Hi, guys, I think you're really going to love this episode because it's that
information that many photographers want to know and it's about pricing your
photography how much to charge for your work. Now how much should you charge for
your photos is a common question that I get asked all the time and it's not
without good reason pricing your work can be challenging it
requires finding a balance you don't want to underprice your work or you
might end up making a loss or being perceived as low-quality
but you also don't want to overcharge as you could easily lead to clients going
elsewhere. Now as someone who's been in the
business for 25 years trust me when I say running a successful photography
business requires much more than just talent. It requires hard work, dedication,
business savvy, as well and part of this business savvy is knowing what to charge
for your photography. Now professional photographers can be grouped into two
categories: commercial photography and social photography. Now depending on
which one of these categories you fall into, the way you structure your pricing
may vary now a commercial product photographer, for example, may get fewer
jobs per year and therefore charge more than say a social photographer who's
working every week or every day. Commercial photographers may also
require more equipment and studio facilities than social photographers do
but they may travel less. So what is commercial photography? Well commercial
photographers such as myself take photos purely for commercial
purposes we deal with business-to-business relationships and
we don't generally get involved working for individuals. Commercial photography
covers everything from fashion photography to product photography and
it's used for advertising purposes, editorials, annual reports and commercial
photographers generally charge by the day or half-day rates per project and
sometimes usage fees as well. What is social photography? Well unlike
commercial photographers social photographers deal with a consumer
relationship. This means they work directly with individuals and the
general public. Social photography includes things like weddings, events,
portraits, families or couples photography. Now some social
photographers charge by the hour but day rates for projects are also common but
generally they're working on upselling which is a big part of social
photographers work. They rely on additional income from selling extra
prints, frames, albums etc. as well. Now due to the nature of each photographer
they'll have their own needs for equipment, studio space, travel expenses,
etc. and the costs associated with those will vary now this is part of
the reason why so many people find it difficult to price their work there's no
easy straightforward answer each requires a tailored approach for each
type of photographer. So my photography pricing guide, well regardless of whether
you're a commercial or social photographer your aim as a business
owner should be the same and that is to make a profit now this may sound obvious
but this is where many photographers fall short too often they think the only
thing they need is skill but in reality good business sense is equally important
if not more important. Put simply, to work out your pricing you need to consider
how much you'd like to make per year and then factor in how much work you're
willing or able to do that year. Now we have a great blog post on KarlTaylorEducation.com
that has some formulas for calculating your expenses and
revenue needed. Now that basic formula can provide a guideline for working out
how much money you need to make now this will include business costs, outside
services, your earnings, your profit and taxes and this will equal your total
revenue needed. So let's break each of these things up
to give you a clearer idea. First of all business costs. Business costs are the
costs of running your business this will include things like your wages, your
studio rent, your equipment, your annual rates, your advertising expenditure, your
insurance, your travel and various miscellaneous costs. Now to calculate
business costs try creating a detailed spreadsheet with any and all associated
costs with running your business. This will provide an accurate account of all
the cost that you're going to incur. Outside services are something that you
don't provide yourself but can be considered part of your business costs
for example... retouching, CGI work, models, stylists, makeup, printing - all of those
things are outside services and keeping a track of those can be done using a job
sheet which is included also in our business section and on our blog as well.
Now your own actual earnings are very important, this is what you'd like to
earn for your work and this is what will make the six day weeks and the twelve
hour days and the day-to-day stresses worth it. Profit, nobody goes into
business just to break even think about how much you'd like to make
and try to add this to the equation remember turnover is vanity and profit
is sanity. Another thing you need to consider is taxes unfortunately we all
have to pay our taxes so let's consider this very simplified and basic example
let's say your business costs are £58,500 per year
let's say your earnings that you want to earn are £60,000 per year and
your profit that you'd like to make is £20,000 and your taxes are
£12,000 therefore the total revenue needed to meet all of that is
£150,500 - now to calculate your project
pricing divide the total by the number of working weeks in a year
if we assume that you'd like to take three weeks holiday a year that would
leave you 49 working weeks in a year so the total figure of 150 thousand five
hundred divided by 49 equals £3071. This is what
you need to make in sales per week to cover your total business expenditure
and earnings. From this point you would need to consider how many jobs you can
actually fit in per week. A portrait photographer for example may have to
undertake three or four shoots to cover this while a commercial product
photographer may only have to do one or two shoots. Now this pie chart gives a
great visual representation of some of the costs that I've just demonstrated
now it is very simplified obviously there will be many other extra expenses
you need to include in there as well things like telephone, miscellaneous
office bills, maintenance, things like that as well but it gives you an idea of
the process and what you need to think about to formulate your expenses and
your profit and your total revenue required. Now we've gone one step further
than that we've actually created a pricing calculator that allows you to
input some figures and slide them around to work stuff out so let's take a look
at that. So on our blog you'll find a blog post about our pricing calculator
and here it is and it's very simple and easy to use and it's actually too
simplified but it's there to give you an idea of things you need to think about.
So on the first slider, we have your studio rent or your monthly mortgage
payments let's pretend that your studio rent was $2,000 per month so we'll put
that in on the slider or there abouts let's assume that your studio facilities,
electricity, water, internet, telephone, those sort of things were coming in at
about $320 a month your advertising costs may be
coming in about a $1000 per month when you consider your telephone,
internet advertising, your newspaper, press,
article advertising so let's put that in a $1000 per month. Internet services,
website hosting, maintenance those sorts of things let's put $105 per month.
