How open to be about how I price commissions.

[andyw]

Originally Posted by Biomech

The top 10 ways to fail said:

"7. Charge for the extras. You do need to get paid for what you do. But do you really need to charge for little things? Incorporate them into your fees, and become an easy business to do business with. If you charge $1500 for a wedding, do you really need to charge $100 extra for weddings 50 miles or beyond from your studio? Instead, raise your fees to $1600 for everyone, and it will all average out."

I love those lists

They are fine for one thing but not for another.
I often get clients saying "just give me the bottom line, I don't care about the detail".
Great, the invoice is a one liner.
But often they want to know every single item, so the invoice is 3 pages.

There is no way on earth I could raise my basic fee to "average out" the expenses.
I did one job a couple of months ago where the "expenses" were 15k for 3 days work.
The total invoice was - Well.... let's just say it was quite large in the end.

Two jobs this month have been basic fee with a couple of hundred on licensing. I don't think those customers would appreciate an "averaged out" fee.

Nope, a commercial photographer absolutely HAS to charge for their expenses. Obviously there are some things which are "thrown in" but hiring studios, props, location hire etc etc. ???

P.S. When I say "charge for" I mean itemise or have as add-on costs to the basic fees.

[Brian Mullins]

Originally Posted by andyw

I love those lists

They are fine for one thing but not for another.
I often get clients saying "just give me the bottom line, I don't care about the detail".
Great, the invoice is a one liner.
But often they want to know every single item, so the invoice is 3 pages.

There is no way on earth I could raise my basic fee to "average out" the expenses.
I did one job a couple of months ago where the "expenses" were 15k for 3 days work.
The total invoice was - Well.... let's just say it was quite large in the end.

Two jobs this month have been basic fee with a couple of hundred on licensing. I don't think those customers would appreciate an "averaged out" fee.

Nope, a commercial photographer absolutely HAS to charge for their expenses. Obviously there are some things which are "thrown in" but hiring studios, props, location hire etc etc. ???

P.S. When I say "charge for" I mean itemise or have as add-on costs to the basic fees.

The article is referring to little things that essentially "nickel & dime" a customer to death. Like charging $20 to ship a disc, or $100 to drive between 50-100 miles. It's not meaning to give one flat price, just to make things simple and not pile on the little stuff. It makes for better business and, to be honest, i've actually won out business over other, less expensive photographers, simply because it's easier to deal with my structure. Just charge a slightly higher upfront price to cover the little things. You, of course, must draw the line somewhere but that is a rare exception.

[andyw]

Originally Posted by Brian Mullins

The article is referring to little things that essentially "nickel & dime" a customer to death. Like charging $20 to ship a disc, or $100 to drive between 50-100 miles. It's not meaning to give one flat price, just to make things simple and not pile on the little stuff. It makes for better business and, to be honest, i've actually won out business over other, less expensive photographers, simply because it's easier to deal with my structure. Just charge a slightly higher upfront price to cover the little things. You, of course, must draw the line somewhere but that is a rare exception.

OK - I had never read the article (I have now). All basic stuff really.

[mokka]

Originally Posted by Brian Mullins

The article is referring to little things that essentially "nickel & dime" a customer to death. Like charging $20 to ship a disc, or $100 to drive between 50-100 miles. It's not meaning to give one flat price, just to make things simple and not pile on the little stuff. It makes for better business and, to be honest, i've actually won out business over other, less expensive photographers, simply because it's easier to deal with my structure. Just charge a slightly higher upfront price to cover the little things. You, of course, must draw the line somewhere but that is a rare exception.

That's the impression I got too. With mileage I think you would have to draw a line somewhere. 'Free mileage within Cumbria' for example. If I had to drive down to London for a commission then I would definitely be charging mileage, but is easy enough for everyone to understand, no-one has to go on Google maps and work out how far they are from me.

And I would say 'free' mileage as opposed to 'mileage included'. They're the same thing to me, I'm gonna be taking account of travel costs in my pricing, but I think 'mileage included within Cumbria' gives the customer more of an impression that part of the fee covers mileage, and therefore if they were very close they might be saying 'you should be deducting something from the price because I'm not on the other side of Cumbria, I'm right by where you are, so you don't have to include as much mileage'.

