Pricing

In October 2011, I wrote about the a photography store that advertised photography for weddings $149.99 at: $149 Wedding

In the blog post, I wrote:

The problem with a race to the bottom is that you might win

— Famous saying that too many people attributed to themselves

Those guys won the race, they are out of business. Gone!

I just had another request of:

It will be good exposure

Basically they want free work.

1. My standard policy is usually yes, if you are also working for free.
2. My standard policy is usually yes, if it is a cause that I really believe into.
3. My standard policy is always asking for credit…

And that got me thinking (these days, I need something to provoke into thinking.) What if we change the parameters just slightly:

“It will be good exposure” but the request comes from a huge for profit organization like CNN, NBC, BBC… with a 3 minutes interview.

Everybody is bashing Costco because their prints are cheap. I use Costco, not by choice but by necessity. I have a custom lab, but anything as next day service is very expensive and same day service, we are not talking 1 hour service here, cost an arm and a leg ($39 for one 5” by 7”.) I could print my own but I can never get it right on the first or the second print. There's always a tweak here and a tweak there, I want/need to change the print one more time…

I use Costco for most of my proofs, to show the customer before the final prints, even for myself to see if the concept will work.

Yesterday was Halloween. There are a lot of stores that open just for a few weeks to sell fireworks for Halloween. PhatBoy had a Fireworks Blowout Sale. I don't think that they realized what it meant.

First anything that you put on the Internet will be borrowed and stolen whether you want it or not. Right click scripts don't really help, copyright notices can easily be removed with Photoshop's content-aware fill, too big of a copyright notice and people won't even look at the photos. Flash doesn't really help, many people don't like flash (including me) and there are hundreds of programs that take your flash stream and extract the photos for you.

So what's the solution? It's actually a few steps.

1. Make the image large enough for people to see and experience the photo. The size?

Most people think that they are not being paid what they are worth. In the early 1990s, Robert Half, the employment agency, did a study in the workplace asking people how they rated their own work performance, then asked the employer the same question. The result was (from memory):

• 80%+ of the employees rated themselves as good and above
• 60% of the employees were rated as average by their employers

We have a disconnect here. There are 2 reasons why you are not getting paid what you’re worth:

1. You don't know what you are worth, or

The difference between blueberries and apples (one bad blueberry spoils the whole bunch).

If you serve yourself blueberries by the handful, you won’t be able to inspect each one. And so just one rotten blueberry can ruin the entire bowl of cereal.

An apple is different. It’s hand picked. Pick the wrong one and it’s not such a big deal, you can just pick another. If you sell apples, then, the goal is to make the great ones great, really great. If you’re in the blueberry business, on the other hand, the goal is to eliminate defects.

Last week, I spent an afternoon with Kim. I “consulted” with Kim about a year and half ago. He already started being a professional photographer, so we spent a day on how to get him going. Every few month, we’d keep in touch via email, “How are you doing… fine… blah blah…”

Kim decided to do children’s birthday parties… The children spend the afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese… He takes the photos, sometimes he prints the photos, and sometimes he gives the mothers the DVD of the photos.

Joel R. is a colleague. He been selling prints of mostly macros of flowers and bugs for the last 10 years. Don't call them bugs, he says they are insects. No, they are bugs, to be crushed. I hate bugs! In anyway, business has been slowing over the last few years. He wanted to expand in the industrial field. We spent an afternoon, I consulted (meaning I charged $$) and showed him how to start (this will be included in the soon to be released “Turning Pro” workshop) without a portfolio.

In 1½ day, he found a “could be” aka the potential customer.

I used to be a “master” at Photoshop. But that was many, many moons ago, before the receding hairline and the white hairs on the chest and Lightroom. I need to do some Photoshop CS5. I went to a large book store, there were only 3 or 4 books on Photoshop CS5. They had many books available on Photoshop CS3 and CS4, but there are too many changes since CS3, especially the GUI and quite a few from CS4. I asked if I would get a large discount since the books were old and outdated.

Every established photographer will tell you that working for free will destroy the world, send them to the breadline, guarantee starvation for their kids and grand kids.

I do some work for free. Something like the help-portrait where photographers take photos and donate a print to the person one day in the year. In 2010, it was in December 3rd. Instead of doing it just one day of the year, I do that every week and I give one or two photos of their pets, cat or dogs. I refuse to take photos of rats or spiders! (Completely irrational fears.)

Jessica Hische is a designer. She does typography, illustrations… She created a flow chart to help you decide if you should work for free. Her website is: http://jessicahische.com

This morning I was talking with Chris. He's from Australia but his girl friend is from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, so they moved here. Within a couple minutes he was ranting about customers not showing up for their portrait sessions. Not that they would cancel, they made the appointment but didn't show-up.

I do offer a time limited free shoot with $75 towards order of the prints.

What do you expect? No deposit, where's the incentive for them to show up?

1. Before I reserve the session, I need a 50% payment. No payment, no session.

I was talking to Bob. He's a pro, a real pro, 25+ years in the photography. There was something I didn't like with our conversation. I knew something was wrong, something was rubbing me the wrong way but I couldn't point it out. What it something he did? How he looked? What he said?

I thought about it and finally I understood. He used an expression at least 3 times I hate it:

You're leaving a lot of money on the table!

I have my prices, they are set. I make a profit at these prices. I'm trying not to gouge my customers. I have a specific market segment.

Every month I get a couple of emails asking me for advice on “how much to charge for photos”. I'm not the only one to receive these inquiries. Budding photographers are asking the same question on many bulletin boards.

So how much to charge for your photos, for your time?

1. The so-called “people in the know” say, you find what's your yearly cost, your rent, your hydro… Then divide by how many times you expect to work or sale.

All photographers [like everybody else] want to raise their income. There are two basic ways:

1. Work longer hours
2. Raise your rates

Photo District News did a survey of more than 1,000 wedding photographers at PDN Survey and they found:

The more hours you work, the higher your gross billings and income tends to be, but only within limits, according to our survey.