People & Planet
This business makes a positive difference by...
- Helping people keep precious photographs and memories in a reliable digital format.
- Save the environment by discouraging the use of paper photographs.
- Allow people to easily share their photographs online.
- Giving something that can be treasured and kept forever.
- Making someone feel good because they know that they are helping you develop your business skills.
Before You Start
Do Some Market Research
Conduct a quick survey among your neighbours and friends asking them:
- Do they have piles of photographs stacked and collecting dust?
- Do they have the time to organise and put them all in a photo album?
- Do they like the idea of digitizing their pictures – making it viewable with a computer?
- Would they like to be able to share their digital pictures online?
This would give you a clear idea on how your business will perform
Things You'll Need
- A computer with internet connection
- A CD/DVD Burner
- Empty CDs or DVDs
- A scanner and scanning software
Finding Clients
- Start with your neighbours and friends - You have the advantage that they already know and trust you.
- Have a creative and convincing flyer.
- The best time to distribute these flyers is a week or two after the holidays as many pictures are taken during the holidays. People would then realize how many photos they have lying around the house!
- Once you're more experienced you may want t
- Place an ad in your school or a local school newsletter.
- Place an ad in your community newspaper.
- Pin flyers on community notice boards (make sure you're allowed to do this first).
Pricing: You can charge by each photograph scanned into the computer. Remember that you are likely to scan quite a few pictures – so don’t charge them crazy amounts for each picture
Think Safe!
- Whenever you're visiting the house of any client you don't know really well, always have an adult present, and always make sure that your parents know where you're going. You can trust most people but it's better to be safe.
- You need to be at least 16 years of age to be able to be in the house of a non-family member. It’s just to be safe!
- Avoid using you computer during lightning and thunder sessions as it may electrocute you and your computer.
Get on with it
Knowing Your Stuff
Before you get started on your job, you need to know how your customers want to organise their photographs. They could want it organized by:
And many more, so make sure you ask them.
You would also need to know how to differentiate photographs as they might not belong in the same album. If you think you need help with this, ask your customers to take you through the photographs quickly to give you a rough idea about where each picture should go.
Doing the Job
There are 3 basic steps in creating a digital photo album:
- Organise photographs – collect and organise the photographs into their respective categories (or albums)
- Scan the photographs – this is the most time-consuming part of the job. Scan the photographs and save them in separate folders (depending on album or category)
- Distribute the photographs – burn the pictures (organized in their respective folders) onto a CD or DVD and label them clearly. You can also offer to your customers the option of having an online photo album (you can charge them for this additional service).
Having an online photo album:
- Sign-up on behalf of your customer (create a login name that they would use) at any free online photo album sites like:
- www.snapfish.com
- www.myphotoalbum.com
- www.photobucket.com
- Create the albums and upload the pictures to their respective albums
- After that, give your customer the login details of that user account and inform them to change their password to keep it secure.
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