bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

Anyone else raising their prices this year?
If so, by how much?

About 5 or so years ago, I was charging about 1/2 what I am now. (still nowhere near what Ed, or Jerry demand, but would like to get to that point at least once)

I make it a point to raise my price by 10% every year, but the way I do it is about 2.5% every quarter, so it is always just a "tiny increase."

Now, something that I noticed is that there is a point where if you are charging too much to keep the "craigslist shoppers" happy, there is point where "ideal clients" don't "trust you" because you aren't expensive enough.

Here's my "random thought" to pass along. If you have gotten to the point where you can't seem to get enough clients, instead of dropping your package prices to be in line with what "some couples" want to pay, try raising your prices.

I tell you, it's a lot easier making double the money, and you don't have to work as much. It also gets to the point where, if you are charging ENOUGH, the clients "trust you" to do what you do, and don't try to micro manage you.

The same thing has been happening with my portrait business. I raised my prices, in some cases by a LOT, and all of a sudden, I'm busier, and have easier to deal with clients. It's amazing, you would think it would be just the opposite.

So, you can run your business however you want, give out digitals, do free sitting fees, don't charge for editing, OR, try something different this year, if last year didn't have the results you wanted. Remember the definition of insanity... don't keep doing the same thing you've always done, and expect different results. That will just lead to burn out.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

I try not to raise my prices indiscriminately by any particular percentage without first going over my year end fiscal statement which is prepare by my accountant. With the way all my overhead costs and the general cost of living are rising, it's easy enough to raise my prices but not sufficiently to maintain a decent profit level. Last year, I was advised to rain my prices by 12.5% in order to keep things going. This year, I was just informed that a 15% hike is required.

Here in Ontario, Canada, the minimum wage was just increased from about $11. per hour to $14, and expected to hit $15. pretty soon. This is good for the economy in that folks are gonna have more money to spend but at the same time so many other prices and expenses are going up in that many businesses are raising prices to accommodate their higher paroles. We are gonna feel theses increases everywhere- at the gas pump, the grocery store and all of the folks who supply our business as well as our employees. When the minimum wage rises, so do the expectations of folks in the higher paying jobs. Some new laws are also creating better perks and benefits for employees and preventing unscrupulous employers form taking unfair advantages of their staffs.

I don't mind paying more for goods and services as long as hard working folks are making a decent living- it's all good but I still have to consider all of this in my price structure. So may photographer do not consider their own lifestyles and salaries in formulating their prices. I always advise newcomers to carefully last all of their personal and business expenses and factor them into their fees.

What's is the sense of running your own business if the "boss" ain't gettin' paid!? When some of theses new guys and gals go through this kind of financial planning, they are oftentimes shocked when they discover they are operating at a loss once they consider and factor in all of their expenses- insurances, adverting, online and communications activities, depreciation and maintenance of gear, educational and association fees and lots more besides the usual rents, utilities and automotive costs.

I also advise folks to NEVER base their prices on their competition. A classic example is that the photographer down the road may live in a luxurious home, may be putting 3 kids through Ivy League colleges and needs to drive a Lamborghini- just saying! The photographer up the street may be contented to live in a closet and share cat food with his pet feline! Different lifestyles for sure and, of course I like to exaggerate to make my points and I do have a sick sense of humor but y'all will get my point!

At the same time, when my prices go up, I still have to convince my clients that they are getting value for their money so I try to keep the quality and service at a very high level. So far- so good- I am still booking well and I haven't yet priced myself out of the market.

02Nomad Loc: Catonsville, MD

Regarding pricing, a friend of mine (who did professional concert photography) told me once that the higher the price, people tend to think it is better quality. As an example, he said that if he were to hold up two photographs, printed right after the other, and quote a price of $2 for one and $10 for the other, the majority of his customers would buy the $10 photo!

Beercat Loc: Central Coast of California

We raised our prices around December 1st. Since then our bookings have dropped. Enough so that I have some concern, in fact I discussed this with my BH this morning. True be told we need to generate cash flow for December, January and February. Once March hits we are fine through November. This is the same every year so we try and get 50% of our bookings in those 3 months so we have deposit cash flow.

