What are YOUR rates? - Family & Event Photographers

[2WheelPhoto]

"Dear competing photographers, what do I need to charge to compete with or undercut you? Errrrr...I meant what do you charge?"

^^^^^^^^^great business plan right there?

[TPF Sponsor]

[tirediron]

What do YOU charge and for what services/packages?

$100/hour. As requested by the client within the bounds of good taste and the Criminal Code of Canada.

[SayGee]

SayGee,

Not many reputable professionals are going to give you sample quotes on an open, google searchable, forum. And because this is an open forum members are from all around the world. The suggestion to call other photographers as a client is a much more effective use of your time and energy. Work smarter not harder.

Christina, I must say, that I have a lot of respect for both your answers and your candor.

While obviously I would rather have the sample quotes and would greatly appreciate them, I knew that your answer is the real reason why someone wouldn't give it. It's unfortunate, though, because the sharing of that information would be valuable to both emerging and seasoned photographers alike - and time efficient too. But I do understand your answer, and had already begun the suggested approach. While I'm not in your direct area, the demographics of your area and mine are very similar.

[Ballistics]

Where I live (long island NY), photographers will not give you an estimate over the phone. You have to physically be in their presence for their pricing. Having said that, you can easily google this question and come up with results.

[camz]

Originally Posted by camz


Hey who am I to question her pricing.

Camz, if given honest answers and enough answers, it's not too hard to use the sampling and apply it one's own geography.

SayGee even with all the samples in the world you're still going to have to go back to your control which is going to be the pricing within your area.

Ok now I wana here your explanation...what is the advantage of taking a bigger sample from all over rather then sampling locally. How would you derive it?

[SayGee]

Where I live (long island NY), photographers will not give you an estimate over the phone. You have to physically be in their presence for their pricing. Having said that, you can easily google this question and come up with results.

DING!!
Give this Forum Member a Ronnie's Tastemaster and an Eddie's Pizza!

[Sw1tchFX]

My clients pay $8,000 for me just to show up with a camera...it goes skyyyy hiiiigghhhh after that!

[gsgary]

$3,000

30 minutes of shooting
1 8x10
2 5x7
1 sheet of wallets

Camz, see the reply from e.rose

She's from Allentown, PA - an area with a median income for a family of around $38,000

She made sure to use the comma when typing $3000 - so it was an intentional answer and not a typo. She's either omitting some critical information from her response, isn't really answering what she would charge a family for fall photos, or she's decided to just post an answer thinking anyone foolish enough to believe her deserves her answer.

She was taking the piss

[mangtarn]

If you don't want to answer, that's your prerogative. But then please don't post a reply. Like I said, your suggestion is not without it's merits - but as an isolated answer, you're devaluing my post. I may not have been in the income producing workforce in many years, but I am highly educated and have a significant amount of sales and business experience.

There sure has been a lot of angry new members raging on the forum lately.

[imagemaker46]

I have been asked this question more times than I can remember, and in some cases I would tell "amateur, soon to be turning pro" photographers what I charge and in some of those cases I found out that they have gone around my back and offered less to my clients, my clients know my work, and appreciate it, so I wasn't concerned about them. I don't tell other photographers what I charge, I know what some pros are charging in other cities, and depending on the city they can charge between 50%-100% more.

I do searches on photographers in my area, I check their web sites and look at their pricing, obviously the ones that don't put up any pricing don't help me. Most of them aren't in my field of photography, but I still like to know. I look to see how long they have been working as photographers as well. I find it amusing that some will state they have been shooting for almost 2 years and are offering competitive rates, the same rates as someone that has been shooting for 20 years, who would I go with as potential client.

You have to decide where you will fit into the market based on your experience and skills as a photographer, should you as a new "pro" be charging the same as someone that has spent years working at it?

[KmH]

Of course, without knowing a photographer's target market demographic, CODB, and reputation, whatever their rates/prices are has no context.

[tirediron]

$3,000

30 minutes of shooting
1 8x10
2 5x7
1 sheet of wallets

Camz, see the reply from e.rose

She's from Allentown, PA - an area with a median income for a family of around $38,000

She made sure to use the comma when typing $3000 - so it was an intentional answer and not a typo. She's either omitting some critical information from her response, isn't really answering what she would charge a family for fall photos, or she's decided to just post an answer thinking anyone foolish enough to believe her deserves her answer.

She was taking the piss

Why do people always take it rather than leave it???

