Having to lower your price is the penalty you pay for not having raised your value.
If a photographer can’t sell value then they may have no choice but to sell (low) price. Choosing to lower prices is a business strategy that will follow that business for a long time. For example, WalMart will always be associated with “cheap” and everyone knows cheap isn’t really good because good isn’t cheap.
Remember that value is in the eye of the customer. Extra prints or fancy leather albums may have value to retail customers (e.g. weddings and family portraits) but they won’t have any value to commercial or corporate customers.
Part of the job for commercial photographers and corporate photographers is to understand what their business customers need, what has value to them.
Low prices might be okay if the photographer can compensate with a continuous high sales volume. But a high sales volume means a high work volume. To support a low-price business strategy, a photographer will have no choice but to work more and more.
Makes no cents.
I liked this post.
Sometimes photographers and entrepreneurs in general need to stop frantically running about trying to fix holes in the business and just sit down for a bit and think through solutions and new ideas.