Avoid the Burnout Blues

Every photographer/artist now and again can experience burnout. It’s hard to avoid this feeling when you are so passionate about your art. According to the Mayo Clinic burnout is a state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion caused by long-term exposure to demanding work situations. Burnout is the cumulative result of stress.

Since most photographers’ livelihoods depend on working all the time avoiding burnout is a key component of business. Here are a few tips and ideas to avoid or overcome the burnout blues.

• The simple things to do first are slow down, cut back, set boundaries, talk to others, and make time for yourself. Making time for you sounds easy but by taking 1-2 days off a week if possible you can really rejuvenate yourself.
• Blog! Instead of doing the work that causes you stress, take a break and blog about it. Blogging about tips, ideas and techniques is helpful to others and may help change your view on things. Don’t worry you don’t need to be an expert, just be yourself and have fun. You can either blog for your clients or for your peers. Blogging your experiences can be both beneficial as a learning tool to yourself as well as something that other photographers can use as reference.
• Get on Facebook. Facebook is not just for catching up with old friends and playing games — it can also be used as a highly effective business tool. It’s great for marketing your products, landing jobs and connecting with your customers and other photographers. You never know who you will interact with or the opportunities that could present themselves just by logging on.
• Teach or mentor someone else. Besides helping someone else who needs the help or encouragement you might learn something about yourself.
• Think of fun and different ideas for your clients. Instead of offering your clients the “standard” photo package or ideas try to think outside of the box. Here’s a link to a previous article I wrote to help you think of different and unique ideas.
• Hire an assistant or interns to help with the daily tasks to free up your time for the fun things you like to do while working.
• Join a professional organization in your area or online. Joining a professional organization will help you to stay on top of what’s happening in industry and it may also help to inspire ideas that in turn could grow your own business. Check out the Professional Photographers of America website for information on a group in your area.
• Make sure you give yourself new and exciting challenges often. If you are a portrait photographer try shooting a landscape photo. By mixing up your subjects you can keep things fresh and fun. Challenging yourself brings out the passion, excitement and enthusiasm in yourself. It helps you to develop your talents and in the process you become a new person. A photographer I spoke to recently mentioned she “don’t necessarily get burnt out on photography but she can get burnt out on what she’s shooting.” She is a portrait/studio photographer but for fun she takes photos of wildlife as a hobby, which helps mix up the day to day work. Check out this link for a complete list of different types of photography options.
• Try to have a hobby or interest that isn’t photography related. I know it sounds hard because everything you do is probably photo related but try to have something else for “fun”. Hobbies can ease your mind and relax you, so start a garden, collect stamps or go to the movies often. Sometimes you just need new experiences to break out of a rut.

There are lots of things you can do to avoid the burnout blues but you need to take the time to address them. Some time alone and reflection can help you think of creative ways to combat feeling like this. Keep an open mind, consider all your options and ask for help along the way if you need it. I hope some of these tips have helped you to think differently and will help you to stay on top of your professional game.

Tech Support Holiday Closings

Pink Ink Studios Tech Support will be closed until Sunday. We have a ton of great information here and here and at the top of our store’s homepage.

We want to make sure you get the help that you need while we’re away, enjoying family time this Thanksgiving holiday. So, take a moment to do the following before submitting a support ticket to help speed up your request!

1 – Use Firefox over IE if you can’t keep items in your cart

2 – Login to the store and scroll down to the left and click on ORDERS HISTORY to review any orders you may have placed and need downloads for – be sure to download IMMEDIATELY to avoid your links expiring and make a backup!

3 – We have lots of FAQs in our forums if you’re already a member – we have to manually approve members due to spam issues, so new members won’t be approved until Sunday.

4 – Read the Terms of Use or Instructions documents in your product downloads to contact the designer directly about a design-specific issue. Please note that some of our designers will also be away for the holiday.

5 – Don’t forget the sales going on this weekend! Watch the blog this Friday!

6 – Help us reach 1000 fans on Facebook so we can start giving away gift certificates to our Fans!

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

New Support Ticket System

As a part of the improvements we’re making at Pink Ink Studios, we have implemented a new, support ticket system. A team of three support staff members have access to this. Please always use this ticket system when trying to reach us about shopping cart issues, forum issues, blog issues, etc. Do not reply to your sales receipt emails.

To learn more about our support…please click here:

http://pinkinkstudios.net/?page_id=1170

Or, as always, click on the SUPPORT link at the top of our website.

Thanks!

I didn’t get my downloads!

So, from time-to-time, we get emails from customers to our support link that indicate that they did not receive their download links from their purchases. We reply within 48 hours (usually less) with instructions, or questions to further help you. If at any time you are NOT receiving any replies within 48 hours, you might want to check your spam folders. OR, try emailing us from a different ISP address.

We’ve had issues with people using Yahoo, Hotmail and sometimes AOL accounts. We easily receive from them, reply, but they continually will email us saying no one is answering them. We keep records of all our sent emails so we go back to check and clearly we have responded. This is when we would ask that our customers please check their spam folders first.

Spam is awful! I have a photographer friend that has this same issue when he replies to a customer email inquiry. They just never get the reply. One way you can combat this is to try and not use one of the three ISP’s above. Try Gmail if you’re looking for a free email account. Or, if you use Outlook or Thunderbird or one of those email clients, make sure that you set it so that you can receive email from support@pinkinkstudios.com, sales@pinkinkstudios.com. Make sure that it knows that anything coming from these addresses is not spam.

Another issue we’ve discovered is some ISP’s such as Cox cable and sometimes SBC Global will completely block us. Not even giving it the opportunity to go to your spam. PLEASE CALL YOUR ISP! Tell them we are not spam. That you want to accept email from us.

When in doubt, try creating a Gmail account or use something different to reach us. OR, email us your phone number or instant messenger identification so we can IM you.

Finally…

We never keep your download links secret from you!

It’s easy, just login to the store. On the left side, you can find a link that says, “Orders History”. Click on that nad review your order history. There, you can obtain all download links within each order. Just click them and save.

Thank you so much for being patient, cooperative and supportive of our store. No one said online stuff was perfect, but we strive to always make sure you are receiving the best products and customer service.

Thanks!

Tech Support

Please resend any tech support emails you may have sent that have not been answered prior to yesterday. When the server moved, it changed the settings on our support’s email account. Jake is asking everyone to just start fresh and will be answering them as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience! Please include your order numbers with your questions!