I am Nicole Begley, a zoological animal trainer, turned pet and family photographer back in 2010. I embarked on my own adventure in photography, transforming a bootstrapping startup into a thriving six-figure business by 2012. Since then, my mission has been to empower photographers like you, sharing the knowledge and strategies that have helped me help thousands of photographers build their own profitable businesses.
I believe that achieving two to $3,000 sales is your fastest route to six figure businesses that any technically proficient photographer can consistently hit four figure sales. And no matter if you want photography to be your full-time passion or a part-time pursuit, profitability is possible. If you're a portrait photographer aspiring to craft a business that aligns perfectly with the life you envision, then you're in exactly the right place with over 350,000 downloads.
With welcome to the Freedom Focus Photography podcast. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Freedom Focus Photography podcast. I'm your host Nicole Begley, and today I am very excited to have my special guest, Daniel Senco from pou. He is the developer of my most favorite album design software ever. Welcome to the podcast Daniel. Thank you so much. Oh my gosh,
so excited to have you here. I can't even remember when I started using smart albums. It was ages ago, like a long time ago and it was pretty much revolutionary then. And it's only gotten better because I can pretty much design an album in less than 15 minutes and it looks amazing and it's my favorite. So yeah. So tell us a little bit for anyone that's maybe not familiar with Pix,
just give us a high level overview of, of what you guys do. Yeah, you said I am the developer, which is a little funny because developer is usually the person that actually writes the code. And I write zero code. I am, I'm the photographer part of the company right now. Our company's actually a little larger than when we started.
We're at 45 people now and the good people behind the scenes are the ones that actually are doing the the coding. I am the photographer part of the team and about 12 ish years ago, my friend and I, we thought that it would be, there is a better way to design albums because back then, for those of you who have been around in the photography industry for that long,
you had to use Photoshop or InDesign and it would take photographers, not even exaggerating multiple days to design a wedding album. You had to lay out the photos so they're evenly spaced. And if you wanted to say add three verticals and four horizontals to a page, you had to figure out how in the world am I gonna fit these in a way that looks like it's done professionally.
And then once you've done all that, a client might ask you to redesign something because they wanted this other image instead and you have to do it from scratch. So it used to take a lot of time to create a design because before an album is printed, it has to be designed. And actually 10 and a half years ago is our 10 anniversary of us in November was 10 years of us launching the software.
And what it does is it helps photographers design albums in less than 10 minutes and make a lot more money in their business. And maybe the most important thing is to deliver more value to their customers. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's so quick and easy. You could actually go in and pre-design an album for your sales session before it's even sold 'cause it can be done so quickly.
And you guys have like the auto one that you can just like boom and it just automatically sorts it. It's, it's literally amazing guys. I just can't even, so yeah, my gosh. So, so good. So were you a wedding photographer prior to that or portrait? What was your photography background? Yeah, wedding and portrait photographer, I've been,
as of now, I still shoot and as of now it's been over 20 years that I've been shooting. I actually learned on film, that's how long ago I started photographing and that was a really long time ago. And yeah, I, I've started the peak of my career in terms of photography. I was shooting 25, 30 weddings a year. I was actually teaching other photographers traveling internationally.
I even developed a tutorial DVD, which is back then it was DVDs that were sold in over 40 different countries. And yeah, I love photography. I still shoot mostly for fun and mostly to be able to relate to our clients so that I can experience the pain of being a photographer so that I know how to serve photographers better. Fantastic. So with Pixel Lu,
you guys have the album design software, smart albums, and then you also have a couple other different options. So what are all the different ways that you guys support photographers? When we release smart albums, people really loved it. They thought we were geniuses and they were, you guys have to do more. And one of the things that I've kept hearing over and over again is start for saying we really need a way to have a easy to make slideshow.
Because I know myself, I was making slideshows by hand and I was using Adobe Premier to put images to a beat. And I just felt like that was a better way to display images. Rather than sending a link with say, you know, a thousand images and overwhelming my clients, I would send them a video essentially of their images synced to a beat.
