I have found to be great in the business and that I admire.

Here is the quick and messy answer I gave to him:

I am working on a blog for exactly this, but to be honest there isn't much there yet. I JUST started with that post on building a house.
the blog can be found here: http://charmingbusiness.blogspot.com/
It's really pretty useless right now, but I am hoping to get all of my thoughts together and organized into writing your business plan. 

The best links I can give you right now are Todd Reichman's blog www.amantofish.com Read from the beginning. He has some incredible insight on designing who you are as a business.  

Small Business Administration. They have incredible resources for anyone going into business. As you tour around on their website you will find everything and anything about how to go about starting a business.  

This next one is an investment on your part, but I can't tell you how much it will be worth in the end. Professional Photographers of America. An aspiring membership is about $17 per month for before you go into business. The professional membership is just under $30 per month. BUT!!! For that money you get an unbelievable amount of discounts and benefits. For the full professional you get $15K in gear coverage and the indemnification trust is an additional $50 a year I think. It's kind of like an insurance policy for if you screw up or if you get sued-regardless of whether you are at fault or not. They have an incredible amount of research and stuff that is invaluable to you in their benchmark study. There is so much information in the PPA that the membership will pay for itself even if you don't use the discounts and extra stuff.  

CreativeLive has some amazing classes. If you sign up and watch them when they are live they are FREE. To purchase them recorded is really not all that expensive considering the information in them. It would cost more to go to a seminar than it does for the recorded ones. There are some on business in there I believe. I haven't looked lately at what is coming up, but they are always GOOD.  

Elizabeth Halford of Elizabeth Halford Photography has an awesome blog with lots of information on all kinds of stuff business and photography related. This is her Business of Photography page. She's a very wise woman!

If I think of anything else I'll try to remember to pass it along. Usually I do post anything I run across in the forum, but sometimes when things are in their busy season (now!) I forget!