Don’t base your photography prices on time!
Lots of people make the same mistakes everyone makes when they start out shooting commissioned photography……they charge on their time.
“Oh yes I think that will take about an hour” they say. And they charge an hour. This is a natural reaction when a client asks “what’s your day rate?” or sometimes the client will say “I think it should only take an hour”.
I’m going to show you why this way of pricing photography is likely to make you less money in the long run and give your clients the opportunity to question your business practices.
The primary reasons photographers and other creatives should not charge on time is because:
- You’re not a plumber or a mechanic, you’re shooting something to make your client money. Your image has a value beyond that of your time taken to shoot it.
- It has your creative input regardless of whether its a widget on a white background or a multi lit set up location shoot. And your creative input is going to make it look so appealing that your client will sell more widgets….etc.
**If you price on time, you shoot yourself in the foot big time. The faster you do something, the less you earn.**
Even though they may not know what goes into photography (let’s face it – most have only experienced a point and shoot) your clients will have a certain “expectation” of what you can achieve. Of course they won’t know anything about the work that goes into lighting those tricky reflective macro objects they want shot, or lighting that group shot outside in the noon sun – but they’ll think “Oh its easy he’s got all the gear” he should be able to do it in X hours.
The problem you get from the very start is that its possible to get into arguments about how much you should be producing per hour. When really the onus should be on your client to be working out that at a charge of Y per shot, they can afford Z shots in their budgets etc etc. If you charge per shot delivered you’ll immediately overcome any tricky negotiations. More importantly, you’ll give your client the ability to budget the shoot properly.
n.b. I’m concentrating on time -vs- a per-image cost in this post and not factoring in usage of the images though the usage would only affect the unit-price of each image and not the rationale of charging per image instead of time.
But don’t most people work on time?
OK, so employees on a production line work on time. They get paid a set amount for a 40 hour week regardless of output. But think about their employers for a moment? Their employers (the big company, the owners of the business – just like you) don’t sell you a widget in the shops based on the amount of time it took for their employees to assemble it do they?
No, they sell you a unit price. Else when they went automated or outsourced to India years ago they would have gone out of business fast and you’be choosing to buy the pair of shoes that Mary made because she was twice as fast as Jack at putting them together so the company sells them cheaper. Don’t see that happening do you?
Can you see what I’m driving at here?
After all the photography, lighting, retouching are done (however much input you’ve had) – and whether you deliver images electronically or prints we are selling a product like a manufacturer – our images – for specific uses – so price them per shot (based on the usage of course which is another post entirely..!!).
“OK PP“, said a poster on DPReview, “just how do you work out how much per shot then?“
How I do my estimating is to:
- work out the complexity of the shoot
- ask myself whether I’m going to need any assistants, extra gear, lighting etc
- look at the usage that the client wants to buy
- guesstimate the time it will take to shoot (you can’t avoid this – you’ll know if its an hour or a day believe me)
- estimate theretouching/computer time needed per shot
- add all this up and cut by the number of images to be created
- +/- a % for discount on volume
Advantages of the per-shot approach:
- If you finish early nobody is watching; if you want to take more time that’s up to you. Either way – no penalty.
- Additional shots ordered/delivered are charged at the full or discounted rate yet they’re already captured
- It will stop the “we want everything on CD” type client in their tracks or you’ll earn a lot of money…
- Clients hate paying “digital fees” so roll them up into the per-shot rate
- It allows your client to budget the shoot properly (focusses the buyer on the value of each image)
Conclusion:
If you levy a charge per shot delivered then when you get better and quicker a few months down the line (and you will as technology advances) then you earn more money in the same time taken – not less;
or if the shoot is quicker than you expected (from your in-head estimating) then you earn the same money for less time taken (and no arguing with the client over whether you sneaked off early…!)
PP
Tags: Assignment Photography, Getting paid, photography, pricing photography
Yesterday I stumbled across a pdf from the renowned commercial and stock photographer Seth Resnick. He takes the same approach when it comes to pricing his work.
