pricing

Sales Strategies for Photographers

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Antone’s Department Store in Zebulon, North Carolina, November 1939. (Marion Post Wolcott/Farm Security Administration/US Library of Congress)

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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Low Prices: A Cautionary Tale

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This isn’t just a picture of nearly frozen waterfalls in Niagara Falls, February 2015. The photo shows science in action! Normally you don’t see clouds being created right in front of you because the point of creation is much higher in the atmosphere. But here, with the relatively warm mist from the falls, warm sunlight and ice cold air, clouds quickly formed at ground level (okay, at water level) and rose into the sky.

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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Dancing On The Ceiling

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The Live 8 concert in Barrie, Ontario, 02 July 2005. Live 8 was ten simultaneous concerts held in ten countries on 02 July 2005, plus one more concert on 06 July. The concerts, held on the 20th anniversary of the original Live Aid concert, were meant to send a message to national leaders at the 2005 G8 Summit in Scotland.

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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Pricing for Business Event Photography

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If you’re lucky, the conference that you’ve been hired to photograph will be held in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows and big skylights. The afternoon light will let you shoot at ISO 400 and a reasonable shutter speed.

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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The Low Price Excuse

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A photographer recently emailed to ask about business taxes. Before I replied, I took a look at her web site. This photographer charges $40 per photo for family portraits and $30 per photo for business headshots. I answered their tax question and then asked why she charged so low.

The photographer replied that she always shoots at least 200 photos per family session and 100 photos per headshot session and the customer always buys several images.

We lose money on every sale but we make up for it with volume!

– Anonymous

Low prices can be an excuse for photographers who don’t want to get involved. They don’t want to work at their work. They don’t trust themselves to deliver good results so they don’t trust themselves to have higher prices.

Low prices are for photographers who refuse to take responsibility for their work. If their pictures turn out poorly, they can hide behind their prices and say, “What did you expect? It was only $99.”

A photographer who charges appropriately has their reputation at stake with every customer. Higher prices compel the photographer to deliver better results to the customer.

When a photographer sets higher prices, they intentionally have nowhere to hide. And they’re proud of it because they’re not looking for excuses.

Higher prices don’t just help a photographer’s bank account because higher prices are also a win for the customer.

 

Working Photographer

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Great customers want a photographer who does great work.

Good customers want a photographer who does good work.

Cheap customers want a photographer who does good enough work.

What kind of work do you do?

 

Customers who pay your rates take your work seriously.

Customers who expect cheap want to take your work.

What kind of customer do you want to work with?

 

Low Expectations

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Canadian goalkeeper Milan Borjan celebrates Canada’s win over Jamaica in their men’s soccer match in the final rounds of the Concacaf FIFA World Cup qualifiers in Toronto, Canada, 27 March 2022.

This is a view-from-my-office photo from a cold, rainy-snowy soccer game.

From the past two weeks:

 

• A Toronto professional photographer does family portraits for $500 according to his web site. The price includes a 45-minute session and 50 “fully retouched” pictures.

Fifty images in 45 minutes? Fully retouched? Ten dollars per photo?

At that price, who should have low expectations, the customer or the photographer?

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