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Pricing Your Services
I'm trying to figure out a more solid way to price my services. My aim is to keep away cheapskates but to also not price my services in a way that would scare off serious clients. The most obvious answer would be to check out the competition but let's be serious, most photographers don't publicize their prices and the few that do, they work for peanuts....so you can't really take them seriously. That being said, how do you go about doing it? Sep 18 14 06:19 am Link Don't worry about what others are doing. Look at what you do, and how much you need to make, to keep your doors open, and provide a fair income to you. Then translate that into a day rate and / or hourly rate. All expenses associated with a shoot are then added to that. Be prepared to calculate the costs of a shoot, quickly and accurately, for client quotation. Don't quote immediately, but don't dally in preparing the quote either. Most photogs are not good enough business people. Sep 18 14 06:49 am Link Who's the client? Are you selling your services to companies or to individuals? What will they get? Sep 18 14 07:06 am Link Exactly, the best way to figure this out is to first figure out how much it is costing you just to stay in business. What are your overhead costs? Basically make a bottom line price. Then add to that whatever profit you want to make which you think is reasonable for your current skill level. As you grow and expand this will change and your prices will reflect that. Any extra expenses related to a specific project should be added on top of all this as an extra line item on your invoice. Cheers. Sep 18 14 07:10 am Link you can charge whatever you want but there's no law forcing potential clients to hire you. you have to find the right balance so that clients see value in hiring you or for some reason see you as their only option. in photography i bet a huge number of shoots are done for free or very little (the infamous portfolio value) so just being able to command a decent sum is a big step forward. and i believe that ultimately people hire people. so you have to be a person that people want to throw money at. i think the bigger issue is how are you planning to drum up clients who are willing to pay for photography? Sep 18 14 07:36 am Link Pricing is based on cost plus overhead plus profit with supply and demand influences. You have to price it so you're making money or at least, not losing money. Then you have to worry about pricing yourself higher than they can get the same services from someone else of equal quality. To control the type of client you get you can, after a while, raise your fees until you eliminate those you don't want or you start losing business. My IP attorney started at $350.00 an hour but got too many small time clients, raised it to $425.00 and still didn't like the clients, finally it got to $535.00 an hour and he was happy with the quality of the client and the amount he was bringing in. You can use the same tactic. Sep 18 14 07:52 am Link i know a talented local pinup photographer who threw in the towel because he could only get $12.50/hour. if you want to make money go to law school and do photography as a hobby. my lawyer step-brother has an amazing house on a hill. how many photographers have an amazing house on a hill solely from money doing photography? and how many photographers have a day job in MIS? i think the idea that you get different types of clients at different rates is valid. it's just that most photographers i know struggle to get any rate at all. many wind up doing tons of shoots for free or peanuts in the hope that some day it will take off. if you want to do $5K weddings instead of $500 weddings then you better be someone that the $5K bride wants at her wedding and you might find you have to spend a lot of money to attract that person and to be the kind of person they want to hire (not to mention being able to handle the demands from that kind of person). Vector One Photography wrote: Sep 18 14 07:54 am Link For me, I have a target hourly rate for work. I review the objectives with the client, make an hourly estimate of how long it will take to execute the shoot, make an hourly estimate of the post processing time, add expenses at cost, and total that for an estimate provided to the client. The only way you can estimate or negotiate a job properly is to know the approximate time required. These rates are for normal unrestricted commercial use. For copyright transfer, work-for-hire, or retail merchandise gigs, I multiply pricing by 2X or more. Local travel is included, and travel greater than 1 hour is an added expense. You have to develop an intuition for clients where its better to ask about their budget right up front. Its a quick tool to qualify that their budget is reasonable, and it could be higher than your basic estimate. Sep 18 14 08:16 am Link Lallure Photographic wrote: No, I don't believe this is practical. Such a calculation, while interesting, will only tell you what you need to get to get by. It will not give you any indication whether your potential clients would be willing to pay your rates. Lallure Photographic wrote: That, I agree with. Sep 18 14 08:17 am Link i always felt like i'd rather have one client at $100/hour than two clients at $50/hour. but it becomes a problem if you struggle to find the $100/hour client. but the lower your average hourly rate the harder you have to work to stay afloat. the thing about lemonade is that in order to charge more than the competition you have to offer more or be in an area where people don't mind paying more. can you be the nordstrom of lemonade stands? but it costs money to be nordstrom so are you actually making any more profit? to me at the end of the day it's all about spendable, after-tax (and after expenses) money. some photographers i see making money are seemingly spending a lot of money in order to make that money (it becomes a hamster wheel type of deal i imagine). Looknsee Photography wrote: Sep 18 14 08:22 am Link ontherocks wrote: It helps to