[mokka]

Originally Posted by andyw

WOW
Those rates are unbelievably low.
I know I am London based and everything is (supposedly) sky high here but at that rate working 365 days a year you are still only talking 80k gross.

That is the going rate in this area. I know you have made the point many times about not basing your prices on what others are charging, and I get the impression from talking to you that if you were suddenly transplanted up here tomorrow you wouldn't change your pricing, but...

If I was a customer, I would be getting quote from every commercial photographer in the area; this is pretty easy to do, as mentioned before there are only 12 or so, of us (that can be found anyway) and a simple Google search will pretty much find us all so I should expect that every time I'm asked for a quote it is being compared with every single one of my competitors.

Say I bump my price up to £300. Instantly I'm now in the top 3 highest charging photographers locally, so the customer's next course of action is to have a look at my portfolio, testimonials from previous customers* and anything else they can to see what it is about my services and my photography that makes me more expensive than most of the others.

If I'm absolutely honest with myself, they won't find anything, I'm not putting my photographic skills down but I'm not yet 'ahead of the pack'. Those photographers that do charge £400-£700 per commission, these are excellent photographers, with 30 years of experience, multiple big-commissions of everything from Sellafield (the biggest company locally), to multinational corps and even Everest expeditions. Jaw-droppingly stunning portfolios, numerous spe******ms such as aerial photography, underwater photography... I could go on but it's clear I'm not 'them'... not yet anyway.

More importantly, 'they' are the photographers that everyone knows, their work is featured in local newspapers in local art galleries; they are photographers that the customer has already heard of, but they charge a lot and hopefully the customer at this point thinks 'well the rest of the photographers I've looked at are still very good, and much cheaper, I don't need the best of the best, I'm only a pencil manufacturer after all, I'll get much better return-on-investment if I hire one of the photographers in the £200-£240 range'.

Bottom line is, if I did raise my prices to something like £300 I don't think a single client would be foolish enough to hire me at that rate when there would be better (well, with better portfolios) and more experienced photographers charging £240.

My overheads are low, I don't have a studio after all (interestingly some of the photographers in the £200-240 range do have studio. If I can get something like 5 commissions per month, then this covers my costs, pays me a wage and leaves me plenty of money to spend on growing my business next year, more marketing, better equipment, better training etc.

Originally Posted by andyw

What do you mean when you say "licenced for commercial use"?
That sounds like it covers a multitude of things and effectively you could be doing yourself out of (potentially) a lot of money. "commercial" use is to me anything from a company brochure through to a full blown press and tv campaign. You CANNOT just give that away.
How long is this license for?

In order to simplify how my licences work I have broken the various uses the photo can be licenced for into three packages.

Basic - for personal use
Commercial - covers most advertising, including websites, social media, packaging, print advertising, posters at the point-of-sale and trade magazines.
Media - more expensive and covering TV, cinema, posters not at the point-of-sale, newspapers and consumer magazines.

By default these licences are for 3 years and are non-exclusive. I was worried that adding location to use and period would just create too much complication for customers, most of whom don't have an international operation, so they are all worldwide.

There are also much much more expensive licences available for actually using the photos in the product itself as opposed to just advertising and packaging (e.g. calendars, posters, postcards etc). The average customer I don't think needs to know too much about these.

Originally Posted by andyw

Obviously meetings to sort out the commission are free as are those where you are handing over the work (and collecting the cheque), but what exactly are "consultations".

I used to work for a large firm of architects and was involved with their graphic designers as well as taking photographs and doing design and visualisation work, I was also involved with the firm's marketing, producing brochures and the like. I don't claim to be a graphic designer, but I have a pretty good understanding of the field and the software used and how photography, graphic design and marketing fit together (and I think most photographers do really even though they may not realise it).

Consultation is for an hour, I will advise the client on anything they want to do with actually using the photo, whether they just want to achieve some cool graphical effect with MS Word, whether they want to know what graphical and web designers I recommend locally, or whether they want to know about printing and framing.