With that said I don't know if we should just lower our prices back to last year levels or offer a yearly 'winter special' of lets say a savings of 10% for bookings made during these months. I've been told offer discounts appears cheesy so I'm contemplating how to deal with this. I'm all ears guys, fire away ....

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

When you increase your prices, you may reduce your volume, however, you might have raised your profit margin per job. This will depend on if your price increases are sufficient to make up the difference and hopefully will exceed the
difference.

When I cut out the low end jobs, I ended up working less and making more money. I takes a while but you can only tell by working the numbers.

Unless your bookings decrease significantly, you may be better off holding your higher fees and see if the quality and profitability of your business improves.

Examine your market position.

Beercat Loc: Central Coast of California

Of the legit wedding photographers in my area the sweet spot prices range from $1800 - $4000. A few under that and a few over. I would say the vast majority are in the $2000 - $3000 range. I'm currently at $2495, last year I was at $1995.

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

I wholeheartedly agree. In the short time I did it full time as my main income, flying by the seat of my pants was probably what necessitated me going back to working "day jobs" to cover my health insurance, and feed my kids.

I know many of us out here aren't as fortunate *(or gutsy) to do our photography as our sole income. I think we're attacking this from a different direction. My main reason is that I love it, but also want enough money to pay for education (to get better) replace or upgrade equipment as needed (not just because it's new), pay the people who help me a little more, because I really like them, and stay completely legal and well insured......anything else is fun money for me.

I know absolutely nothing about my business model is "professional" but I have learned a lot in the years since I officially ran myself out of business, and one thing is exactly as you say, prices should never be lowered to be in line with the lower common denominator.

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

Funny you say that. Back in the day (before running my hand through a table saw) I played guitar and sang in local bars and pubs. When I started out, I charged $20/hour, and was lucky to be booked every month or so.

A friend/mentor of mine, who was a popular local magician (not musician like me) let me in on his secret...as he said, he wasn't particularly good.

I jacked my prices up to $400/night, which was $133/hour, and was playing 4 nights a week. Believe me, I never got any better, but it certainly did pay for 3 trips to Hawaii for me and my family of 4, and a lot of fun.

Other than my price, NOTHING changed. Still had my outdated sound system, dented microphone from being dropped on the screen multiple times, guitar with the finish missing, and poor memory, so I had to "make up words" to parts of songs that I couldn't remember.

Often times, people confuse price for true "art." That's why people pay big bucks for artwork done by an elephant. It's valuable, because they are told it's valuable, so they want it.

At least that's my 2 cents.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

As some of you may know, my career in wedding photography is old a dirt! I've been involved in it for well over 50 years- I still enjoy the work, find it profitable and insanely enough, I still do it. At one time, portrait and wedding photography comprised the bulk of my income but for the last 20 years, my “day job” is commercial photography and corporate portraiture. Although photography is my full time job and I am self-employed, technically, I am still a weekend warrior in the wedding department.

I would have loved to keep wedding photography as my mainstay but there have been too many changes in the marketplace to enable that unless I wanted to run a high volume “wedding factory” with a stable of weekend shooters and take on trying to book “every wedding in town”. In my New York days, I have been there and done that and it ain't for me- too much craziness.

So...admittedly, I am an old school kinda guy, not in my style but in my business model- I still sell ALBUMS and in doing so, my minimum wedding job starts around 4 grand. Here's the truth: In the olden days, my philosophy was to book every job I could- just get a decent contract for whatever the going rate was and the selling STARTED at that point. We showed nice samples, offered nice packages and worked hard to do outstanding work for each and every client. There was lots of speculation in that we depended on over-sales and add on sales on every job to make each job really pay off- that was our goal. We did what we used to call psychological “pre-selling”, this meant treating each couple like royalty from day one, really knocking ourselves out to create an outstanding body of work at each wedding and again, making the best possible impression on the bride and groom, their family and bridal party. Hopefully, at the end of the line, everyone involved was in a buying mood. On the average, most of our contracts became much larger orders with ad add-ons like parent's albums, upgraded main and parent's albums, display portraits, gift prints for parents and bridal party members and more. We were extremely careful not to come off as a bait and switch operation. Even on the smaller contracts, we kinda jokingly warned folks to save up some money and bring their checkbook to the proof presentation because once they see the results they are gonna go nuts! In many cases, this encouraged some clients going to start off with a larger per-order at a preferential price.

