How to Improve Your Portfolio Photos

A picture truly is worth a thousand words. Everyone loves before and after photos. That’s why so many magazines and TV shows use them in home decor and personal makeover stories.

If you’re not careful with how you shoot and present your photos, you’ll be sabotaging your business efforts considerably.

It takes time to set up a great photo

I attended many professional photo shoots during my years in advertising. Typically, there would be a photographer with expensive equipment, the stylist who paid close attention to every detail, the lighting guys armed with more equipment than you or I will ever bring to staging shoot, and sometimes a creative director on top of that. This team could spend an entire day shooting one or two rooms!

So, is it realistic to think that you can walk into a room, take two seconds and shoot a single great photo, without planning and without moving a thing? Expect that you'll take at least 10 shots each of the before and after of any given room and then have to go through them to select the best. Know that you'll never achieve what you see in magazine photos because you're not armed with the same experience, equipment, time or team. But you can still get great results if you take your time and you really pay attention to the details in the photo. A common pitfall is shooting into the light of a window, making everything else in the shot too dark, as shown in this bedroom I staged:     By re-shooting the room vertically, I captured the important details while avoiding the issues caused by the light coming in from the window.	Save the Date Times indicated are eastern (NY time). Please adjust for your time zone. April 14 (8PM) - Ask Staging Diva Live (Free for new subscribers, by invitation) If you subscribed to Staging Diva Dispatch in the last 3 months you will receive an invitation. April 15 (noon) - Staging Diva Dialog (Graduate Members Only - $47 for recording and live call) Staging Diva Graduates have a chance to ask Debra Gould questions in a small group. Here are some of the topics from our last call: choosing strong domain & company names how to grow your own email list competing with stagers who have inventory why didn't the client buy? cameras and wide angle lenses getting a logo (cost and sources) earning referral fees how to meet/contact FSBO clients furniture rental companies coordinating staging with painters/ handymen working with agents business insurance balancing staging with a full time job > Learn how to join the April 15 Dialog April 20 (11 AM to 3:30 PM) - Open Coaching Day with Staging Diva (F/ree, by invitation only - a $75 value) Staging Diva Quiz Challenge Winners get a 15 minute one-on-one coaching session with Debra Gould. Staging Diva Graduates get a 15 minute one-on-one laser coaching session with Debra Gould. Invitations sent to Staging Diva Directory members. Ongoing Mon., Tues. and Wed. by appointment Staging Diva Business Accelerator Coaching Not just for students. > Learn more about getting coaching from Debra
Another common mistake is including images in a staging portfolio that demonstrate getting rid of clutter more than decorating to sell. I shot this before and after pair as part of one of my staging projects. These photos never made it into my portfolio because they don't demonstrate a compelling reason for a client to hire me for my skills or creative eye. Yes I got rid of clutter, and arranged furniture and art for this corner of a home office, but it's still a pretty boring transformation.	These shots were not strong enough to make it into my home staging portfolio.
If your phone isn't ringing often enough with new business, it could be that your portfolio is scaring away potential customers. What is it costing you NOT to fix that problem? I share the 20 worst home staging photo mistakes and how to avoid them in the Staging Diva Ultimate Portfolio Guide along with tips for getting great testimonials and media coverage.	Learn more about the Staging Diva Ultimate Portfolio Guide

Staging Success Spotlight

 

Congratulations to Staging Diva Graduate Cheryl Ward of Ivy Home Staging (ON) on her first full blown staging project. She writes, "I couldn’t be more excited, ecstatic, enthused and motivated. A stranger saw my advertising, contacted me, hired me and paid me for a home staging consultation and arranged for final home staging once renovations are complete. Just to add, the house is HUGE. Life is good!"

Cheryl says while she enjoys her day job as a technologist in a community college, nothing "compares to being the boss of my own company, doing something so gratifying and helping people." Like many Staging Diva students, Cheryl had been buying, renovating and selling properties for many years, never realizing home staging was a career option. She says her "heart skipped a beat" when she discovered she could actually do this for a living. "Since grabbing that life line of the Staging Diva Training Program I have had such an overwhelming sense of enthusiasm for my future," says Cheryl. "I have been methodically going through the steps of getting my business started as covered in the training program. You were right, Debra, if I didn’t give up, the business would happen and now it has started. Oh, what a feeling! My sincerest thank-you for tossing out the life line." Bravo Cheryl and thank you for that amazing feedback, you inspire me to keep doing what I do!

