Budget, budget, wherefore art thou?

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What every photographer knows, and seemingly few clients understand, is that every photo can be shot in many, many different ways and each can have a very different cost.

When looking to hire a photographer, a few clients will initially refuse to reveal the exact details of their photo project. Some other clients may not know the details or they haven’t fully decided what they want. Nevertheless, the photographer is expected to give a price for a job they know little about.

When you’re trying to figure out and price a photo job that doesn’t have complete information, the advice often given is that you should ask the client for their budget and use that as a guideline. But if you ask, “What’s your budget for this project,” the client may answer with something like:
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Game Face

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LinkedIn offers each user a personalized page of potential connections titled “People You May Know.” From a quick look today at my page of potential business connections (I’ve blacked out personal names and company names), I don’t recognize any of these people:

If any of those faces look like you, perhaps it’s time to put on your game face.

 

Experience or Just Service?

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With many photographers in your area using similar equipment, offering similar services, and having similar websites, how do you set yourself apart? After visiting a few websites, potential customers may assume all photographers are the same.

What can you do to stand out? Create a flashier website? Offer deeper discounts? Invest in trendy backdrops or lighting accessories?

None of these are long term solutions.

Instead, focus on understanding your customer more deeply. What are they really looking for when they search for a photographer? What concerns or constraints do they have when hiring one? What do they expect when working with a photographer? And how do they want to use the photos you deliver? These considerations have nothing to do with shutter speeds, pixel counts, or focal lengths.

This isn’t about customer service but rather it’s about customer experience (link to PDF). The two are not the same.

In short, customer experience is the overall impression a customer takes away from their interaction with your business. For a photographer, this experience often begins the moment a potential client visits your website. Customer service, while an important part of the experience, refers specifically to what a business does for the customer.

By improving your customer experience and gaining a deeper understanding of your clients’ needs, you can become their photographer of choice, more so than any new gear or price discount could ever achieve.

 

Choosing Cheap Photography

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Toronto Chooses Cheap

The City of Toronto’s web site has a page promoting its new Pan Am BMX course used in the recent 2015 Pan Am Games. The photo shows a number of female competitors lined up at the starting gate.

The problems with the photo are that the event shown is not from the Pan Am Games. The track is not the city’s new BMX course. The location isn’t even in Toronto. Oops.

Some sports web sites in South America assumed this was a Pan Am photo and used it in their news articles about the Pan Am BMX event. Those South American web sites were probably confused because the Toronto Pan Am Games itself initially used the same picture on its BMX pages. Oops.
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Canadian Readership Numbers

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A couple months ago, the Newspaper Audience Databank (NADbank) and the Print Measurement Bureau (PMB) released their Spring 2015 survey of readership numbers for its member newspapers and magazines.

If you need readership (not circulation) numbers of some Canadian newspapers and magazines to help with your photography pricing, then have a look at this list which uses 2014 data. Readership numbers are typically much higher than the corresponding print circulation numbers.

This is more for commercial photography that will appear in these publications and not so much for editorial. While many publications have “fixed” rates for editorial photography, some do have wiggle room to negotiate higher rates.

The days of pricing photography based on circulation still exist but it may be more accurate to price based on readership, especially since that’s how some publications charge their advertisers.

 

Pricing Photography for Social Media

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Photographers, in the old days, priced their photography based on its usage. Generally speaking, editorial had the lowest price, public relations and corporate had a mid-range price, and advertising had the highest price.

This worked quite well for 45 years or so. Then Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter came along.

The line between editorial, public relations, and advertising can be nearly invisible with social media. When a company publishes pictures on social media, is that editorial, public relations or advertising?

Every type of business communication is a form of marketing. At the very least, social media should be considered public relations rather than pure editorial even though it may use editorial photography.
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Let the Games Finally End

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Over the past 17 days, I drove 1,554 kilometres, ate 9 lunches and 14 dinners, paid $124.50 for parking and shot just over 7,000 pictures. I was covering the Pan Am Games in Toronto.

As expected, the Pan Am organizers, politicians and various Pan Am sponsors are claiming that the event was a runaway success and they’re now giddy with anticipation of hosting a Summer Olympics and even a World Expo. The Pan Am Games were a success only in that no disasters happened (not counting the billions of dollars spent).
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