CD vs. Prints

[holymolar]

January 2011 will start my 3rd year of doing portraits. When I first started it was simply as a hobby but slowly has grown over time to basically my job.

I have been told numerous times that I am charging way too little, from both amateur's (which I consider myself to be as I am self taught) and even professionals. I charge $50-60 dollars and that includes a CD with edited images (this can be anywhere from 30-60 depending on how long I shoot for) and the CD is shipped.

Well, for the past few months I have been contemplating making some changes to do the way I do things. I feel like I should raise my prices to cover expenses, but I also am considering no longer giving out CD's and instead doing prints. I have been in clients homes and have seen my work and it looked better on CD than it dose on their walls. They're going to drug stores and Walmart to get their prints! They're terribly cropped and glossy pieces of trash.

I just don't know how to make the leap from CD's to prints. I'm more worried about loosing my clients and not being able to find new clients because EVERYONE wants a CD to make their own prints.

Any advice? Is it worth the risk of loosing long time loyal clients? I don't know why I feel so guilty when it's MY work and MY time and MY photography. :|

[Biomech]

I'd say up your prices, if they are happy with your work they should understand, and will probably respect that you're trying to make something more of it.
I don't charge alot right now but (after research and feedback), I'm doing £35/hour sitting fee then prints at various sizes unframed and framed. The client can opt for 10 images on a CD for £200 - which I explain works out cheaper if they want a fair few (the upsell). I worked out my pricing by costing a single print (I send them away to get done at the moment) + postage to me, postage expenses to the client, labour at £7.11/hour etc....... multiplied by (what appears to be a standard) 2.23. Then round it off.

The 0.23 takes care of tax and NI which leaves me with 100% profit. Sounds like a lot, but when you're talking a session with 2x 15x10 prints for £35+(2x25), that only works out at around £38 for what could be the only booking for the day/week/month etc

I think the generally consensus here is to charge alot more for images on a CD. As someone else pointed out recently, if you give them the CD, they are going to print them out at the lowest cost and show their friends those pictures as samples of your work.

[gturner]

I took you 3 years to figure out you need to cover your expenses?

I fear there may be some "I told you so's" coming for the peanut gallery.


at those prices, you don't have clients, you have charity cases. You WILL lose some, so be prepared. I suspect however that the ones you keep at the ones you would have wanted to keep anyway.

[Jim Poor]

Google Easy as Pie and read the complementary first chapter. Then, buy the book.

[Dirt_Bike_Ryda]

I charge $100 Australian to go down to the local park for an hour and take as many as the customer wants, then i edit (only crop and colour adjust mostly in C/RAW), then i burn to CD and its theirs.
When i get more experianced (im a sparky +40hrs/week so i don't get much time to practise) i will probably up prices and charge something like $200 (same deal)

[KariBelle]

I would think your clients would understand if you raised your prices after 3 years of keeping them so low. Your clients already know the quality of your work, and I assume they've been happy with it, so they should recognize the deal they've been getting and be okay with paying a little more for the quality they are already enjoying. As for the cd vs prints... I would say offer both, but offer the cd at a higher cost--- knowing they'll be printing your pictures elsewhere. Do you give your clients a copyright release? Certain places will not reprint professional pictures without it.... and really, no place should be printing professional photographs without the photographer's sign off....

[Dirt_Bike_Ryda]

but how can people tell it is a professionals work, and not just someone who owns a half decent camera and a studio-ish setup at home ?

I used to work in a Camera Shop and the only time we could say "can't do it, it's a pro's work" was when it had DO NOT COPY printed on the reverse (or something alike) otherwise, how can tell ? I know, it's a real pain i wouldn't like to have someone reproduce my prints, but what else can you do ? You can add copywrite info in the EXIF data, but people at BigW etc don't care about that (or i doubt very much they would even know anything about it). Which is why i get my Photos Printed where i used to work and can get the text on the back, but then again, not all print shops would even look at that.

[nokiN]

Originally Posted by Jim Poor

Google Easy as Pie and read the complementary first chapter. Then, buy the book.

Well, you know. I did that.

It's such a common term I can't tell which of the hundreds of thousands of hits I got you're referring to.

How about the authors name, or a link, so we can narrow it down some?

All I get at amazon.com with searching - Easy as Pie - is cook books.

[Jim Poor]

You couldn't have looked very hard. It's the second result on page one of Google: Served Up Fresh

Originally Posted by nokiN

Well, you know. I did that.

It's such a common term I can't tell which of the hundreds of thousands of hits I got you're referring to.

How about the authors name, or a link, so we can narrow it down some?

All I get at amazon.com with searching - Easy as Pie - is cook books.