Discover how to price your photography services to achieve maximum client interest and sustainable turnover in a challenging time
Discover how to price your photography services to achieve maximum footfall and sustainable turnover in a challenging time
Pricing your work has to be the most tricky aspect of running a photography business. While you are clearly generating a product with your images, it can be difficult to define exactly what you should be charging, and how to value the effort you put in. This is because we often think of taking photos for a living as an extension of our hobby, and can feel privileged to be able to earn from our passion. This can lead to us undervaluing our skills, which is made all the more difficult by many clients failing to recognise how much work goes into professionally shooting and editing images from a commission.
To ensure that your business is profitable and sustainable, you first need to understand what your main goals are, and how time plays a part in the efficiency of your working day. Here we’ll look at some key things to consider when setting your prices right.
UNDERSTAND YOUR OVERHEADS
Creative media, particularly in the digital realm, can be difficult to assign a cost to.
This is because a lot of the work is done at a laptop and via online intermediaries. There are many ‘hidden’ costs or investments that we often forget about, and importantly, digital processes are not always free. While selling digital files from a website is definitely a cheaper operation, leaving you free from printing costs, there are still expenses involved. Notably, a website-hosting platform often requires a yearly fee, or a significant one-off outlay for a professional web designer to create. Then you have electricity bills to consider, which can quickly mount up if you are running multiple computers, on which you spend the majority of your working day.
Understand the unique pressures a digital workflow has on your finances, and factor these into your pricing structure. If you don’t, your profits will be significantly impacted.
TIME IS MONEY
Another tricky aspect to value is the time we spend on a job. In the first months of starting a business it can be tempting to take on any and all jobs, but if you end up spending ten hours on a commission that is only paying £100 then you are earning significantly less than minimum wage, by the time you consider business costs.
Every minute you are working you are also incurring costs, so you need to ensure that each unit of work you carry out yields a profit. An hour spent editing a photo because ‘you may as well’ is not efficient if you could have completed an entire separate job in that time. Charge by the hour, not by print, to ensure that you are paid for your time.
REPEAT BUSINESS
Sometimes you should price your services based on the likelihood of earning future revenue from the same clients and/or the same assignment. If you’re shooting a wedding, and the customer only wants a flash drive of digital copies, then remember that this may limit the possibility of them returning to you for additional prints. While you don’t have print costs, you miss out on print sales, so buffer this loss with your hourly rate. It may then be worth offering a discount if they return to you for prints.
MAKE IT MODULAR
Running a photo business can be expensive, but you don’t need to outprice yourself. Upselling from a baseline package with optional extra services can be a good way to encourage clients to pay for higher value products. Start with two or three ‘levels’ of service, defined by the number of images, hours spent shooting, etc. Then offer add-ons, such as special editing effects, photobook and canvas prints, premium album assembly, video shooting on the day, or even a second photographer. Bundling these into packages can effectively persuade people to save money by paying a higher fee on the date of booking, rather than buying these at a premium later. If it works for budget airlines it can work for you!