How to price my services?

[colormesilly]

I have a somewhat medium size business interested in using my photography services for photographing items for brochures. However they want me to come up with a "per item" fee. I'd rather charge an hourly rate but I'm an amateur as far pricing my services.

I was thinking $3 per item? With a minimum of 5 items per session, ya know, so I can make money, not loose it through paying for gas to get there. And I was also thinking of a special fee, where if they needed me to take a photo on short notice of like one item; Maybe $12.

Oh and they want me to invoice my services too. Anyone know anything about that as well?

I'm not all too sure, that's why I came to ask people who have been in this situation. Much appreciation for any input!

 

[Big Mike]

However they want me to come up with a "per item" fee. I'd rather charge an hourly rate but I'm an amateur as far pricing my services.

How many items would you normally shoot in an hour? Take the hourly rate you want to charge and there you have your per item rate.

You will also have to consider their usage of the image. Are you giving them the rights to the images forever after? Or for one year, or for one publication?

I was thinking $3 per item? With a minimum of 5 items per session,

:scratch: I have no idea what you are shooting or how you work...but unless you missed a zero or two...there is a problem there.

 

[colormesilly]

I will be shooting gift items for brochures. These brochures will be mainly for companies that want to offer their employees gifts for working at the company for 10+ years and so on.
I plan on leaving full copyrights to them.
As for how many items I will be shooting, I'm not sure at this time so it's hard for me price it.

 

[Bthornton]

I have a somewhat medium size business interested in using my photography services for photographing items for brochures. However they want me to come up with a "per item" fee. I'd rather charge an hourly rate but I'm an amateur as far pricing my services.

I was thinking $3 per item? With a minimum of 5 items per session, ya know, so I can make money, not loose it through paying for gas to get there. And I was also thinking of a special fee, where if they needed me to take a photo on short notice of like one item; Maybe $12.

Oh and they want me to invoice my services too. Anyone know anything about that as well?

I'm not all too sure, that's why I came to ask people who have been in this situation. Much appreciation for any input!

$3 per item? I do that type of work and I charge WAY more than that. I am middle of the road prices for this area and for that type of work I would charge in the area of at least $100 per shot. With that being said most places need more than 2 or 3 shots and end up with a quote for the entire job. Each job gets a custom quote based on what they need, how many images, will there be a lot of post production work, are they a regular customer, what the images will be used for and I know some will not agree with this but I do reseach a company and the profit they make before giving the quote. I don't know what you mean by size with a med sized company but to me that would be in the 1-2 million per year size company.
I don't ever remember doing any of that type of work for less than $1000. It's just not worth it for less than that. You have to remember this is a company, they are used to paying for pro services. You can bet they don't pay the accountant $3 for anything. You have to value your work and charge for it. Look at it this way. Let's say you take a great photo of a mop and they use that image in all the advertising and on the website and make $500,000 in sales from that mop. Do you think it helped sell that mop to have a good image? Would that image be worth more than $3 if it helps bring in $500,000? It really makes you think about what to charge when you look at it like that.
As for invoices you can find free templates on line to create your own. I do not send the invoice until the client has the images then it can be a 30-60 billing cycle that you have to wait for.

 

[JIP]

You need to base your fee on doing this one time for them. If you are charging them pennies so you can get repeat business you are crazy. The question of how many things you are shooting was very relevant so you can figure out how much time it will take and figure an hourly rate but I have to agree with the others if you really did not forget a zero or 2 in your initial statemnt of how much you might charge you are crazy!!. Honestly if you walk out of a session and make like $10-$25 you are being ripped off and you are screwing your possible competition because I don't think anyone can afford to do a shoot like that at those rates.

 

[xion]

You are charging too low - you have to include product setup, post processing and mainly your hourly time and overheads in your quote calculation. Plus you need to make profit.

When you are doing a commerical shoot, you also want to consider the target usage and length of usage for your pricing. Never sell them the copyright, only the usage right.

 

[colormesilly]

ahh, see I'm new to the whole pricing. I'm mostly an amateur and I don't have much experience doing jobs yet. However I've done a couple weddings.
Thanks for all the help and suggestions. I'm going to call them today and ask some questions, then I'll go from there.

 

[colormesilly]

Ok. I just got off the phone with them and they said I would be taking from 1 - 4 items at a time. It may only be 2 times a month as well. The post editing is a maybe, but they do graphic design work so they'll most likely do it themselves. And they would want full copyrights to the images (which I have no objections).

 

[santajuana]

If you're going to give the full copyrights of the image you shouldn't charge $3 per image, I agree with Bthornton, you must charge at least $100 per shoot. Don't give your work for free (to me $3 is free!!! lol)

 

[AprilRamone]

$3 per item with a 5 minimum item? So you'd make $15?
How much gas would it cost you to get there. How much time have you already spent thinking about how much to charge? And all for $15.
Crazy.