Jim’s Slide Scanning Business Blog

I was recently asked “How’s the business doing?”  I can say that it seems growth of my slide scanning business has slowed just bit over the last few months.   That being said, sales seem pretty close to even with what they were last year, according to QuickBooks.

After almost 10 years of providing slide scanning services, I’ve gathered a large customer base.  Many of my customers send me slides in batches, so a lot of the orders I receive are from repeat customers.

A large part of the success of my business is due to my pages doing well on the search engines, for many different search strings.  Part of the reason for this, is my publishing of lots of not-for-profit pages to the Web, with most of them linking to my scanning pages.  My main scanning page has LOTS of information (and words people search for.)  One of my high traffic pages is my slide scanning tips page where I share some of the logic of the process.

Since I do the scanning work part-time from my home-office, it is not my only source of income.  I’ve been working as a machinist and assembler in a large manufacturing plant for over 30 years.

I get many calls from people looking to convert their slides to PowerPoint presentations and I’m currently enjoying the number 1 spot on Google for the search term “slides to powerpoint.”

Sometimes I get swamped with scanning orders, but as I’ve mentioned in a previous blog entry, the inflow of work is often quite close to my capacity to complete and ship orders out.  It’s rare that I don’t have orders in-house.  About every 3 or4 months there might be 1 0r 2 days where no orders are in progress. Except for July…

Speaking of July, as I’ve done in previous years, I plan to shut down the slide scanning for the entire month including the first week of August this year.

Today I added a link in the blogroll to Steve Bennet’s blog, related to his scanning business, Pixmonix.

Unfortunately, I’m forced to turn off comments on this blog since I’m now getting spammed with comments here on a daily basis.

I recently responded to a post in a photography business forum.  See my response under J. Harrington USA here:

http://photo.net/business-photography-forum/00T2XY

After my last post to this blog on March 29th, I did get 2 days with no orders in-house.

Things have changed a bit.  Ten orders have arrived since then and five have shipped.   There’s currently about 1800 slides in the queue.  Business is good!

Apparently, the economy issues we hear about on the news are not having a big impact on those looking to digitize 35MM slides.  So far this year sales are within 5%  of what they were at the same time last year.

Orders from local customers continue to rise.

This afternoon I’m working on an order of 120 slides for conversion to PowerPoint.  These are for a doctor  (cosmetic surgeon) in the state of Washington.

When I finish and ship this order, it will be the first time since September of 2008 that I’ve had no orders in-house.  I’m looking forward to the break.  I expect it will only last a day or two.

Google’s customizable, on-line, multi-layer calendar comes in handy for keeping track of incoming and outgoing orders.

I may make portions of my calender accessible to customers to view receipt and ship status of their orders.  This would save me time over the current way I notify customers.

QuickBooks Pro 2009
I use QuickBooks Pro for the business accounting but it’s not useful for marking incoming and outgoing shipments.

Would love to get some input from other Google Calendar users about their uses for it.

I’d love to know who follows this blog.  Feel free to add a comment, and you can make it anonymous.  Would love to know your line of work and why this blog interests you.

Over the last 22 days, 21 orders have been received here.  I’m continually amazed at the growing demand for slides to digital conversion services.

A Testimonial:

One customer had the same 30 slides scanned at about 10 different local scan service providers, including mine.  He told me the quality of the scans I did was better, by far, than any of the others.  He told me this after dropping of 440 slides for 2710PPI.  That batch is just a small portion of the work he wants done.  He left a portable hard drive to put his scans on.  He wants both edits and no edits versions.

Of his 440 scans, there are 22 which I’m not billing him for.  Those at “no charge” are difficult scans from high contrast slides or slides that were out-of-focus.

I thought after the Christmas rush, I’d see a slowdown in orders coming in.  Not so.  My phone continues to ring off-the-hook with people calling about digitizing their slides.

For example: Simon, a physician in PA called about his archive of about 2000 slides, mostly X-Rays and CT scans. Ron, a photographer, called about his collection of about 1000-2000 slides.

Orders from repeat customers continue to make up a large portion of the work.  Some examples are Sam L., an adventurer/photographer/writer.  Sam dropped off his first batch here about a month ago.  Sam looks a bit like Sean Connery, beard included.  Sam travels a lot and is currently in Maine.  His second batch of slides was delivered last week.

Dudley, from western Massachusetts has been sending his slides, in batches, for about the last year and a half. Dudley displays his scans using a digital projector. He shoots mostly with Fuji Velvia because he loves saturated colors.  Dudley asks that I increase the brightness and saturation in his scans to account for the loss a digital projector brings.

John G. from Rhode Island has been sending his slide carousels, 1 or 2 trays at a time, over the last 2 years.

A pathologist in NY has sent several orders recently.  Most of her slides are made using a camera and a microscope to show microscopic cells etc.

After finally finishing a very large order least week, I’ve caught up with the backlog of scanning work which has been keeping me really busy.

In spite of catching up, I’m still not accepting orders for delivery before Christmas.  I don’t need the pressure and no order should be rushed!

I have a few orders in house which will keep me busy until after the holidays.

I’m considering raising my prices soon and may implement the change Jan.1, 2009.