[camz]

Saygee I hope we didn't drive you off dear. I pulled out a template from our business plan for pricing comparatives within the local area. In order to come up with a list of competitors within our market, a scope for our targeted clients had to be initially defined as such - sample only,e.g. : Saygee photography's ideal targeted clients will be in their 20's and 30's, modern, fun/outgoing and family oriented. From this scope we looked around a certain vicinity where COG(Cost Of Goods) meets a certain range(Sorry for the fancy mancy words - it will help you when you do your research later). Within that range we looked at photographers that had similar characteristics and specifically boiled it down to shooting style(very tough to categorize), customer demographics and pricing. In order to dive deeper into their world and gather data, I had to pretend I was an inquiring customer; in a few instances, I actually ended being a paying client in order to get what we needed for a specific breakdown. Here's an example of the chart formulated from our little CSI:

	Your Business		Competition 1	Competition 2	Competition 3	Competition 4	Competition 5
LOCATION			San Leandro	San Francisco	Daly City	Pacifica	San Francisco
WEDDING PRICE RANGE			$4500 w/ album	$4950+	$3000+	$3000, $4500 w/ album	$3500, $4500 w/ album
PRODUCTS			Albums, Hi-Res Files	Albums, Hi-Res Files	Albums, Hi-Res Files	Albums, Hi-Res Files	Albums, Hi-Res Files
BRANDING			Good	Very Solid	Good	Good	Very Solid
MARKETING			Good	Very Solid	Good	Good	Very Solid
QUALITY			Good	Very Solid	Good	Good	Good
SERVICE			Good	Very Solid	Good	Good	Good
RELIABILITY			Good	Very Solid	Good	Good	Very Solid
STABILITY			Good	Very Solid	Good	Good	Very Solid
APPEARANCE			Good	Very Solid	Good	Good	Very Solid
ADVERTISING			Good	Very Solid	Good	Good	Very Solid
IMAGE			Good	Very Solid	Good	Good	Very Solid
COMPANY REPUTATION			Good	Very Solid	Good	Good	Very Solid
EXPERTISE			Good	Very Solid	Good	Good	Good

Except for the pricing and product, competitor image like customer service, expertise, reputation etc, these were all attribute data so it took some time in defining. It wasn't necessary in our behalf but I wanted a break down to where I know I can be ahead of my competition within the subcategory scope I defined above, shooting style(very tough to categorize), customer demographics and pricing. With a more specific break down you will be more precise in the decisions moves you make. Kinda like chess vs checkers

Below is a pricelist template we also used sampled at $100hr for labor. Within our competitors the price mark-up was 3x - 10x of COG(Cost Of Goods). We chose a multiple no greater then 5.5(Anything above would just be uncivilized..lol). So what does this mean, if you the photographer were to purchase an album from your supplier whcc and they charged you $100 bucks, based on your mark-up of 5, you would sell it to your client for $500 material cost. It doesn't stop there, you would also need to factor in the hourly rate of labor into account when charging the client. So if you worked on the album for 5 hours
(at an hourly rate of $100) and the album cost you $100 the formula would be [(5*Hourly Rate COG) + (5*Album Cost COG)] = [(5*100) + (5*100)] = $1,000 for the album. This applies to any sort of labor that you perform for the company. Thinking this way will remind you how valuable your time really is...even simple tasks like driving to the venue.

Here's the markup chart:

MARKUP GUIDE
DESCRIPTION	COGS	3	3.5	4	4.5	5	5.5
1-hour Labor	100.00	300.00	350.00	400.00	450.00	500.00	550.00
2-hour Labor	200.00	600.00	700.00	800.00	900.00	1,000.00	1,100.00
4-hour Labor	400.00	1,200.00	1,400.00	1,600.00	1,800.00	2,000.00	2,200.00
6-hour Labor	600.00	1,800.00	2,100.00	2,400.00	2,700.00	3,000.00	3,300.00
8-hour Labor	800.00	2,400.00	2,800.00	3,200.00	3,600.00	4,000.00	4,400.00
10-hour Labor	1,000.00	3,000.00	3,500.00	4,000.00	4,500.00	5,000.00	5,500.00
12-hour Labor	1,200.00	3,600.00	4,200.00	4,800.00	5,400.00	6,000.00	6,600.00
14-hour Labor	1,400.00	4,200.00	4,900.00	5,600.00	6,300.00	7,000.00	7,700.00
16-hour Labor	1,600.00	4,800.00	5,600.00	6,400.00	7,200.00	8,000.00	8,800.00
Album 1	125.33	375.99	1,400.00	1,600.00	1,800.00	2,000.00	2,200.00
Album 2	155.72	467.16	545.02	622.88	700.74	778.60	856.46
Album 3	188.41	565.23	659.44	753.64	847.85	942.05	1,036.26
Album 4	221.11	663.33	773.89	884.44	995.00	1,105.55	1,216.11
Album 5	253.80	761.40	888.30	1,015.20	1,142.10	1,269.00	1,395.90
Album 1 Special Cover	163.89	491.67	573.62	655.56	737.51	819.45	901.40
Album 2 Special Cover	210.21	630.63	735.74	840.84	945.95	1,051.05	1,156.16
Album 3 Special Cover	256.53	769.59	897.86	1,026.12	1,154.39	1,282.65	1,410.92
Album 4 Special Cover	302.84	908.52	1,059.94	1,211.36	1,362.78	1,514.20	1,665.62
Album 5 Special Cover	349.16	1,047.48	1,222.06	1,396.64	1,571.22	1,745.80	1,920.38
8x10 BW	43.76	131.28	153.16	175.04	196.92	218.80	240.68
8x10 Colored	43.76	131.28	153.16	175.04	196.92	218.80	240.68

This is a very high level summary but I hope it helps you with your data gathering for price