Nowadays, I find that parents are not as involved in the wedding plans, couples are older- very few teenage brides etc., parents and families are not pitching in to finance wedding expenses as much and folks are happy with digital files which they can share online. Sadly, copyright and such other laws and polices are oftentimes not respected. If the industry is suffering it's because many photographers have created theses trends and that's too bad- I don't like to blame folks or knock anyone's policies but theses are self inflicted wounds that oftentimes lead to business suicide. So...I won't pine for the good old days. I don't mind fair competition- it's good and healthy for the business but in some cases, in certain locales, wedding shooters are running a rat race by giving away the kitchen sink at low prices and killing each other and themselves with low-ball pricing practices.

So...at one point, I decided to stick to my guns, offer only coverages that were based on a big, fat, fancy leather-bound album plus a couple of parent's books or a selection of display (wall) portraits and if necessary, just price myself out of the market and just do my commercial work and do the occasional wedding for folks who were traditional enough or “crazy” enough to go with my regime. At the same time, I also decided to offer many services, styles and basically “run the extra mile” for my clients- stuff that the competitors were not doing or willing to do. I felt that if I was going charge more, demand more and insist on larger packages, I would have to show good value for their hard earned money that I expected my clients to spend with me.

So.. the first year of this “revolution”, I went form about 75 wedding bookings a year to 35, however, surprisingly enough, my sales volume in social photography remained about the same with 50% less work to do. Nowadays, I am happy with 30-35 wedding and other social functions each year- last year we dod 40- weddings, Bar Mitzvahs etc.

I will be 74 years old this February and my plan is to stop shooting weddings (myself) by the time I hit 75. I will keep the “department” going with crews that I have trained as assistants and second shooters over the years.

As far as pricing advice is concerned, I can't and will never tell anyone what to do or how to charge. I can only tell folks about my own experiences and pricing policies and how they affected my sales. Each geographic location has its own socioeconomic conditions, and consumer buying habits especially when it comes to wedding practices which can also be linked to ethnic and religious communities, in which each has its own wedding traditions and spending habits. Years ago, when I worked in the New York City metropolitan area, there were vast differences in all of theses factors, form one neighborhood to another. In some cases, studios and wedding photographers that were located only a few city blocks apart, had entirely different clienteles, policies and price structures.

My only blanket advice, if any of y'all are contemplating price revisions, is to create a new or revised business plan to take into consideration all of your REAL business and personal expenses, decided on how much of a TAKE you want to achieve from each job and what kind of bottom line you wish to achieve at the en of the year and base you price structure on these figures and your projected sales. If your prices go up and you bookings are seriously disrupted, you need to justify the price differentials to you customers- your work has to be bigger and better!

Good luck for the new year- better days are coming!

fotoman150

I used to have high prices in my studio but I built a lot of value into the collections.

Still, even though I went over all the benefits of my collections, which were quite extensive, I still had clients that were angry because the price was outside their reach. This was very frustrating.

I have a feeling that my reputation fell short of my prices. If I had been well known for what I did, I would not have had so many objections to my prices.

There were some clients who understood that I was good at what I did and deserved the prices I charged, but not many.

I was never able to overcome this.

I had several husbands come and try to talk me down on the prices like they were going to man handle me and get the price down and be the big hero for their wife, but I shut them down. They tried very hard to intimidate me. Some even tried to rip me off.

I had a couple come in with their baby and the husband pointed out to me specifically that his baby girl had some blue from her right iris that spilled over in to the whites of her eye. He wanted me to make sure that this feature came out in the portraits.

