A friend convinced me to come out and shoot a dog agility trial. I figured it would be good practice for wildlife shooting and if I sold a few images, all the better. But I was ill prepared for the eventuallity that someone is actually interested which they are. Any advice on how to price the images? I was thinking of offering 4x6, 5x7, or 8x10 prints, web formated digital images, or full res digital with an unrestriced personal use lisence. I've already got a Zenfolio account and have things all set up other than deciding on pricing. Any advice will be appreciated.
We've evolved a pricing structure, or more accurately a "strategy" that's held up for our 25 years of business. We base it on our cost of having a lab do the printing for us, simply using a multiplier. We've paid off the mortgage on a commercial building and built a fat retirement savings account, meanwhile accomodating all the usual costs of maintaining a storefront business, so our multiplier (5x) may seem really high to some.
Local markets and traditions, as well as your personal goals for your business, will surely force you to reflect carefully when choosing your own multiplier. But the approach will certainly simplify this and all future pricing decisions. You can adjust your multiplier as conditions change more easily than any other pricing strategy I know of.
Thanks, Hank. One other question, do you price differently based on subject matter? Would you price something like I described differently than wildlife photography? Or do you base it all on your cost structure per your comment?
The actual prints or web files are based on that structure. We also charge hourly shooting fees when on contract and license fees on top of that if they're for advertising. In the larger scheme of our business prints may be the smaller parts of some contracts, but sales to the public from events such as you describe, whether athletics, graduations, weddings, or celebrations derive their print prices from that schedule.
BTW- In recent years we have had great luck posting portfolios from the events on a web host linked to our lab. We pass out our cards with our site address and a password for the private portfolio. Potential buyers place their orders right on the site, which go directly to the lab. Their credit card payments go to our account and we get a monthly bill from the lab. It's certainly the handiest way I've seen for selling to large numbers of people at an event. Oh, and the reason I mentioned it, a part of the process is that we have to post prices. Using the multiplier I describe makes that easy, especially if and when lab fees go up on at least an annual basis.
I forgot to point out one of the biggest challenges in selling photos---- Compensating yourself for all the unpaid hours you put in to support each sale, whether prepping photos, assembling and submitting orders, or delivering. Heck, add sweeping the floor and pressure washing the exterior of the building to your list of unpaid chores.
You have two choices- cut down on the unpaid hours or raise your rates enough to include an element of income to cover chores that you can't bill directly.
We do both, not only in our choice of multipliers for setting prices but also in things like using the web host/lab arrangement to deal with mass small sales from events. Receiving $2k-$4k for an event is dandy if your only time investment after the fact is sorting and posting to the web host. It's barely minimum wage if you have to invest dozens and dozens of hours to track down participants and solicit orders, then follow up. And meanwhile you'll gross lots more simply because in our experience event participants respond better to web browsing and ordering than to nuisance phone calls from us to schedule appointments for face-to-face sales.
Thanks, Hank. Being self-employed isn't all wine and roses I guess...
I can't even imagine what marketing must have been like pre-internet. With my inherent people skills it would have been a long uphill climb to poverty.
You'll still have to get your cards in their hands and rely on all methods to get them to your portfolios, but the time savings are significant. Moreso than any other web "marketing" I know of, the online event portfolios do result in more sales.
Discussion
6 repliesLocal markets and traditions, as well as your personal goals for your business, will surely force you to reflect carefully when choosing your own multiplier. But the approach will certainly simplify this and all future pricing decisions. You can adjust your multiplier as conditions change more easily than any other pricing strategy I know of.
BTW- In recent years we have had great luck posting portfolios from the events on a web host linked to our lab. We pass out our cards with our site address and a password for the private portfolio. Potential buyers place their orders right on the site, which go directly to the lab. Their credit card payments go to our account and we get a monthly bill from the lab. It's certainly the handiest way I've seen for selling to large numbers of people at an event. Oh, and the reason I mentioned it, a part of the process is that we have to post prices. Using the multiplier I describe makes that easy, especially if and when lab fees go up on at least an annual basis.
I forgot to point out one of the biggest challenges in selling photos---- Compensating yourself for all the unpaid hours you put in to support each sale, whether prepping photos, assembling and submitting orders, or delivering. Heck, add sweeping the floor and pressure washing the exterior of the building to your list of unpaid chores.
You have two choices- cut down on the unpaid hours or raise your rates enough to include an element of income to cover chores that you can't bill directly.
We do both, not only in our choice of multipliers for setting prices but also in things like using the web host/lab arrangement to deal with mass small sales from events. Receiving $2k-$4k for an event is dandy if your only time investment after the fact is sorting and posting to the web host. It's barely minimum wage if you have to invest dozens and dozens of hours to track down participants and solicit orders, then follow up. And meanwhile you'll gross lots more simply because in our experience event participants respond better to web browsing and ordering than to nuisance phone calls from us to schedule appointments for face-to-face sales.
I can't even imagine what marketing must have been like pre-internet. With my inherent people skills it would have been a long uphill climb to poverty.