Hey!

I’m a product photographer and I’m thinking about offering one or two e-commerce clients a heavily discounted case study. (Only my existing clients, not people from Reddit or anyone else)

The idea: take 3 existing products and upgrade the content with better product shots, more angles, one lifestyle image and a short product video. The product is mainly home textiles.

I’d probably discount the project by 50–70%. In return, I’d want permission to track and use the sales data for those products over the following months.

The goal is to find out whether better visual content actually improves sales, conversion or product performance and build a real case study instead of just saying “better photos sell more.”

As a seller, would that be interesting to you?

And what would you actually be willing to share with the photographer the sale increase in %?

Do some of you may also have experience how much sales increased and how long it took when upgrading from "average" to high end product photos + video?

Of course if the sale increase is only like 2% my whole idea would be doomed since my work would be super hard to meassure.

We never did something like that in the photo studio so I feel a bit insecure and would value your feedback.

Some of my clients are struggling with the current economy and booking less photography.

My instinct is actually to offer more instead of less: more product images, lifestyle shots, room scenes and short videos instead of just one or two white-background photos.

I’d like clients to see me less as a cost and more as someone who helps them sell more.

My idea is to offer one or two existing clients a heavily discounted case study. I’d re-shoot their three best-selling products with:

• fresh product shots
• around 4 images per product
• one lifestyle image
• one short product video

I’m thinking about a 50–70% discount. The goal wouldn’t really be profit, but getting a strong reference project.

In return, I’d want access to sales data and permission to use the results in my marketing.

For example: sales start at a 100% baseline, and after 12 months they’re at 130–150%. Obviously I couldn’t claim photography was the only reason, but if the same pattern happened across 2–3 products, I think that could still be a strong sales argument.

Does this sound like a smart idea and is this even useful for me?

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Would you accept?

I’m curious how other people see the future of physical studios. Do you think many studios will downsize as more work can be done with help of digital/hybrid workflows? Or will studios shift more toward video, social media content, podcasts, livestreams, and becoming general content production spaces? Personally I shoot mainly products and see our need for a big studio size is going down.

Do you think the overall number of photo studios will shrink? And for B2B studios, does it make sense to rent out the space when it’s not being used, or is that usually more hassle than it’s worth?

Interested to hear from people who run, rent, or regularly work in studios.

Located in Germany, but I would be happy about advice from anywhere. We alle know product photography is in a huge change right now and I the situation feels a bit overwhelming. I'm the junior photographer thinking about taking over the studio.

Feel free to send me a pm!