Later, he forgot he told me that and brought the pictures back and said he wanted a discount because the blue of her iris spilled over to the whites in one of her eyes. I remembered that he told me that's what he wanted but I knew he just forgot that he told me, but I didn't mention it. I just projected the original shot up on the screen and told him that was the way his baby looked. He had nothing to say. What a scheister!

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

My mentor (ended up being my father in law) told me a very long time ago, that if at least 80% of people aren't complaining about your prices, then you are probably not charging enough. His point was the 80/20 rule, and only about 20% of the people enquiring about your prices are actually your "ideal client"

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Price-wise, I deiced long ago that I can't be everybody's photographer at any price. I don't do a big volume of wedding work with a stable of many photographers so I had to decide on a price structure to fit a more upscale market. Not all my clients are rich but most of them are interested in a high quality coverage and product.

In all my years, I have never been intimidated by a groom, a bride's dad or anyone else in an effort to lower my prices but some folks like to haggle in a good nurtured way. Maybe that's because I am a big ugly dude with a bad case of perma-frown- but the brides think I am a teddy-bear! If anything, the brides are better at haggling by looking at me with those big lovely eyes- a trick my daughter used to get her way when she was little- I know that drill. Truth is, I never lower my price but usually throw in a wall portrait or something and close the deal. I figure that cost that into my price well in advance!

As far as inane requests like the kid with the “blue rims” in his eyes- I have learned to vet my clients and turn down jobs with stuff like that. It is obvious that folks like that are either missing the real essence of wedding photography or looking for trouble. I always listen carefully to my couples and make certain that I look after all of there logical requests as to style, how they want their coverage to go down and any special shots that seem 100% doable. Most of my clients just let me do my own thing and just want to enjoy their wedding day. And end up with nice photographs. I do everything I can to ensure that my part of it will be enjoyable for them.

crazydaddio Loc: Toronto Ontario Canada

You get what you pay for seems to be the psychology. The problem with our business is that the correlation of price and performance is not as strong as other service businesses.

There is no professional association that monitors accredits licenses and penalizes performance like engineering or medicine.
(And they are not perfect either)

The barrier to entry is very low.

Long term pros have built a client engagement process and results portfolio that are truly professional in every way but the clients have to wade through the marketing and have enough meetings to get a sense of that.

I have only been doing this for 4 years and started at the age of 50 with no formal training. UHHers would have told me dont do it :-)

I charge based on what I can offer confidence of results. My prices have doubled since I started and are still well below average but will raise them to the low and of average this year.

My last wedding, the brides planner was a professional wedding planner by trade. She had done more than 100 weddings and said, unsolicited, I was the best photographer she has ever worked with by far. (For us insecure artiste's, that was like gold to my soul :-) She was commenting on my process and not my photos since she had not seen them yet.

I did another wedding where I was dissappointed with some of my "magic" shots I wanted but the bride cried with delight. That is the place I want to live....continuously dissatisfied with my results and the clients over the moon happy.

My recommendation is to followup with your clients and ask for feedback. It might be painful but it will make you better.

(And I will post the odd photo here and open myself up for crtitique which can be very helpful also :-)

jaysnave Loc: Central Ohio

Hey Crazydaddio, thanks for posting. I smiled reading your post as you are pretty much channeling my view of the business of photography. I picked this up in my 50s and I am basically living in the same place that you are. Look forward to seeing your "odd photo". Photos can always be critiqued. I certainly critique my own photos, but only to learn how to improve the next one. Having said that, if your client was "over the moon happy" then you accomplished your goal!

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

Crazydaddio and Dave.... (working at a mental hospital, that's an interesting choice in "handles")

My business has always been under promise, and over deliver. It works so much better than promising the moon, and always looking for excuses. I know those guys. I was just approached by one asking to start second shooting for me. Typical run and gun, shoots 5000 photos and hands them a disk of unedited photos. No thanks, just makes more work for me. I have an awesome team that knows to visualize the shot, where it would go in the album. 20 awesome photos, like what I got for my wedding, is a million times better than 5000 mediocre unedited snapshots.