You can read the pdf on the PixelGenius resources site:
http://www.pixelgenius.com/tipsandtechniques.html – look under “Seth Resnick” then download the pdf called ‘Basic Pricing for Photography Assignments’.
PP
When not stepping on land mines in Indochina I’ve met a quite a few jackass photographers who sell their time, including photojournalists and architectural photographers. Improvements in technology allow these jackasses to produce more and more work, in less and less time. These jackasses then compete amongst themselves by offering to do more work for less money. One Atlanta-based architectural jackass is convinced his customers hire him because of his vision: he’s lost sight of the fact that in the last five years, using new technologies, he does a lot more for his clients for prices that are substantially the same as they were five years ago. The jackass simply does a lot more volume. And, like all good jackasses, he’s confused when a would-be client won’t hire him for $1500.00 in order to save $300.00 by hiring a cheaper jackass. He’s a jackass.
This is off topic, but you’re showing Google ads advertising “download high-res stock images for free!”. Banish your competition from your site! :)
Thanks Noni,
You’re right. Can’t be having that can we :) I’m still finding my feet in this blogging game but I’m sure there’s a way I can banish unwanted ads. I’ll look into it right now!
PP
Hi PP,
with Adsense you can only block individual domain names. I wish there was a way to filter by keywords.
Adsense is useful, though, for keeping your blog in top search results so consider what’s worse – loss of publicity or competition from micro’s and nano’s.
Thanks for your articles, by the way ;)
Hi Noni,
Many thanks – glad you’re enjoying the site. Yes, I blocked about 60 domains yesterday – I’m trying to filter the adsense down to just the stuff that will be of interest to readers.
Obviously as you kindly pointed out – “free image” ads aren’t :) There are loads of them – and adsense is country specific too so it may take a time before I get a good set of stuff popping up.
I’m doing this in between assignments and stock shoots so its a case of getting there eventually..!
PP
Good article, thanks – i wish more people understood it’s more than just point and click!
[...] The first thing to rule out is charging on time. Charging for your time is not going to make you rich, and it’s very unlikely even to make you a living wage. Charging for your product is what you are aiming for. If you want to know why charging time is bad business for photographers read this post here. [...]
It is so fantastic to see a post about charging per image. I’ve been charging this way for the last few years and ever since I made the switch I have seen my income skyrocket and my workload plummet! It’s fantastic – now all I have to do is convince the other photographers in town that it’s worth their while too.
Hi Paul,
Yes, its the best way to charge so you are not digging ever bigger holes by giving more and more for less and less. It also shows the client that you charge based on the worth of the image to them, not just how long it took you to shoot.
PP
[...] http://www.thephotographybiz.com/photography-business/dont-charge-out-your-photography-on-time/ [...]
What would you recommend for portrait shooters in terms of pricing their time? i charge a creative fee and separately for prints. i do not offer these on cds….
Hi Deirdre,
Although the licencing model is aimed at commercial and advertising shooters strangely enough social, wedding and portrait shooters tend to already price for the use of the image.
That’s the bottom line. The image usage attracts $x so more use is $x + $y
You are doing a session for a fixed creative fee and your “usage” is the print which is (I assume) given over for personal use only. So you’re pretty much there already in as far as this model applies to the portrait market.
I am *not* a social shooter so I really can’t comment on what is good or bad in your arena (same goes for weddings too) but the whole principle of the “end product” holding the value and *not* the time it took you to create it can be applied to all forms of photography businesses.
In commercial and advertising photography we control usage buy way of a licence. In portraits and weddings this is by way of the product, the prints or album.
Just as a commercial client will return to licence extra uses or more time, or additional media placements then your clients *should* return to purchase extra prints.
I’d say carry on doing what you’re doing. You don’t give over a CD (which would be like shooting unlimited use or “RF” in stock) so you control your usage via your print sales.
I think you have the perfect model already.
Best
PP