Photography

if your work is good enough people will pay for it. you don't need to trick them into working with you. something tells me your work is not up to par.

also i feel like this post is a phish for his discord to sell some marketing packet or something.

That's a tactic that's been used before, and generally is either a scam or used by someone who doesn't know what they're doing/doesn't have good enough work to stand on it's own. It sounds decent in theory but in practice you aren't going to land as many clients, there's no guaranteed payout, and the type of client who would hire a photographer with this practice is generally not the type of client who's going to pay large amounts of money for a photo and will likely complain about pricing or just not buy anything then complain online that it's a scam.

Generally, marketing is more about reaching out and interacting. If you can do that well, and your portfolio is good enough that people would want to use you as the photographer, you'll land clients. Just spamming advertisements isn't going to work no matter how your pricing is set up, and charging a high price for delivery after a "free" session isn't going to be well received or get many referrals.

If a client is going to go to someone who will do a free session over you, it really doesn't matter how you set the pricing. If the prices are upfront, they'll still go to the photographer who isn't charging anything for delivery. If the pricing is hidden until after the shoot, it's a scam. And people will rightly call it out as a scam. The best practice in this scenario is to just look for different clients. Don't market to the people who are looking for free or really cheap. There are people out there who are more than willing to pay for quality, and as long as you can provide that quality you can land the clients.

There are some instances where a model similar to what you laid out works, but it's generally not with portraiture. And the fact that you're pushing a private discord server to "talk about the details" just screams scam. So no, I don't think it's a good marketing practice. Especially since it has nothing to do with marketing, and is just a pricing scheme.

You’ve come up with a fairly well established business strategy for a lot of beginning professionals.

The problem with that strategy is that there’s a lot of work on the photographers part, and no guarantee about getting paid. You have to shoot and edit BEFORE you get paid. Theres no guarantee clients will buy images/prints - and it doesn’t matter how good you are as a photographer.

When you market something as free, people tend to take it at face value - it’s free, so what have they got to loose? Your clients might decide to try a shoot since it’s free - and not put any effort into it. Things like making sure their toddler has a clean shirt, and snacks/toys so that they’re happy and smiling in the pictures. Even making sure the adults spent more then 10 seconds looking at themselves in the mirror before they headed to the shoot. Making sure people show up on time…or at all.

Then there’s the people who will get sticker shock when they see the image pricing. Even if you told them beforehand, they either forget, or don’t understand that the dollar amount for the image isn’t just for the image - it’s for your time, editing, shooting, travel/location expenses, etc.

I think it can be okay for quick mini sessions, but for other larger things, I want to be sure I’m paid for my time.