Miscellaneous costs, banking, professional fees, accounting, that sort of thing let's
tally that up to being about $300 per month and then let's
assume that you want to pay yourself I don't know four or maybe now let's go a
little bit higher let's say you want to make sure that you pay yourself at least
$5100 per month. Now what will your hourly rate be
so if you put in an hourly rate let's say you were able to charge around about
$200 an hour for your services then let's look at the results
so your total outgoings are shown in this box and that's showing that monthly
your costs would be $8825 now that equates
to 10 billable hours per week so using the slider example that we've got on our
blog there you can see that you're going to need to bill ten hours per week at
that hourly rate to meet those costs now whilst this examples quite rudimental it
does give you a good idea of how sort of business flows and ebbs with costs and
expenses revenue and earnings so it's well worth playing around with this
slider to get yourself familiar with how to configure and think about your
business operating costs. So you can find that slider over on KarlTaylorEducation.com
on our blog. Now this formula along with the simple examples
that I've just discussed should give you a good idea of how to start calculating
your pricing. Now if you're still not sure, it's also worth considering what
your competitors are charging as this should give you an idea of whether
you're over or under charging but keep in mind their costs may be different to
yours. Your level of experience is also something to think about if you're an
experienced photographer you may be able to charge higher
prices than someone who's just starting out, chances are you'll have more
equipment, maybe a studio of your own, an assistant,
not to mention greater knowledge and a greater level of skill all of which
clients will generally be willing to pay for. So let's talk about types of pricing
once you've determined how much you should be charging you need to think
about how you'll present that pricing to your client the most common method among
professional photographers is to choose a day rate but there are a few other
options too. Now day rates or half-day rates are the preferred method of
charging for many professional commercial photographers including
myself a day rate covers the cost of your time for that day or half day's
work however it does not account for additional costs such as assistant fees,
additional images, post-production, time usage fees and other services so with my
day rate if I'm using an assistant I'll be charging extra for the assistant if
there's additional post-production work we'll be charging extra for that on top
of the day rate now the other charging method is per job which can be suitable
for larger projects quoting per job takes into consideration how many hours
or days it will take you to complete the job and it includes any additional costs
that may be incurred this allows you to put forward one fixed price for the
overall project. The other method is hourly, this method of pricing is more
common among student or amateur photographers though some portrait and
event photographers may also charge by the hour. Charging for your time by the
hour, photographers generally add the additional cost separately afterwards.
Another method is per image. This is commonly used when shooting things like
packshots and it's charged per picture, for example, a product
photographer may charge £5 for an image of 100 items at
£5 each or £2 per image for 500 items so it's all to do
with scale and quantity. But for this type of photography, it's
usually very easy to replicate and reproduce ecommerce type imagery.
Another thing is usage fees usage fees also known as licensing fees are what a
client pays to use your images and they're based on the amount of use or
exposure that that image is going to get and how long the images are going to be
used for. Usage fees are usually only applicable for bigger jobs and bigger
clients and adding them to work done for smaller clients will only create
confusion and it isn't usually worth the hassle but on large-scale advertising
campaigns and projects photographers like myself and product and advertising
and fashion photographers will often be able to charge usage fees - now what do
professional photographers charge as I mentioned earlier when working out your
pricing it's worth taking the time to find out what other photographers are
charging however you need to be realistic with this keep in mind their
location their specialization the level of experience as these will all have an
impact on their pricing so I've outlined some general rates that you might expect
for professional photographers so top product photographers who generally
charge a commercial day rate can charge maybe around £3000 or
$5000 per day and prices for high-end product and advertising
photography pallate Jonathan Knowles or Peter Lippmann are usually even higher
and these will have additional usage fees applied to their work as well. Now
we cover more about usage fees and how they work in our business section on
Karl Taylor Education so make sure to go and check that out too. High quality
wedding photographers can cost up to £2000 per day that's about
$2500 per day and even award-winning photographers that's
award-winning wedding photographers they can charge much more maybe
£5000 / $7000 per day. Portrait photographers may work for as
little as just a few hundred dollars for a family or group shot shoot and they
may try and shoot two or three of these per day and be able to make a decent
living. Top portrait photographers may be a
charge £2000 for a shoot and top celebrity portrait photographers
maybe commissioned at much higher rates anywhere up to 8000 or
10,000 per day. Unfortunately, there's no definitive guide when it comes to
what to charge for your work but what I've discussed here today should offer
you a good starting point. So take the time to go through some of the costs of
running your business and think objectively about your level of
experience and level of skill and what you have to offer the client. Don't allow
yourself to make the common mistake of undervaluing your work or your time and
make sure to consider all of the costs associated with the job. It's also worth
considering your pricing from time to time and not just to account for
inflation as the years go by your skills as a photographer should hopefully
improve and your techniques improves your knowledge grows you'll be able to
offer more to your clients and therefore be able to charge more. As photographers
we never know everything and it's important that we keep learning and
improving taking the time to invest in yourself as a photographer will pay off
in the future and you'll find your confidence and skills grow. Remember
if you're looking for ways to practice and improve our classes offer a wide
selection of topics suitable for any skill level they offer an opportunity to
follow along and understand the techniques which you can then put into
practice we also have a large volume of business skills and business marketing
and pricing within our business section on KarlTaylorEducation.com