Bid Help?

[erincarter]

I've been asked to bid on a contract for a potential client that is looking for Spring/Summer photo's for their marketing campaign.

Shoot will take place over a 2 month period (Mid May to end of June)
Action and Landscape shots required
All ages and ethnicities will need to be photographed
Day and night shots required

They are asking for a quote for the shooting as well as post production costs, travel costs, assistant costs, etc.

My question is...along with the quote, they are asking to know how many shots I will provide per $1000.

How in the heck do you figure that out

[candleman]

Originally Posted by erincarter

I've been asked to bid on a contract for a potential client that is looking for Spring/Summer photo's for their marketing campaign.

Shoot will take place over a 2 month period (Mid May to end of June)
Action and Landscape shots required
All ages and ethnicities will need to be photographed
Day and night shots required

They are asking for a quote for the shooting as well as post production costs, travel costs, assistant costs, etc.

My question is...along with the quote, they are asking to know how many shots I will provide per $1000.

How in the heck do you figure that out

ASK THEM how many they want. and price it that way.

I'e only done one genuine Commercial job, and I asked for a specific list of the designs, and said i'll provide one "on location" shot of each garment...

I came up with some concepts, we arranged the props.. and I gave them a price.

If I were to do it again I would charge by the hour, and triple the rate I initially estimate.
(this price was assuming unlimited use)


I would ask them to sit with you and detail a shotlist so that you actually have a "deliverable" to check off, otherwise they can lock you in for reshoots because they didn't get the image they wanted etc. etc.

[andyw]

Originally Posted by erincarter

My question is...along with the quote, they are asking to know how many shots I will provide per $1000.

How in the heck do you figure that out

Simple, you don't.

You tell them that on this sort of job that is not how it works.

You should be getting details of what they require in the way of sets, type of shots etc and an approximate number of how many shots are likely to be required for each.

You tell them that you will shoot as many as is required to get "the shot" from which they can choose the final shots they will use.

I would be giving them a quote based on a day rate then detailing the extras and licencing fees.

[Jim Bryant]

All that work for only $1,000. Are you nuts? Ask them how the photos will be used: Web, marketing, or advertising and sell them two-year rights for XXXXXX on each photo selected.
Plus, the all the amount of work, you'll be putting into this project will be less than minimum wage.

Charge them per shoot and per usage. If they say that's too much money and we'll look elsewhere, they will be doing you a favor.

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by Jim Bryant

All that work for only $1,000. Are you nuts? Ask them how the photos will be used: Web, marketing, or advertising and sell them two-year rights for XXXXXX on each photo selected.
Plus, the all the amount of work, you'll be putting into this project will be less than minimum wage.

Charge them per shoot and per usage. If they say that's too much money and we'll look elsewhere, they will be doing you a favor.

Originally Posted by erincarter

My question is...along with the quote, they are asking to know how many shots I will provide per $1000.

I take that to mean that there are potentialy multiple $1000.00's involved. Not just a set $1000.00 dollar price tag.

[kingpatzer]

You ask them how many usable shots they are looking to obtain. You agree to work with the art director to create that many shots. But costs involved (travel, expenses, salary of assistants, your salary, equipment and so on) are going to be largely fixed based on when and where you are doing the work.

Once you know the cost per unit time for doing the work, then you can talk about how many images you are contracting for, as well as how the images will be used. With that information you can set the schedule for duration and come up with a final price.

Depending on the location and how much stuff you are transporting and the number of assistants you'll need, it is conceivable that the first $20,000 or so that they spend will do nothing more than put you on site and prep the shoot. So, for those dollars they can expect 0 images per $1,000.

It's just the wrong metric to use.

[kingpatzer]

Originally Posted by Jim Bryant

Charge them per shoot and per usage. If they say that's too much money and we'll look elsewhere, they will be doing you a favor.

For a lengthy location shoot, they will probably be looking at this as a short term contracting gig and expecting the images to be works for hire. But that of course isn't always the case. There's a good location case study on 'A Photo Editor" of pricing a location shoot:

http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/05/...sing-campaign/