When starting out with your photography business, the most important thing to determine is how much your services will cost your client. There are many factors to think about when determining your price. Here are some factors to consider:
1. Your photography business have to turn a profit.
Any business will need to turn a steady profit for it to grow. This means that the cost for your business needs to be less than your income. Carefully calculate your expenditures of your photography business. Don’t forget to calculate all the little things that you may miss like the wear of your equipment as you use them for your business, transportation costs, food consumption costs, photography classes costs, costs to cover any accidents and worst case scenarios, and other non-materialistic costs. If the business doesn’t profit, it’s more like a hobby.
2. Compete in the photography market by upping your quality of work, not downgrading your price.
Clients are will to pay more for a photographer if the quality is up to par with the price. Consequently, if your prices are too low, your business will appear cheap and clients will doubt your ability and quality as a photographer.
3. There’s no exact figure for pricing in the photography business world.
You can price your services at $100, $1000, or even $2000 and it’ll be no problem. You can even start your price at $100 and raise your prices to $1000 after a period of time and no one can stop you. One important thing to remember is you have to have reasons why your prices are reasonable. Maybe because of high production costs, exclusive photoshoot venues, difficulty of photograph shots, or quality like no other. Make your clients believe they’re getting their money’s worth, however high your pricetag may be.
4. Don’t base your price on time you spend, but rather on quality.
Consider the following case: Say that there’s a photographer with a $100/hour fee. To get $500, said photographer would need to work for 5 hours. In reality, that photographer can produce the same quality photos in 1 hour as opposed to the 5 hours that it’s estimated to take. Therefore, said photographer should still be worth the $500 fee because he/she just saved the clients time. The photographer shouldn’t be getting a paycut because he/she finished the project faster than expected.
To most clients, time is a valuable asset. The faster, really is, the better. So if you, as a photographer can get the job done more efficiently and professionally and in high quality in a shorter amount of time, the asking price for the services should be higher than an hourly wage.
5. Find the right target market for your services.
If you’re into wildlife photography, you wouldn’t want to offer your services to a fashion designer. Market your services, instead to a animal-loving community or a wildlife magazine. Finding the right market for your brand of photography will make your professional photography life that much easier.
Good luck! Hope this helps!
