Congratulations! You have decided to take your photography skills to the next level! You have decided to start your photography business.
We congratulate on this beautiful journey and we wish to remind of one of the important things in your photography business – your pricing!
This is because the issue of pricing is one of the things most photographers and even other service providers struggle with when they just start their business.
However, before you begin to bother about pricing, make sure you have decided on your specialty because your photography specialty can be a huge determinant in pricing.
How do you set the right pricing? How do you calculate your earnings and profits?
Your pricing should be set in such a way that it ideally and accurately represents your brand, specialty, knowledge, and experience.
Here are some tips for you:
- Have a cost blueprint: First, you need to understand how much it costs you to run your photography business. You need to calculate and document everything such as the cost of equipment, marketing and promotional costs, office and studio costs, miscellaneous costs, and so on. You need to consider both fixed and variable costs.
- Cost of service provided: It is important to note that some photography sessions would differ from others. And so, you need to calculate the cost of the service rendered. For instance, did you take 5 portrait photographs of your client? Are you printing out the images? Are you providing an album? Are you framing the images? These are some of the things you need to consider.
- Time: You also need to consider your time. How much time did you spend on the work? You need to consider travel time, meeting up with clients, familiarizing yourself with the venue, setting up equipment, production time, and even post-production time.
- Analyze the market: What do other photographers who do what you do currently charge? How is the market fairing and what are the gap your competitors are filing as well as how much are they charging their clients.
- Profit margin: You need to remember that your profit margin might differ from work to work. You need to add your profit to the costs you have determined in order to know what to charge.
In addition, here are some other things you can consider when calculating your pricing:
- Consider copyrights and usage: You can also consider how the photos would be used and the kind of rights you are giving your clients when deciding your pricing. Are you giving exclusive rights to the clients? Are restrictions on how you can make use of your clients’ images in your adverts and promotional materials? You have to consider these things.
- Your education: How educated are you in your photography field? What are some of the certifications you have?
- Your experience: How experienced are you and for how long have you worked in your photography business.
- Your work quality: What is your work quality like and how advanced are the equipment and materials you make use of?
- Your skills: What is your technical know-how and what are those expertise photography skills you have garnered over the years?
Photo by Miss Zhang on Unsplash
