T
The Violator!
Guest
Hi, no, it's not fair - to you, or to your competitors!
How are you expected to make a living, or how are your competitors expected to make a living if you are going in at cut throat prices?
Let's look at this another way: how many months or weeks in a year will you realistically work, allowing for sickness and holidays? How many portraits will you realistically do per week? What will be the cost of getting in that level of business (marketing, where, how much, how often)? When would you want to retire (which means you need to consider saving too)? Is there any margin to do a seasonal promotion at certain times of the year when business is flat?
Now what about your costs? New equipment? Training? Insurance? Overheads - food, electricity, rent, travel, phone, marketing? What about holidays? And on top of this you need to build a 'cash cushion'... now divide that by the number of weeks you expect to work.
And divide that among the number of portraits you expect to shoot... how does that compare with your 'cost plus' pricing?
Now, how much time will you spend 'per portrait' on preparing for a shoot, set-up, shooting, travelling back home, post production and retouching on your images, marketing, sales, explaining your costs to clients / eliciting a brief, administration, bookkeeping, accounts, ordering stock, cleaning, answering the phone, research, designing new brochures... and now compare that to the costs per print.
I think you are looking at this completely unrealistically and you need to first make a comparison with other professional photographers in your area. Many of them will be struggling already. Now consider whether you will expect to make a realistic living if you charge $2 per print on a $1 print?
... if everyone priced this way your newspaper would be $0.10c and a DVD would be $50.c, a print by a photographer would start at $0.25c and a painting would be $20, spare ink for your printer would be $1. Doesn't work, does it?
Using this method of pricing you will not end up making a profit - you'll actually end up subsidizing your clients and you'll give yourself an impossible job to raise your prices to a realistic level later - you'll get known as being the dirt cheap photographer in town (for a while, until you go broke)... not a route I'd recommend.
So, a more sensible way is to compare your product and prices to your competition and to price, if not accordingly, then at least with some knowledge of what your competition is doing.
In an ideal world, in 5 years time, will you be selling the best photography in town - or the cheapest? There are a finite number of photos each portrait will buy from you, so your job as a photographer is to optimise your take per shoot, so you get properly rewarded by your clients for the effort and skill you put in... !
If you think a dollar per print is a decent margin then what do you expect to earn per day and how many prints does that equate to... are you really going to work 80 hours a week for $50 gross revenue (not profit) per day - if you're lucky enough to sell 50 prints per day!?
How are you expected to make a living, or how are your competitors expected to make a living if you are going in at cut throat prices?
Let's look at this another way: how many months or weeks in a year will you realistically work, allowing for sickness and holidays? How many portraits will you realistically do per week? What will be the cost of getting in that level of business (marketing, where, how much, how often)? When would you want to retire (which means you need to consider saving too)? Is there any margin to do a seasonal promotion at certain times of the year when business is flat?
Now what about your costs? New equipment? Training? Insurance? Overheads - food, electricity, rent, travel, phone, marketing? What about holidays? And on top of this you need to build a 'cash cushion'... now divide that by the number of weeks you expect to work.
And divide that among the number of portraits you expect to shoot... how does that compare with your 'cost plus' pricing?
Now, how much time will you spend 'per portrait' on preparing for a shoot, set-up, shooting, travelling back home, post production and retouching on your images, marketing, sales, explaining your costs to clients / eliciting a brief, administration, bookkeeping, accounts, ordering stock, cleaning, answering the phone, research, designing new brochures... and now compare that to the costs per print.
I think you are looking at this completely unrealistically and you need to first make a comparison with other professional photographers in your area. Many of them will be struggling already. Now consider whether you will expect to make a realistic living if you charge $2 per print on a $1 print?
... if everyone priced this way your newspaper would be $0.10c and a DVD would be $50.c, a print by a photographer would start at $0.25c and a painting would be $20, spare ink for your printer would be $1. Doesn't work, does it?
Using this method of pricing you will not end up making a profit - you'll actually end up subsidizing your clients and you'll give yourself an impossible job to raise your prices to a realistic level later - you'll get known as being the dirt cheap photographer in town (for a while, until you go broke)... not a route I'd recommend.
So, a more sensible way is to compare your product and prices to your competition and to price, if not accordingly, then at least with some knowledge of what your competition is doing.
In an ideal world, in 5 years time, will you be selling the best photography in town - or the cheapest? There are a finite number of photos each portrait will buy from you, so your job as a photographer is to optimise your take per shoot, so you get properly rewarded by your clients for the effort and skill you put in... !
If you think a dollar per print is a decent margin then what do you expect to earn per day and how many prints does that equate to... are you really going to work 80 hours a week for $50 gross revenue (not profit) per day - if you're lucky enough to sell 50 prints per day!?