The Pricing Puzzle

It is pretty much inevitable that as a professional photographer, you'll have to figure out how much to charge per job or per hour. The pricing puzzle has a different solution for everyone; it may be tempting to look up photographers in your genre and compare packages and session fees, but don't get caught in that trap! What you need to charge depends on so many factors, and you don't want to end up selling yourself short or charging more than your level of experience is worth. Get all the pieces of the puzzle together, though, and you will end up on the road to success.

There are two major factors that go into running any business: cost of doing business (COB), and cost of living (COL). You'll be learning a great deal about these things in your business classes - pay attention and keep all of your work because you will really benefit from revisiting the worksheets on at least an annual basis to see whether, and how much, you need to raise your prices. If you haven't had a business class yet, it's not too early to start tracking where your money goes so you'll have a really good idea of what you take in and spend on a monthly basis. You will be super prepared for class, to boot!

Cost of Living
While there are charts and calculators available to determine COL based on where you live, it will be much more useful to you to input every single regular payment you have to make into a custom chart. Things like utility payments, average grocery costs, mortgage/rent, and other items that are not business-related will go into this chart. You will also want to include entertainment expenses to ensure you have enough money to enjoy your free time with the prices you set.

Cost of Doing Business
The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) has great resources on its pricing guides page to help you better understand what you need to consider when setting your pricing. The cost of doing business calculator by National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) is a great place to start, but I'd suggest creating an Excel document in which you expand on the items included in the calculator. For example, if you have one payment for web hosting and one for your domain name, itemize these instead of simply including "web hosting/portal service" so you can see exactly where your money goes each month or year. Similarly, itemizing each professional subscription or membership will help you keep track of how many organizations you have joined and determine whether you want to renew each one annually. Don't forget to include licensing costs in this section (for example, my studio is an LLC so I had to account for setup and annual fees - business incorporation is something you should talk about with your accountant or bankers, and is a blog post for another day!).

Once you have all of your costs (including the salary you want to pay yourself, if self-employed), it's time to determine the final pricing. You don't want to just cover your basic costs, you want to make a profit! Think about what makes sense for your business: will you have tiered packages from which clients can choose? Will you offer products like albums, prints, and custom flash drives for image files? Try to envision your ideal client and how he or she will be using your images. Because my focus is weddings and portraits, my pricing includes various packages with some special à la carte products (like this super fun wooden box with mounted prints I just added to my offerings, tested with some of my Tanzania photographs!).

Once you've set your prices, be confident! If you have confidence that you are worth what you charge, so will your clients.

Have any pricing advice or concerns? Leave a comment and I'll share my opinion or point you to some helpful resources!

Works Cited:

"Cost of Doing Business Calculator." National Press Photographers Association. National Press Photographers Association, 2012. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.

"Pricing Guides." American Society of Media Photographers. American Society of Media Photographers, Inc., 2014. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.

-Friday Ambassador