Staging Transforms Stale Properties into Hot Listings

In a slow real estate market, buyers have less incentive to buy because they know that increased inventory means asking prices may go down even more tomorrow. As listings sit on the market month after month, and in some cases year after year, they get forgotten by real estate agents and their clients.

After all, a new listing is always more enticing than one that's been sitting around getting stale.

In most cities across the US and in some smaller markets in Canada, home sellers can be trapped in their non-selling houses for a long time, as was the case for a client of Staging Diva Graduate Holly Battaglia. She recently staged a listing that had been on and off the market for part of 2007 and most of 2009, without a single offer.

By decorating a home to be more appealing to buyers, home stagers offer the perfect solution for desperate home sellers who need a way to make their homes stand out from the competition. Congratulations to Holly Battaglia for proving that home staging can transform a stale listing into a hot property (even in a slow market).

After Holly staged her client's home, it had 7 showings in 7 days and got the first offer.

About this single project, Holly reports that her staging fee more than covered the entire Staging Diva Program plus her listing in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers.

That's the cool thing about home staging as a career You can try it out without much risk because you can quickly make back what you put into training, assuming you are learning the business side of things in the training program you take. Not all staging training programs offer the same thing and not all are taught by people who know how to succeed as a home stager. > Read 15 questions you should ask before choosing a training program.

Free report explains why this is a great time to grow a staging business. Get it Free now.

More marketing ideas to make sure you take advantage of the Spring real estate market. Learn more now.

Congratulations to Staging Diva Graduates Leah Fritz and Dianna Leeder who renewed their Profile Page directory listings for a fourth consecutive year! They know that leaving website design and maintenance to us is a huge time and money saver. Leah says, "I've had great projects from my Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers listing, plus speaking engagements. I'm in my 4th year and it's the best money I ever spent! I never needed to build my own web site."

Welcome also to our 6 newest directory members. These Staging Diva Graduates are in great shape for the spring real estate market as it will be easy for agents and home sellers in their areas to find them when they need to!

(Year 4!) Leah Fritz (WI) Perfect Place Home Staging	(Year 4!) Dianna Leeder (ON, SK) 2Visions Design	Karen Lafantaisie (ON) Room by Room	Jacqueline Taylor (KY, IN) Revive Home LLC
Mena Cabral (ON) Concept Home Staging and Design	Karen Dvorak (TX) Home Staging by Dvorak	Sheri Lee Moshansky (AB, BC) River City Home Staging	Lillian Lu (ON) Willowdale Home Staging
Save 25% on Your Directory Listing and Get a Free Company Brochure When You Join Now All Profile Page listings and Mini Listings are 25% less when you join the directory for a year. When you order, you pay the cost of building your page and you don't have to pay for hosting for another 37 days! Here's how that works: For example, let's say you order April 20/10. You would pay the cost of building your page right away (that's a one time cost of $395 for a profile listing OR $95 for a mini listing). Your listing in the Directory would be active by April 27 at the latest. In other words you are on the Internet ready to be found by potential customers within 7 days of when you order and submit your material! Then on May 26/10, you would pay the $450 for annual hosting. If you have a Profile Page, this is also when we create your Free brochure. This is the button we'll add to your listing Free so that people can download your brochure right from your page: Sample download button that goes on your directory listing Profile Page Mini Listings do not get a free brochure because there is not enough information in the listing to create one. Regardless of whether you have a Profile Page or a Mini Listing, you would not be billed for hosting again until 12 months later, on May 26, 2011 when you'd pay the cost to renew for another 12 months at the rate of $450 (assuming you wanted to renew for a second year). All Directory members can pick up to 10 locations that they serve plus up to 4 states and provinces for their listing in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers. The sooner you join for your area, the closer up to the top you appear in the listings. > How to get your own Profile Page > How to get a Mini Listing If your website is hard to find, doesn't look as professional as you'd like, or you don't have one at all, isn't it time you learned how you can join the Directory of Home Stagers?