freelancing

Better search results

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One of the interesting(?) features available to web site owners is the ability to see what search phrases are used to find their site. One such phrase used several times to find this site is: “photography companies hiring photographers”.

Very few “photography companies” have staff photographers:

• Newspapers. But the newspaper industry is collapsing and the hiring of photographers is rare. The number of staff news photographers in the USA is expected to drop by 30% over the next seven years. Canada should be similar.

• Government. A few government offices have staff photographers but this has been mostly replaced by freelancers and occasional contract work. It’s surprising and short-sighted that municipal governments don’t all have staff photographers and photo departments.

• The military. But I doubt it’s much of a photography company.

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Working for free

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Photographers, do yourself a favour and read this article by US brand strategist Patty Soffer:

Freebies are the scourge of freelance workers everywhere. Beginners notwithstanding (yes, we all pay our dues) many are tempted to work for free because they believe it will lead to paying work. News flash: it won’t. It leads exactly nowhere. When the un-payer decides to ante up, they hire someone else because they want to work with professionals who value themselves. Clearly you don’t if you were willing to give it away for nothing.

– Patty Soffer

 

When someone asks you to work for free, it means they think your photography is worthless. When you work for free, it means you agree.

The best situation is to charge what your photography is worth. But if you must offer a discount, rather than work for free, simply charge less than what your photography is worth but more than what it costs.

 

Making Contact

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My web site offers three ways for prospective customers to contact me: telephone number, e-mail address and a contact form.

I thought that most people would use the e-mail link. My assumption was that people would prefer and trust their own e-mail software more than a plain web-page contact form.

Over the past three years, 5% of potential customers used the telephone number, 30% used the e-mail address and 65% used the contact form.

Forms can capture not only the person’s name and e-mail address but also any other information you might need. However, asking too many questions risks turning a simple contact form into an interrogation and frighten customers away.

Contact forms are easy to implement. Web hosts usually include CGI-based e-mail forms. Blog software either has contact forms built-in or there’s a free plugin available. There are a few third-party-hosted form services.

Contact forms do attract spammers and there are ways to minimize this nusiance. But any spam that does come through a contact form is far outweighed by the benefits of having such a form on your web site.

 

Bottom of the ninth

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Some photo assignments can be challenging in one way or another. But a professional photographer should welcome such assignments as an opportunity to help build customer trust and enhance the photographer’s reputation.

Any corporate photographer can arrive, set-up, shoot a few business portraits and then deliver the finished photos a few days later. Hopefully, the customer receives a professional level of competence and quality but beyond that, the photographer didn’t really “prove” anything to the customer.

But if. . .
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Photography pricing resources

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Just a short list of a few resources for learning to price commercial photography. I’m not vouching for any of these. A photographer would be foolish to base their business practices on numbers from someone else’s web site. Use these for informational purposes and to help understand the underlying principles.

• The News Photographers Association of Canada Cost of Doing Business Calculator (CODB) is a good place to start. You may be quite surprised at what your CODB is.

• The Canadian Association of Professional Image Creators has a PDF listing suggested minimum usage fees (i.e. licensing fees only). Main page > Useful Resources > Resources > Reproduction Fee Schedule. The site has other useful information.

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Sales tax for Canadian photographers

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For Canadian professional photographers (and other business owners), the federal government has published a brief GST/HST guide and a sales tax calculator. The calculator is titled “GST/HST calculator” but the results will also show provincial tax.

Current sales tax rates (these may change):

British Columbia: 5% GST and 7% PST

Alberta: 5% GST and 0% PST

Saskatchewan: 5% GST and 6% PST

Manitoba: 5% GST and 8% PST

Ontario: 13% HST

Quebec: 5% GST and 9.975% QST

New Brunswick: 15% HST

Nova Scotia: 15% HST

Prince Edward Island: 15% HST

Newfoundland and Labrador: 15% HST

Yukon: 5% GST and 0% PST

Northwest Territories: 5% GST and 0% PST

Nunavut: 5% GST and 0% PST

In British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec, the provinces which have both GST and a provincial sales tax, each tax is charged on the retail price only (i.e. there’s no tax on the other tax).

 

Please check the date of this article because it contains information that may become out of date. Tax regulations, sales tax rules, copyright laws and privacy laws can change from time to time. Always check with proper government sources for up-to-date information.

 

Canadian GST / HST tax form

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This article was posted in 2012. Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has since made changes to the GST/HST filing process. Back in 2012, taxable and non-taxable (zero rated) sales were included together. Starting in 2016, taxable and non-taxable sales have been separated. This means that the GST/HST form mentioned below is out of date. The CRA has not published an updated form because it wants you to file GST/HST only online.

 

Back in 2010, Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) made it mandatory for businesses to file quarterly GST/HST tax returns electronically. As much as electronic filing is fast and easy, the instructions were, and still are, poorly explained. Fortunately the CRA continued to mail a paper copy of the tax form so you could follow the instructions on the paper copy when filing your GST/HST electronically.

About a year ago, the CRA stopped sending the paper copy of the GST/HST tax form. So now, when filing a tax return electronically, you have to remember (or guess) each step of the tax return. For example, you’re asked to enter a dollar amount for “Line 108” – Uh, what the heck was Line 108 again?
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