The Pricing Predicament

The dreaded pricing conundrum… what do I charge???  This is probably one of the biggest challenges photographers face.  Most photographers starting out will look at what other photographers in their area are charging because they have no idea where to start.  The problem with this is that you have no idea what the specific costs are for those other photographer’s products.

Everyone’s cost are different, which is why you have to sit down with your specific labor and materials costs to figure out what you need to charge.  This is called Cost of Sales pricing, and it is the easiest place to start.

You also have to factor in your market area and what it will bear, who is your ideal client, and once you are established you can delve into value based pricing.  Value based pricing is a where prices can be set based not only on the costs but the perceived value.

I know pricing for photographers is a very tricky subject, which is why I want to take the stress out of it.  I am getting ready to launch a 2 day business workshop at my studio in Houston, and one of the topics we are going to tackle is pricing.  This is going to be different from other workshops where the instructor just reads from a slide and tells you how you should go about pricing yourself.  I want each studio that participates to bring the pricing from their labs, any specific products/costs that go into making their products, and what they want to pay themselves.  With this information, we are actually going to price your individual products and make sure you can do it as well once you leave.

I don’t want to just show you how to price products, I want to teach you how to do it for yourself.  Once you figure out your specific costs, it takes the guess work out of what should you be charging to what you have to charge in order to stay in business and make a profit.  It will also take the stress out of trying to sell your products because you will know that you are priced the way you are to be in business.  Let’s remember one thing… We are photographers, but we are also small business owners.