not have to be operating in desperate situation. Photography is not what you can call a steady, stable, guaranteed income. For a few well established photographers to be the exception to a certain degree. When cut backs are made photography can be one of the 1st places companies will look to trim a budget. Sep 18 14 10:19 am Link Who is the potential client? What is your cost of doing business? Can that potential client afford it? What volume of client do you need to sustain your goals? Once you know they can start working at pricing, but it's still not that simple. That will only give you an idea if you should really enter the business. Beyond that you need to look at competition, what value you can add, and how are you going to define your brand. It's about what makes you unique and what the customer values. Sep 18 14 10:35 am Link ontherocks wrote: Photography is only a side thing to me. I'm a full-time Oil Futures Trader. I don't NEED to make money from this. Since I've invested time and money in what began as a hobby, I'd like some sort of a return so that I'm not operating at a loss. Just breaking even would be a good start. Sep 18 14 02:34 pm Link Photography by Sean wrote: You figure out your costs and then add the value of your creative contribution. Sep 19 14 04:42 pm Link Ultimately, if for a particular job, you want to charge more than the cost of a prosumer camera, you will have to explain why - not why they should pay you as opposed to someone else, but why they should spend that much on whoever they hire. With certain things it's easy. Think in terms of "box office numbers". When certain actors are in films, you know what the minimum gross is likely to be. If you're shooting commercially - photos people are spending money on as an investment - and you can show the financial impact of previous shoots on the results of your client's bottom line, it will be easy. If you have a history of creating 10-20% growth in their profits, that's what your rate is based on - even if you shoot with an iPhone and no assistant. If you don't have that track record, you don't have much of an argument above costs. When you're shooting for individuals who want photos for sentimental reasons, then your position is "You can clearly afford a lot, and you're clearly going to be a pain in the ass to work for, so this is what I want to assuage my misery." You just have to find a non-offensive way to say that. There's also a minimum threshold, where below $X, you just don't care how easy it is. You can advertise that as a base. "Shoots start at a minimum of $500 and vary with the details of the job." The one good thing about that is that, assuming they've read what you've written, you know they can afford at least that much. Sep 19 14 04:57 pm Link One final thought, it's going to sound negative, but it's meant to get you to change your expectations for the answer to your question. When you come up with an idea for rates, come back and see if we think your ideas are good. Without knowing what you'll come up with, my answer to "Does this sound good?" will be: 1. No, because there's someone who will do it for less. 2. No, because there's someone else who does the same thing and gets paid more. We can all make up answers for how to come up something, but none of them are right. You have to make up something you're comfortable with, and beyond that, always get as much as you think you can. Use rates as a way to control volume of work. If no one is asking you to shoot, shoot for free. When someone wants you to shoot for free, but you're already shooting for free for the next 14 days, they'll offer you money to bump to the head of the line. When you have paid shoots for the next 14 days, raise your rates so that you lose 4 days of bookings and are working a normal 5 day week. When you're working a normal 5 day week and you have more work coming in than you can handle, you get a rep, or hire a ghost shooter or raise your rates again. Sep 19 14 05:08 pm Link Muskopf Photography wrote: This is the first thing you need to ask yourself, and also how much minimum you'll need to cover your expenses; time, travel, meals, etc. depending on what you're doing. It also depends on which genre/niche you're working in Sep 19 14 05:16 pm Link Lallure Photographic wrote: +1 Sep 19 14 08:19 pm Link Photography is like ANY other business and it follows all the basic rules it takes to make it successful AND profitable. IS it possible to make "good" money doing photography "part-time"? Personally, I don't hunk so. First of all, think of all the experienced full timers that are out there that have been at this for years and have a name some people have heard of. Now think of all the NEW full timers trying to get any business they can by offering lower prices just to get work. Now the part timer comes along. You don't shoot as often. You don't have time to really market the business right. Hardly anyone knows you. Who do you have to give you testimonials or references. Who are they? This is why you see so many come and go in this business. They think it's an easy way to make a lot of money. Hate to tell anyone thins but unless you really market the hell out of your business and create a real demand for your services, you will never see any so called "real" money. This is a sales and marketing business as much, if to more than a photography business. Your rates are not set my your NEEDS. Your rate is set by your demand. You start off with average or even below average rates and as your demand increases so does your rates. That's basically how everybody starts. If you don't shoot enough to create a demand it will be a very up hill battle. Sep 20 14 05:16 am Link Mikey McMichaels wrote: Shoot for free. Wedding shooters in L.A. shoot startup fashion designers for free, and it is no good for anybody. I can't believe you're telling professional photographers to shoot for free--to shoot commercial for free. Wow. Sep 20 14 09:28 am Link LA StarShooter wrote: If you read the what I wrote and apply it to the OP, that's not what it translates to. Sep 20 14 12:05 pm Link |
