The business side of photography
What will it cost if your photo project fails? If your photographer misses the mark and the photos are not effective, how much will that impact your business? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Perhaps even hundreds of thousands of dollars?
What will it cost to ensure your photo project succeeds? A few hundred or a few thousand dollars more? Far less than the potential loss from failure.
So why take the risk of hiring the cheapest photographer, the lowest bidder?
Price is set by you, the photographer, but value is set by your customers. Your task is to align the two. You have to align your prices with the perceived value of your photography.
Perceived value refers to the benefits a customer believes they will receive from your photography. The higher the perceived value, the greater the customer satisfaction. Additionally, a higher perceived value allows you to charge higher prices. Since a strong perceived value benefits both you and the customer, it’s essential to focus on enhancing it.
While price will reflect tangible factors like your time and costs, value is subjective. It’s emotional and varies from customer to customer. Value to the customer depends on:
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Price is set by you, the photographer, but value is perceived by the customer:
Perceived value = Expected benefit(s) – Perceived cost
where Perceived cost = monetary cost + the effort needed to make the purchase.
If Expected benefits = Perceived cost, then value is zero. The customer probably won’t buy.
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This same store today sells beauty supplies.
(This post is mostly for new photographers doing corporate or commercial photography rather than retail photography.)
Unlike a department store which sells hundreds or even thousands of products, a photographer basically sells one product – themselves – and that comes in a very limited supply. A retail store’s business model is based on volume. A store has an unlimited supply of products to sell to dozens or hundreds of customers each and every day. A store gets a steady stream of money from lots of small purchases.
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This is another view-from-my-office photo.
A photographer asked me to take at look his recent food photos (mostly photos of product packaging). His customer wasn’t happy with the pictures. The photographer wanted a second opinion before replying to his customer.
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This is another view-from-my-office photo.
All products, except luxury items, have a maximum price set by market conditions. A loaf of bread costs up to about $8. A bakery can’t increase the price to $20 or $30 no matter how good that bread is. The price of bread has a ceiling. To make more money, a bakery can expand into products that have a higher price ceiling such as cakes and pastry (which might be considered luxury items).
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A few months ago, I was asked to quote for a three-hour business event. So I quoted for a three-hour event.
Two days before the event, the event organizer said they needed me onsite 45 minutes sooner to do some early photos. They also wanted me to stay after the event so I could edit “one or two pictures” right away for their social media.
On event day, I arrived one hour before the start and, as requested, I was ready to go 45 minutes before the start. But the event was 45 minutes late getting started. It also ran 1-1/2 hours longer than planned. After the event they wanted some group photos. Then the “one or two pictures” that they needed right away became 16 images. What was originally supposed to be three hours onsite turned out to be more than 6-1/2 hours.
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