And so we decided to take on that project. Funny enough, we thought it's gonna be like a few months of work and it ended up being two years of of work. And so we created smart slides and it's a way to create a slideshow in less than 10 minutes, we have over a thousand licensed songs tracks that you can use. You just drag,
drag and drop your images. It does auto beat matching for you. So it's a really great and easy way to show images to your clients. And then a few years ago we also released a gallery product. This is where photographers can drop drag and drop images, create a simple beautiful gallery that they can send to their clients. And actually the the starter plan,
which is 10 galleries, storage is free. So every anyone can use it without having to pay anything. And also we've released a few years ago an add-on to smart albums that is called cloud proofing. And that add-on allows you to send the designs to your clients so that they can look at 'em, leave their comments, suggest changes, and it allows you to quickly communicate with your customers so that you can finalize that design and send it out to print.
I love it. Yeah, I use that cloud proofing, it's really, really helpful because like the other option was like you'd have to like export A PDF and then send the PDFs to your clients and then you have to worry about making sure it's connected and then it's a Google Drive link and then they can't access it and oh my gosh, this is so much easier.
Yeah, that Definitely. That's fantastic. So what are, I would say, or with your, the different albums or different photographers, have you found any kind of unique ways that people are utilizing the, the album design software or different genres that are utilizing albums that maybe you didn't realize before? Or Yeah, just some, some interesting ways maybe for people to think about adding albums into their business.
Yeah, so I think the very first thing is you should make an album for yourself. Because if you, if you don't make albums for yourself, it's very difficult to sell those albums. When you have to sort of force the sale of an album, it, it's gonna feel like you're not really believing in what you're selling and you're gonna feel kind of dirty doing it and you're gonna regret even getting into it.
So before you can sell something, well you have to believe in it yourself. And the best way to do that is to make albums for yourself. That's step number one. So I then we go on trips or like my son is two and a half now, so I intend for like for every year of his life to make a little album. I think that's number one.
And then once you've done that, you really see the value of albums and then it's not hard to sell. And you can do an album for pretty much anything, any trip, any shoot, any, whether it's an engagement session, a portrait session, a wedding, a whether you're photographing pets or kids or really even buildings, if you're doing like travel photography or street photography,
you can make an album out of it. And there are lots of benefits to creating an album, but really it comes down to the process of curating the images. 'cause you have to choose the best images and putting them in a collection, which is an album that represents the best of that trip or the best of that wedding or the best of that shoot.
So it's a really great way to package the images after you've done editing them. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Absolutely. One of the ways that I think too that we can utilize albums is not only for a sales process so of you know, you know, having a session selling the album, but also potentially for marketing. So a lot of,
we have a lot of pep photographers in our audience, so a lot of them go to events or they do a lot of marketing at other locations, things like that. You could actually create really portfolio albums that could be available, you know, at your events or maybe, gosh, even creating like a fun little book. I'm just thinking this popped into my head just now of a fun little marketing idea you can do,
you can do like the dogs of X, Y, Z, whatever business and create like a little private book for that client that you know, photograph their clients, which then build more clients for you and all sorts of just fun marketing ways that you can utilize your albums as well, really. Yeah, absolutely. I think the truth is that people see albums pretty rarely now because everything is on their phones now and people get lost in their phones 'cause there's thousands and thousands of images in there.
And nowadays an album, a printed album is something pretty rare. And so when they see one, especially if it's a well done professional album, it's a really a wow factor and it allows you to offer something to your audience that no one else does probably in in your area. Yeah, I've actually experienced that quite a bit from clients where you say album and they think it's gonna be like a Shutterfly type album with just like the magazine really thin pages and like the really kind of like,
you know, like normal kind of hardcover like textbook kind of cover, but then they see samples of some of these albums that you can create and they're like, this is not what I expected. So yeah, definitely being able to create those albums, those samples. So utilize, you know, even your own, like you said, I love to use some of my own images to create my album samples because then I get to enjoy them myself.
Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's that curation portion of the work. 'cause with smart albums it's ex extremely easy to create the book. The difficult part is choosing the images because if you have say 500 images, choosing a hundred is actually quite difficult because you have to debate which one needs to go here and which one needs to go there. But that process,
that work of curation is what makes the end product so amazing because what's the saying like for for websites or portfolios that your work is as good as your worst image in that portfolio. So when you curate your work and present it in a curated form, like an album, you're really elevating your work because you're choosing the best, the best images from that work.
And when someone looks at your work in a cur that's curated and presented in such a beautiful way, it just makes you look so much better. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's actually one thing I talk to my clients about when we're designing albums because I do have a couple options where they can include all of their images from their session in the album.
Now I am shooting portraits, so it's definitely a lot less images to show than say a wedding. But I've found that and I let them know like, yeah, we can include all of them, however, if we wanna kind of pick and choose our best, then they're able to be bigger and just like so much more impactful because you know, you can't still build a pretty big album.
I think I, the biggest one I've done was 20 spreads, so it was a monster, it was a, it was a nice big album. But yeah then like they kind of curate their favorite totally like you know, their best of the best that we can have these nice big, gorgeous images that just, you know, when you start to look at it that way,
it's just such a, a beautiful product for them. Yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a definitely a better way to serve your customers than just sending them digital files. Of course everybody loves digital files. Of course you can post them everywhere and people can like them. Of course that's, that's great in itself. But it's unfortunately nowadays everyone does that.
It's really not a way to stand out and the way to stand out is to offer something that few photographers do nowadays. And we, with that we've seen kind of the, the return of print because in some ways people are just tired of everything digital. Yeah. I've actually found that I used to photograph families and pets and in 2016 I went all pets.
But even in that like 2015 era, so gosh, almost 10 years ago I was starting to get a lot of family clients that had done the, like all inclusive digital, 'cause like early 2000 or like af early 2010s was when the market really started to like just grow with more and more people entering and more and more like all inclusive low cost digitals.
And I started to get so many more clients that had had that experience and like we didn't do anything with the images, they're just sitting on my hard drive or they didn't have a good experience for whatever reason that are, you know, we're choosing then to, to seek out people that were offering a higher level experience with more products so that, you know,
they have a full experience through the entire, the entire process and they're gonna end up with something gorgeous and tangible that they can really enjoy. So yeah, I found that and then I found that the pet industry was lagging a little bit in that, but then I've also kind of found that too where people have tried the, the all-inclusive digital and they're like,
eh, you know, they, they kind of miss the product piece of it because you know, otherwise Yeah, they just sit on your hard drive and you never get to enjoy them. Yeah, yeah. And you gotta remember that if someone's hiring you for a shoot, I know with at least my family, like it's not something that I'm, you know,
I'm not hiring a photographer like five times a year. It's something that's special and something that they're really looking forward to and it's something that doesn't happen very often. So the better you can serve them by providing them ways to relive their memories and to enjoy those, those portraits the better. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So with smart albums, I wonder how many vendors are you guys up to now that you work with?
Do you know that number? I know the list continues to get longer and longer. Yeah, it's, it's near nearly 200 now. I think we're at 180 or so. And basically for those listening, what we're referring to is we pixel don't print the, the books, we only help you with the design portion, but someone has to print those books and there are many,
many places around the world that do a wonderful job. And so what we do is we contact the best labs out there and we ask them to share with us their requirements for their books. Because every manufacturer has different requirements. The sizing is different, how much they cut off at the end of the pages is different, how many maximum number of spreads and pages is different.
So they all have different variations of what is and required and what can cannot be done. So we talk to them, we figure out all the difficult measurements and spec specifications and we load them into smart albums so that when you choose to work with one of these labs, you can simply choose them from a list and we have 180 of them. Once you choose that lab from the list and you choose the size of the book that you want to print,
everything else is figured out for you. The sizing, the measurements, the, the bleeds, the save zones so that when you send those files to the printer, they are exactly what the printer requires. Yeah, I love that. If you guys wanna see an example of how easy this is, I, I am gonna link to a YouTube video that I did showing how I design an album with a software.
