Mark up on prints

[bigpuddin43]

Ok I have played around with the cost of buisness calculator but have a hard time figuring out how it will work for me. I dont ever plan to go professional but have had some friends and family interested in some prints. I am having a hard time figuring out how to price them as I dont really have shoots to figure billable days. Most of mine are nature/landscape type shots that I just happen to take when out walking or a good storm coming in I will get setup for lightning shots. So dont really know how to figure all that on the calculator or how to figure in mark up on certain print sizes. I use miller photo lab and plan to just do a drop shipment to whoever purchases them. Havent decided how to do payment yet either plan to start possibly by just check by mail then work up the print and send directly thru millers? does this seam feasible since I dont plan to make much from this I dont see the point in starting a website and going thru the extra cost for mainly just prints sold here and there to friends and family? But what percent mark up to make it worth my while? Basically trying to recoup some cost of gear. Also in the strange senario where this somehow takes off I dont want to be grossly underpriced and hurt my business by jumping prices too much at once. Hope some of this makes sense and yall can help me out. Thanks.

John

 

[tirediron]

The basic answer is, "It depends". My mark-up ranges between 300% for large wall art to 700% on small prints, but that's based on my hard costs and projected costs over the year.

 

[bigpuddin43]

thank you very much most of these will be printed for wall art this at least gives me an idea of what to quote.

 

[KmH]

The same here.

My markup varied by print size, and print type.
Desktop size prints got marked up a lot more than wall size prints.
Specialty print types get marked up more than regular prints.
Framing had the least markup.

Drop shipping can be problematic.
Millers Professional Imaging is about the best lab there is, but humans work there so an occasional mistake is made and less than quality work gets shipped from time to time.
I always had product shipped to me so I could make sure it was right before the customer saw it.

Selling is all about the art of presentation, skillful communication, and adding value by being attentive to details.

One way to practice that kind of a professionalism is by making proper forum posts with paragraphs, appropriate capital letters, and appropriate punctuation.

 

[ruggedshutter]

For me, family would get the going rate of "At-Cost" or just slightly above to cover shipping. In the case of friends, it would depend on how close I am and if I think that they would expect the discount every time or not. You can usually find a few local photographers that have a price list on their site for their prints and can get a good idea where the average market price is.