Portrait Marathon:
Marc Hauser for Charity

"How I shot 9800 portraits in my studio in 6 months and lived to tell about it!"

"Cats! Dogs! Babies! Young and old! They came non-stop! I sent out 10,000 postcards and got over 9800 responses! It was amazing! I printed 20,000 postcards using Modern Postcard to print them (very low price and great quality). Then I bought a mailing list from a company called Creative Access. My target? 10,000 art directors and designers (all advertising and design people).

The postcard copy had a big headline “Shoot With Marc Hauser For 100 Bucks (Get Your 15 Minutes Of Fame )”. I placed a sample portrait of a laughing woman on the card using the same style that I was doing portraits in--just to show what they would get for 100 bucks.

Here are the steps I went through:
1. I first determined a fair price and figured out what clients will get for that price. Then I calculated how much I will make and how much the charity makes (the bottom line). I chose to shoot 1 roll of black and white per portrait (you could also do it digitally which would save a lot of cash output) and delivered one 8x10 glossy or matte print. I charged $100.00 plus another $50.00 for each additional person in portrait. For example, a family of 5 people in one portrait would be $300, two people would be $150.00. As Andy Warhol says everyone can get their 15 minutes of fame!

2. I picked several charities that everyone could relate to.


3. I sent letters out to the selected charities describing what I would be doing.


4. Once I got a response from charity, I asked them to send me a letter stating that this is an official charity drive for them.


5. I put together a sample book showing 30 portraits in all different print sizes from 5x7 to 20x24. I also used different print surfaces which shows different print/surface toning. On the first page of the portfolio, I put the letter from the charity stating that I was donating a portion of every portrait session to the charity. (The charity I chose last year was the American Diabetic Association. Why them? ...because I am a diabetic.)
6. I made a banner for the front window of my studio, telling people about charity portrait drive. The banner included my phone number and the days I would be shooting.

I did the charity shoot 4 days a week: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. I averaged about 20 to 30 portraits a day and on Saturday I did 35-to-40. I also offered hair-and-make-up for another $100.00 a per person. Where the money really starts rolling in is the extra print orders.

I sent out the postcards and left stacks of a 100 post cards at all the places in my neighborhood that would allow them. I also gave them to the charities to pass out to their friends (tell your friends about my charity portraits...we know you have some). I offered gift certificates (I sold over 1000 of them) which were very popular. An importact thing to remember is to make the gift certificates valid only for the time during charity promo.

After several years of experimenting I have one piece of advice if you decide to try this yourself: make sure you have a real good sales person taking those print orders!"

 

(Marc's charity of choice this year is Gilda's Club .)

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