It'll be in the show notes so you guys can go over and check that out. I mean it is literally you open it up and you choose, okay, I would like pro DPI album this orientation, this size. And then you can choose a couple other things like how much spacing between the images, how much of a like edge, a black edge you want around the images and then,
and a couple other little template questions if you want. And then you just import your images, drag and drop and then just start designing. And you even have that like one click, like get it started design, which, what's that one actually called? I'm just calling it the, It's called super, it's called, it's called Auto build. There you go.
And what it, what it does is it analyzes your images based on the timestamps, whether they're color or black and white. And it creates the design based on what your specifications are. For example, if you wanted, let's say you have 27 images and you wanted a 10 spread album, well you would tell it that you want 10 spread album and then it would analyze the images and then it would make the design based on those images.
Yeah, yeah. It does a really, really pretty good job. And then you can go in and customize it. Yeah, as needed. And it's just so easy to like the, the way that I do it, it's all sometimes start with auto build or it's so easy sometimes just to do it how I wanna do it too, that I'll just go through and like chunk my images together and put 'em up there and then,
so you have them all at the bottom and I select, maybe I want three on this page, so I select the three to go in there. And then I just use my little arrow key and just fly through the different templates to I'm like, oh that one. And then you can just drag and drop an image from one to the other to switch spots.
I mean it is so easy and user-friendly guy, it's definitely go check out that video. It's, it's absolutely fantastic. And then, yeah, the cloud proofing also just life life changer because then you can easily send it off to your client. They can go through and leave you comments, but nine times outta 10 they're always just look, say, looks great,
print it. Yeah. Which is really helpful. Yeah, because if you're printing an album, it's usually a few hundred dollars for you and it's multiple hundreds of dollars for the client. So before you print the book, the album, they want to look at it, they wanna make sure that the right images were chosen, they wanna make sure that the images that they want big are big,
the images that they want removed are removed. And so they are able to look at each spread and if they have suggestions or or requests, they can comment. And those comments, those suggestions are gonna come right back into smart albums so that you see what they want changed and you can make those changes very quickly and re-upload the design and then once they approve it,
it's, it's all set to to be printed. I love it. I love it. Do you see any mistakes that photographers are making when it comes to album design or you know, album sales? The number one mistake is by not doing it. That's the number one. And I know there's a lot of fear around how much work that is and you have to learn something new.
Like all of that is true. It is a little bit of learning because you have to decide on what print lab you wanna use. You wanna maybe decide on like pricing that you wanna offer that's there, there is some of that, but the most difficult portion, which is the design is, is really, really simple now. And by not offering albums,
it means that you're not serving your clients as well as you could be because there's, there's a lot of value here that you're not providing to them. And also it's a great way to make extra money on the same shoot that you already have shot. It's, you know, a typical album to print depends on the company, obviously it depends on how,
how big it is. But it typical wanna be like something like $300, let's just say. And you can easily sell it for a thousand. And most customers are happy to pay that a thousand dollars extra to get something really valuable that they'll keep for the rest of their life. And you know, that's like $700 profit for probably less than 30 minutes of work when you consider choosing the images and making the design and everything else.
Yeah, I actually kind of recommend that. Well, for Amira work I always let my students know like at least four times. But I actually think albums are even way more profitable. 'cause I recommend kind of just ball parking about 10 times your cost because, because of the value of what they're getting, right? They're getting so many images. And that also depends,
my gosh, there's so many ways you can price your albums. You can include your digital files, which is what I do. So it becomes a no-brainer that my clients are like, okay, may I do artwork? And if I do the the album, then the, the files that are in that album are also included. Or you can have the album at a little bit of a lower price point and then have the digital files as an add-on my gosh,
there's just so many different ways to utilize that as such a, a, a, a driver, a value driver in your pricing. Another way that I've seen it done a lot that I love is when somebody orders, you know, a wall piece and you can even have it as a wall piece of a certain size plus a certain album. Then they can,
you know, get a discount on digital files or get all the digital files or get some sort of special gift. It's just such a, a fun way to do that and they, they really do love them once they see them. I think it's one of those things where it's, you know, not all clients, I would say maybe 20% of my clients come into the session knowing that they want an album,
but the majority of them don't even realize how much they love it until they see it, see the, the sample. And also after we have the session and they see there are all these other images that they still love that it becomes such a great way to include all those. Yeah, I I, yeah and speaking of speaking of mistakes, I think like you said,
if you, they don't know that you offer them or that they even wanted one, they will never have that desire spontaneously. So it's important to show an example, just like I learned this recently, but you know how you come to a restaurant and there are always wine glasses there and they, if you don't order anything, they come and take them away.
