Let’s say you want to buy a box of breakfast cereal. You can go to any number of grocery stores and see, pretty much, the same boxes of cereal on each store’s shelves. You might choose based on which box of cereal looks best and its price.
This is exactly like buying stock photography but instead of grocery stores, you visit web sites. You choose a photo based on which stock picture looks best and its price. You’re still choosing a product (a photo) from a store shelf (a web site).
Let’s say you want breakfast. You can go to any number of restaurants that serve a wide variety of breakfasts. What should this breakfast cost you? Well, you can’t answer without knowing what you want for breakfast, who will prepare it for you, how it will be served and where all of this will happen. Is it a fast-food breakfast at a takeout store or a more elegant breakfast at a five-star hotel?
This is exactly like buying assignment photography. Just as every restaurant breakfast is different, every photo assignment is different. You hire a photographer to create a custom product.
Stock photography is off-the-shelf. Assignment photography is bespoke.
Earlier this week, Cradoc launched FotoQuote Pro 7, the latest version of its photo pricing software. In addition to the usual pricing for stock photos, this new version contains pricing guides for some types of assignment photography.
If you use any type of photo pricing software, do remember that there’s a huge difference between pricing for stock and pricing for assignments.
Stock pricing is about usage. The customer will choose a stock image based on how suitable the image is for their needs and the price for that usage.
Assignment pricing is about usage, the photography required, the time and effort involved and, of course, expenses. The customer will choose a photographer based on the photo services required, the photographer’s apparent skills and the total price.
Assignment pricing software always has to be taken with a large grain of salt. The provided numbers are, at best, ballpark prices that other photographers in other cities have used in the past. These photographers are not you.
It’s foolish to simply say that you should charge $400 for a business portrait. This is like saying a restaurant should charge $15 for breakfast.
Assignment pricing software can serve a purpose when you don’t know if you should charge $200, $2,000 or $20,000. This happens when you’re asked to quote on a job for which you have no experience.
For example, let’s say you’re a corporate photographer who mostly does portraits and corporate events for web site and public relations use. Then one day, a company asks about shooting photos for its upcoming mobile app or photos to be included in a corporate video. Pricing software might offer some insight here.
The Cradoc web site shows a screenshot for Corporate Headshot assignments. Based only on this information, which is viewable in the demo version of the software, you will see some contradictory numbers, for example, “$150 (web use only one year)”, “$135 (unlimited, non-exclusive use)” and “$275 (local use one year).
The information in this Corporate Headshot section is vague and conflicting because, as previously mentioned, every assignment is different. From my experience in Toronto, little of the information shown in this section is accurate.
For something like business headshots, what photographers charge is all over the map. One reason for this is the number of inexperienced photographers suddenly becoming corporate photographers and not understanding the market. Landscape photographer last week, corporate photographer this week.
I’m not exaggerating here. This week, I got emails from two photographers who wanted to switch to corporate or commercial photography. One was a wedding photographer (with no web site) and the other was a landscape photographer (his web site filled with landscapes and still lifes).
Understanding the market means knowing what the customer wants and expects and what the customer needs you to deliver.
Producing and delivering what the customer really needs cannot be priced by software. It’s priced by experience and business sense.
Business sense means that you understand you’re not selling pictures. It also means that you understand that price is only a small part of the overall transaction.
Pricing software is useful only if you understand what the numbers mean and what they don’t mean.
