There's quite a few posts asking how much to charge and it's very difficult to give a helpful answer, simply because there are too many variables at play.
But I thought it might be helpful to post the following small extract from my
Professional Photogaphy Manual
Unfortunately if you want to read the other 100 pages you'll have to buy it
Perhaps this post could be a sticky?
How much should you charge?
If you read the average guide to running a photographic business youll be advised to do your sums, work out how much you need to earn per hour, build in an allowance for the cost of your equipment, your car running costs, your business rates, your telephone costs and everything else that you need to spend in order to run your business.
And thats just fine in theory, but its only theory and it doesnt work!
The true answer is that you should
charge what people are prepared to pay.
If, for example, you want to photograph weddings and the average photographer in your area charges £1,000 for full coverage and an album with 40 prints, there is no point in charging £2,000 (unless of course your work is outstanding and you have so many people begging you to photograph their wedding that you cant cope with the demand)
Of course, you could charge just £250
.
And it might be a good idea to charge low prices at first, just to get some more experience and build your portfolio, but as a long term strategy it simply wont work because
1. You need to make a profit. Most people will think that youre too cheap so you cant be any good. Would you risk something as important as the photography of your own wedding by employing someone who isnt any good?
2. If you charge too little most of the people who book you will be people whose weddings will do little or nothing to enhance either your portfolio or your reputation.
It goes without saying that you should be competitive without being too cheap. If you charge too little, not only will you not make the level of profit you need, potential clients will assume that you are cheap because your work is not up to the required standard and if you charge too much people will go elsewhere. The going rate for any job should be based on the price charged by most competent photographers in your area look in Yellow Pages, let your fingers do the walking and find out what your competitors are charging!
Your own prices may be higher if, for example, you're an outstanding photographer and you have people queuing to book you. Or they may be lower, if you're just starting out, don't have a client base and can't match the quality or service of other photographers but they should be within about 25% of the median prices* charged by most competitors.
The other, very important point about your charges is that they should be enough to give you a healthy profit without any additional sales.
*Ignore people who charge ridiculously high or ridiculously low prices and base your own prices on those whose prices are in the middle of the range.
Using a wedding as an example again, suppose that you need to charge £1,000 to make a decent profit dont assume that if you only charge £500 and rely on sales of extra prints to friends and relatives, that these sales will actually happen! What if
a. A friend of the Bride & Groom follows you around with their own camera and undercuts your print prices?
b. Someone scans your photos into their computer and produces cut-price prints?
c. Or photocopies your proofs?
d. Or its a very small wedding and there are very few potential customers for prints?
e. Or if the marriage is over before the album is ready?
There are always people who think that it's perfectly OK to scan or re-photograph prints to avoid paying for future prints. A lot of people will try to avoid paying for any prints at all by copying proofs so it makes very good sense for every proof to be printed with a large copyright mark, including your name, address, phone No. and anything else you can think of. Even tiny, low-res files for email use are at risk I recently had a wedding client who complained that his email proofs were 'fuzzy' when he got Jessops to print them and he could see nothing wrong in trying to steal my work. This is why I say that you must earn enough from your charges to give you a healthy product without any additional sales.
I can't give you specific advice on how much you should charge because I don't know how good your photography is or how much most photographers in your area charge, but it might help if I explain how I used to charge, and how I do it now
I thought it would be a good idea to photograph weddings, after all I have an assistant who likes wedding photography and is very good at it.
So I started off by offering a range of packages, starting at £550 and including 30 8"x6" prints in a middle-range album. The next package up was £650, the £750, £950 and £1150. Nobody ever booked the top package and the few people who did book generally went for the cheapest package.
It really wasn't worth doing for £550 so I put all the prices up by £100. People still generally went for the cheapest package but the number of bookings went up.
Then I dropped all of the packages and introduced a new service - £750 for attendance and proofs (on CD) only. The number of bookings more than doubled.
The point is, wedding photography is a professional service and its value is whatever the photographer and the client believe it to be although there are always some people who are looking for the cheapest, the potential clients who are most worth having are more likely to make their buying decisions based on quality and perceived value than on price.
They pay a non-refundable retainer at the time of booking and the balance has to be paid 28 days before the wedding. They get the proofs when they return from honeymoon and then they make their decisions about prints and albums.
The lowest amount they can possibly spend on an album is around £350 (30 8"x6" prints in a budget album) bringing their total expenditure to £1100 about the same as the cost of my original top package that nobody ever bought but with a lesser number of smaller prints. Some people go for 50 10"x8" prints, at a cost of £847 in a traditional album, making a total of £1597, others go for a storybook album which can cost even more.
Some people want to supply their own album. Fine, I'll mount the photos in it free I can afford to because I'm making a fair profit on the prints.
Some people don't want an album at all, that's fine too. Or they may want their photos on DVD the price of which is exactly the same as the profit I would have made if they had spent the average amount on prints.
The great benefit of this pricing strategy is that
a. the clients have a complete choice of album, number and size of prints
b. they pay for the photography at least a month before their wedding and they pay for the album/prints at least a month after their wedding by which time they have benefited from at least two more pay days
c. extra (non album) prints are often ordered after the wedding album is supplied, and is paid for from a different salary payment.
Lets take another example, a family portrait this time.
Some photographers charge very low sitting fees (or no sitting fees at all) in the hope that their clients will love their work and order lots of prints. If this business model has any chance of success the prints will have to be very highly priced, but if the print prices are too high then many of the clients wont buy very many if any - prints, which means that the profit has to come from less people, which means that the prices need to be even higher, which means
.
Now, what I do is to charge what I feel to be a minimum realistic sitting fee, £75. This is just enough to make it worthwhile, and includes a full set of proofs, printed 8x6. Even if they never order any enlargements, my costs are covered and Ive made a small profit. But because the proofs are watermarked they are almost bound to order enlargements, and heres why
1. They paid their £75 sitting fee at the time of booking. That money is now gone and forgotten and when they order their prints they will only think about what they are spending when they order, they wont think about what they have already spent
2. If they dont order any enlargements then all theyll have for their £75 is the proofs which can't be used or scanned because they are very boldly marked with my copyright notice.
3. Because I have already been paid for my time my prices for enlargements are very reasonable, compared with those of people who charge nothing or too little for the sitting so the clients are likely to order more prints than they originally had in mind
4. Because my enlargement prices are reasonable Im one of the good guys, and they will recommend me to their friends.
, still lots of very useful information......