And I always thought, why did they even set them here? They always take 'em away. Well, they set the wine glasses because you're more likely to order wine. That's because you're reminded that you can order wine now. There's no hard sell, no one's trying to shove, you know, bottles of wine down your throat, but they're telling you there is wine here.
Well how are you doing that with your business? You don't have to force anything down anyone's throat, but you should let them know, hey, these are the options that you have. And an album is one of them and so you need to show an album so they can see what they have an option of buying. Yeah, you could actually even take like create a,
take a session that you love and create a sample album in smart albums and exported its PDF and like create a little gallery on your website of like, hey, this is what do you wanna flip through an album? This is what an album would look like. So they can actually even see that before they even book their session and you start to, to plant the seeds,
right? Yeah, absolutely. What has been the, the most rewarding part for you now that you've been, well, well over 10 years of building this business? What's been the most exciting part for you? Man, there are lots of answers here that are all correct. I obviously love being part of a team and creating something with a team. We have,
like I said, 45 or so people that are spread around all over the world, 20 different countries are represented and it's really exciting. And from the standpoint of photographers, just the impact that we've had on the industry. Last year alone, we had a million and a half albums designed with smart albums. Wow. Just the last years alone. So if you,
you know, if you 10 x that because of the 10 years, we're probably approaching 20 million albums designed sometimes soon. Yeah. And that's a lot. That's 20 ish million families out there that are, have an album in their home because of, of the work we did. So yeah. That's really exciting. I love it. I love it. Is there a way for someone to go learn more about smart albums or like test it out?
Do you guys have a like a little trial or like can they go explore with it and play? Absolutely. Once you play with it, I think you become addicted. Absolutely. There is a trial. You can google us plu.com or smart albums. I'll find, find the same website, you can download the trials, try try the software out, see how it works for you.
And if you wanna save 15%, you can use Nicole's code here, freedom Focus, and that'll give you 15% off for the first year. Yeah, awesome. And you guys will make your money back, hand over fist because yeah, once you're able to start to market these albums more, and also I think one of the reasons a lot of people don't push them or don't sell them,
and I've heard this so many times where they're just like, well I just don't wanna design it. Like they, the photographer feels like the designing piece is gonna be so heavy and like they don't know how to do it or you know, maybe some other softwares are not as intuitive and you know, some labs have their own album design software, but I have found nothing that is anywhere near as easy and user friendly as smart albums.
So once you have smart albums, you'll a hundred percent want to add albums into your business. Thank you. Thank You so much. Of course. Yeah. Thank you again Daniel, do you have any like final words for anybody out there that's kind of on the fence about if adding albums into their business is right for them? Yeah, most print labs offer a discount if you wanted to create a sample album.
So download smart albums for free, take the trial, create a album that is a, an example of your work and then you'll have a piece to show to your clients, to potential clients. And if they purchase an album then you can sign up for smart album. So there's really zero risk here and there's only upside. Yeah, I love it.
Awesome. Well yeah, you guys go check it out. Pix lu.com, P-I-X-E-L-L u.com. We'll have links in the show notes down below and then also save 15% with the code freedom focus one word. And yeah, reach out to Daniel, let him know how awesome his software is because it really is life changing. There aren't too many times where I get softwares,
I'm like, I will never not use this. This is by far the best, but this is definitely one of them. So thank you Daniel for being the, the main driving force in creating this many years ago and thanks for being here on the podcast with us and we wish you tons of success in the future. Thank you very much.