Quote:
Originally Posted by johnnieob
Ive been in business for a long time & every time I've used "free" in my advertisements Ive been bitten on the butt!
Mabey you can put in "Free copy E-Mailed only" Have the participant sign a photo & model release form & if a hard copy is wanted offer to have it shipped for a fee.
Free seams to bring out the worst in some people & the last time I did a "free" shoot which I did not have a release form signed I got burned.They got all the photos (e-mailed) & got the hard copies them self. Now if I do a shoot that I dont get paid for I have the release form signed & I own the copyright befor I start & if they pay for the shoot I give them a cd of it & a few photos & copyright to the event.
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I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until someone tells me to shut up. It's absolutely positively crumulently critical that your business model reflects the reality of the customer's expectations. As a professional, you've got three distinctly different products you can sell:
1) Your time
2) The right to publish/obtain the images themselves
3) Hard copies
A lot of people around here seem to prefer to charge for 2 and 3, and give 1 away. From what I've seen, though, 2 and 3 have the least concrete value to consumers. What the public at large sees when they see a picture is the cost of the workmanship plus the cost of the materials. I firmly believe it's not going to be very long before it's almost impossible to sell prints. I've seen and talked to way too many parents that are downright irate at the cost of the prints, while they'd be perfectly happy to be charged a reasonable session fee.
That's why I keep harping on the idea that professionals need to figure out how much money you need to make, figure out how many prints they expect to sell, and THEN set prices. Going in with the idea that all your profit is going to come from prints when your customers may want digital images is going to lead to some consternation later as you try and figure out how you charge for no prints, and touchy feelings as you try and explain why the images themselves have value to you because to the customer you already gave away the workmanship part of your value for "free".
If you're going to do free sessions, you absolutely must state it's for a limited time, but what I'd do instead is offer "prepayment". Figure out what you need/want to make, and offer the session fee toward the cost of prints / CD with a money back guarantee, if they don't want any prints or images, you'll refund their money.
That emphasizes that it's your time they are paying for, which consumers
know has value, and not the cost of the CD and prints themselves, which everyone already knows is negligible.
It's not that the pay-for-prints business model can't work, lots of people use it. It's that I firmly believe it's going to work less and less as people value actual hard copies less and less, and it's good to be prepared with another option to meet your customers needs.