pricing

Photography value and quality

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When hiring a business portrait photographer or other corporate photographer, you might be tempted to shop by price. You may think that the lowest price means the best value.

With some tangible products, the lowest price can be the best value. But this doesn’t apply with services like photography and especially not when quality matters.

What’s the difference between value and quality?

Value: Usefulness or importance.

Quality: How good or bad something is. A degree of excellence.

Ideally a photograph has both high value and high quality but that’s not always the case. For example, a poorly exposed, out-of-focus family photo can be very valuable to you.
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The (F)utility of Low Prices

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Photographers, how much would you charge to deliver 24 business headshots, 12 full-length environmental portraits and 4 environmental group shots?

Well, a Toronto photographer quoted $800 for this recent corporate job. This works out to $20 per delivered picture. The corporate client turned down this quote because even they knew the low price was ridiculous.

Photographers who try to discount or lowball their way into a job only hurt themselves. It’s been shown that customers are not fooled by bottom-end prices. So why do some photographers keep doing it?
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Discard Discounts

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A photographer can’t discount their way to success. If it was possible, don’t you think every photographer would be doing it?

When you discount, you penalize customers who pay your normal price. For example, after buying a $400 winter coat, do you feel cheated the following week when the same coat is discounted 50%?

When you discount, it means you have no other value to offer the customer.

Discounting attracts price shoppers. Is that what you want? If you offer a discounted price of, say, $99 for a business headshot, then you’ll attract $99 customers. If they like your work, they’ll tell all their $99 friends and you’ll get more $99 customers.
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Quotable Stress

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A photographer wrote to say:

“I don’t know why sending out job quotes still stresses me out too much after all these years. I tie too much emotion to my business at times.”

She went on to say that she wanted to learn to separate her business from her emotions because, she said, it’s not personal, it’s just business.

 

If you view your photography as art then perhaps you should also view your business as an art. And art tends to be emotional.

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Licensing Fees for Photography

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There are usually three components to a commercial or corporate photographer’s price: production expenses, photo fee (or creative fee) and licensing fee (or usage fee).

The first item, production expenses, refers to all expenses directly related to the job at hand. It doesn’t include your cost of doing business. It should be straightforward as to how to determine and charge for production expenses.

Photographers often charge a markup on some of these expenses but some clients ask for receipts and will refuse to pay any markup.

One important expense is your own equipment. Some photographers charge each client a rental fee for using their own photo equipment. Other photographers put the cost of their own equipment into their cost of doing business and wrap that into their photo fee. I’m not sure which method is better but remember that the cost of your own equipment must be recouped.
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A Timely Reminder for Photographers

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1) How much would you pay me to take a photo of you?

2) How much would I have to pay you to model for a photo?

Are your two answers the same? Shouldn’t they be the same since the outcome – a photo of you – is the same?

I bet your answer to the second question is much higher than the first.

The first question was about me, the second question was about you. Everyone values their own time more than someone else’s. This applies not only to individuals but also to businesses.

A photographer has to understand that many corporate clients tend to value their time more than their money. These clients know that any money spent on photography will be earned back but any time that might be wasted (on a photo project) is gone forever.

This means that marketing low price is the wrong approach for a corporate photographer. Instead the photographer should be showing that they value the client’s time as much as the client does. How will the photographer save the client time and effort?

For many corporate clients, it’s about the results. This means that a photographer gets paid for bringing value, not low price, to the client. It’s not usually about price unless the photographer makes it about price.

And when a photographer makes it about price, they shoot themselves in the wallet.

 

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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