Tutorial Guidance on how much to charge

Interesting reading, I will have to put my prices up, but on second thoughts I struggle to sell at my current prices. Cyclist are a mean lot !!
 
Great advice from all....... where's the paracetamol? :/
 
Gary very informative post mate, I will need to come back later to read the rest of the replies but I found it interesting to note that your bookings went up when you changed your pricing plan!

Jim
 
jimnomad said:
Gary very informative post mate, I will need to come back later to read the rest of the replies but I found it interesting to note that your bookings went up when you changed your pricing plan!

Jim
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Yes, they went up dramatically in fact - which only goes to show that not everyone is looking for cheap, quite a lot of people will associate 'cheap' with 'cheap for a reason'
 
I have been running my own business for only six months, making the switch from hobby to income generator has been difficult. One of the most important lessons that i have learned is to develop separate pricing points for each of your services. For commercial we invoice per hour whilst for contemporary portraiture we have set price packages. When dealing with the public it is important to have transparent pricing in order to build trust, the customer does not like hidden extra cost.

Another crucial point is to develop a seasonal revenue model if you want to make a stable income. For me i target graduation photos throughout autumn, studio gift vouchers in the build up to christmas, commercial work from New Year to Easter then weddings in summer. The importance of this cannot be over looked, if you haven't got a stable cash-flow you wont last long so plan ahead and get a strategy in place.

Too see some examples of my companies work and services take a look at our website, we only launched it last month so theres still quite abit of work to do.

Thanks for reading.

www.xseedphotography.co.uk
 
This was a great read thank you for putting this up to share with the rest of us.
 
Very interesting discussion, this is very helpful for those who are just starting their photography business. I totally agree with jpwone “You have to know your market and price accordingly. You have to know your costs and price accordingly”. Setting up a business is not as easy as 123, it involves a lot of thinking realization and analysis. You need to make sure that through your profit you should be able to sustain your business needs but at the same time consider your customers and the current pricing in the market.
 
I have been asked by my local council for a few images I took at a local event and put online (yes facebook)

They have said they would like to use the images for PR and to put online (NI Tourist Board) and credit me for them or pay for the images.

As much as I was chuffed, I've no idea what to charge

Any advice on what route to take would be appreciated

Cheers
Trev
 
@ Scout n 'About

As far as I can see, you could go one of three ways with this.

a) Let them show the images and accept credit of the images only, hoping that this will gain you some publicity.
b) Ask the council what they are offering to pay for these images, taking into account that the money is coming from a budget and will undoubtedly be much less than hiring a professional for the event.
c) Get a price per image in your head and charge that. I once sold a photo of the NZ Skytower to an Australian (yes..you read that right) calendar company for £300. You could say each picture is worth approx £80.00 each and total up the amount and send them a mail with that total.

Although I'm no expert by any means, if you've already decided to get some payment for these, don't undersell yourself. You could always reduce if they object.

Hope this helps ;)

Simon
 
Sell them. The 'publicity' is highly unlikely to be of any real value. Think of a (reasonable) price you'd like, double it and see if they bite.

Just seen the date of your post and would imagine it's all long gone now.
 
Really helpful, thanks so much. Quick question, when you watermark proofs, do you do so across the centre of the image? So it can't be cropped out?
B
 
What an excellent discussion, thanks everyone.
There are some real "eye openers" in there which should make everyone stop and take a long hard look at their business model, costs, pricing and marketing.
 
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.
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Well pointed out! You can't just charge too cheap or way expensive. Reasonable price and high quality of your work will establish your business and yourself too!
 
Garry Edwards updated Guidance on how much to charge with a new update entry:

How much should you charge?

I posted the original of this back in 2008, by which time it was already a few years old, having taken it from book that I’d written a few years earlier, so it must be time to update it:)

I believe professional photography is a fairly level playing field, and that the factors that affect pricing are fairly constant within all of the many different types of photographic service providers.

There are, I suppose, 3 very different business models.
  • Full time photographers who work for...
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Read the rest of this update entry...
 
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