You can tell that it’s getting close to the end of the year as companies rush to get work done or hurry to spend any remaining budget. In the past two weeks, I received nine inquiries for business portraits and each job had to be delivered and invoiced before December 31. The requests ranged from two to thirty business headshots.
One potential customer asked why I don’t offer a bigger volume discount for multiple business portraits. They wondered why the cost to shoot 30 business headshots didn’t drop to under $50 each.
Here’s why:
• There is an economy of scale when photographing more than one person’s business portrait. Since the photographer is already set up for the first person, photographing additional people is easier and faster than having to come back another day. The marginal cost to the photographer is low and so a discount is offered.
But there is no economy of scale when editing the pictures. If it takes X amount of time and effort to edit one person’s portrait, then it will take 30X to edit the photos for 30 people. The marginal cost to the photographer is high or at least doesn’t change.
Certainly some photographers will “batch process” large numbers of images to help reduce the time and effort involved. But other photographers, including myself, always custom process each image, one at a time, to get the best possible results because we think clients should always get the best. This allows the marginal value to be kept high.
• Professional photographers don’t sell pictures but instead they license the use of the pictures. Licensing is based on the value or use of the pictures. Whether the photographer produces one business headshot or thirty, the value of each photo does not change. The marginal value is kept high.
As more people are photographed, the company’s “consumption” of the business headshots does not decrease. Each and every portrait still has the same value. In fact, as more people are photographed, the company’s use of photography increases and the corresponding benefit also increases. The marginal value stays high.
• If business headshots are discounted down to, let’s say, $50 each (and I’ve seen photographers go as low as $20 each), then the photographer is losing money. A true professional photographer simply can’t afford to work below cost. Only an amateur photographer might think, “I’ll lose money on each portrait but I can make up for it with volume.”
• Photographers who charge more also deliver more. Not necessarily more pictures but more time, more editing, more assurance, more flexibility, more understanding, more expertise.
Whether a company buys one business portrait or thirty, that company still receives the same value from each picture. In fact, as the number of business headshots goes up, the company actually benefits more since photography increases readership, enhances corporate image and builds customer trust. So one might argue that photographers should charge more, not less, for multiple headshots.
Marginal cost is not as important as marginal value.