I know that most photographers will be imparting this kind of information anyway but I think that by packaging it up like this, I'm creating more of a sense of added-value, and a guaranteed after-sales service something that might tempt them away from competitors.

* This is another point. I have done a few free shoots for some very small businesses in order to build up my portfolio (I gave them a voucher, it had an expiry date, I was clear that this was a once-only offer, not an invitation to spread the word that some photographer's doing free shoots). They said they were very happy with it but they constantly ignore or forget about my polite requests that they go onto my website and leave a testimonial.

[andyw]

Mokka, thanks for explaining all that. Please don't think I have been having a pop at you or anything. I have just been trying to understand the situation.

Last question, is this a full time job for you?

The reason I ask is when you said
"If I can get something like 5 commissions per month, then this covers my costs, pays me a wage and leaves me plenty of money to spend on growing my business next year, more marketing, better equipment, better training etc."
I thought to myself that I am definitely going to move up there because that is half the national average wage and that is before any business expenses?? If you can do what you say then great things must be very cheap in your neck of the woods. That would not even cover my insurance and lunches. (expensive lunches )

Anyway, I have gone on enough in this thread.
I can only say good luck to you. I think there are a number of areas you need to look at but I am not where you are so my perspective is a bit skewed and if what you are doing works for you then go for it.

tks

[mokka]

Originally Posted by andyw

Mokka, thanks for explaining all that. Please don't think I have been having a pop at you or anything. I have just been trying to understand the situation.

Last question, is this a full time job for you?

The reason I ask is when you said
"If I can get something like 5 commissions per month, then this covers my costs, pays me a wage and leaves me plenty of money to spend on growing my business next year, more marketing, better equipment, better training etc."
I thought to myself that I am definitely going to move up there because that is half the national average wage and that is before any business expenses?? If you can do what you say then great things must be very cheap in your neck of the woods. That would not even cover my insurance and lunches. (expensive lunches )

Anyway, I have gone on enough in this thread.
I can only say good luck to you. I think there are a number of areas you need to look at but I am not where you are so my perspective is a bit skewed and if what you are doing works for you then go for it.

tks

I hope it to be a full-time job. At the moment I have no day-job, so yes it is a full-time job, but I don't have the confidence at this point to abandon searching for a day job and sign-off (the dole). That would be putting all my eggs into one basket and I really would be screwed, so I have one foot in my business and the other foot in a day-job (or the search for one at least), if my sales forecast turns out woefully optimistic then I can get a day-job, if it goes as planned then I can go 'real' full-time.

Many people have warned me how there is no guarantee of success, and most start-up businesses fail, as if they're worried I am investing everything in this business (in fact hardly anyone here has expressed any kind of support for me, it's all doom and gloom). But the fact is I have no job at the moment, and there are no jobs around and starting a business to make my own money from skills I have, is at least as realistic as finding someone who will employ me for my general office skills... if not more. So why not spend most of my time on my business... it only takes me a few minutes each day to go through job websites and confirm that there still aren't any jobs worth applying for.

So when I say full-time... obviously 5 commissions a month is nowhere near full time. But I expect to spend at least 60% of my working time in the first year marketing, and a fair bit on administration (of which there is a lot more involved in setting up my business than there would be day-to-day in the long run)... writing terms and conditions and template contracts, licences, release forms etc, market research... all take up a lot of time in the first few months. Hopefully, if the time spent on marketing is fruitful then by the second year I will be spending a greater proportion of my time earning money and will be able to increase my wage. As you point out, even if things go well I'll still be earning way less than the national average, but i'll be getting way more than I currently get on the dole. I still live with my parents so my living expenses are low... moving out is a priority for me when I increase my sales, but also yes, housing up here is very cheap, even compared to Liverpool where I used to live, and the things I enjoy are generally cheap or free, I have no family to support. I've never earned above average wages in my life, but I came close once, and I felt I was living the Life of Riley, even though almost half of my wage paid for rent (relatively expensive in Liverpool city centre).