Pricing & Legal

Overview

Affordable DSLRs make it easy for people to start a photography business who will work for free to gain experience. So it is vital that you find something unique and market it well, so people will hire you instead of finding someone they know to do it for free. Find what you like best and try to imitate it. Seek inspiration to come up with your own angle on something that will sell like crazy!  Remember the three Is we talked about on the first day of class:
Imitation – Inspiration – Innovation.

Give your clients more than a CD of digital pics. Create a memorable experience with fabulous, extraordinary, creative masterpieces! Get lots of practice and gain confidence to reassure your clients you will deliver the goods. Meet with them before the shoot and show them beautiful printed work, photobooks, and ideas to get them excited about the entire experience. Make plans and share a Pinterest board so you know what style they are looking for.

Preparation

Study these resources to set your pricing
1.   6 Tips for Setting Your Photography Prices – Digital Photography School
2.   5 Psychological Studies on Pricing You Must Read – KISSmetrics
3.   Pricing Experiments – Conversion XL
4.   10 Pricing Strategies That Can Drastically Improve Sales – Helpscout

Instructions

Follow these steps to set up your own pricing and legal forms:

1. Create your own Average Session Price Worksheet

See the example to the right. Include all the same elements, but with your own figures and plans.

A. Determine your goal: Career – Part-Time – Hobby?
If you have a goal of making $20,000 through your Portrait Sessions and you charge $150/session. You need to schedule 133 sessions throughout the year (or two each week)  to achieve your goal.  So, if you charge $300/session, you can make $40,000 for the same amount of work!  Also keep in mind, you can make a lot of income from selling prints, frames, photobooks, etc. So factor that, if you want to make it part of your business. It is all a matter of marketing.

B. Average Session Price Worksheet: 
How much will you charge?   Complete a simple Income and Expense Worksheet to determine how much time you truly spend on a session and how much you want to earn per hour. Then decided how many sessions you want to do and  calculate your expenses and come up with a net annual income.

2. Develop a Pricing Structure & Create your Pricing Sheet

Craft your own structure based on the tips and resources provided. Make your own pricing sheet you can email to clients. View the Pricing Sheet examples below. Save your pricing sheet as a pdf, then email it to yourself and/or a friend, download it and print it to test out how someone will receive your file on a PC or Mac, when emailed. DO NOT FORGET TO INCLUDE YOUR NAME AND/OR STUDIO NAME, CONTACT INFO and WEBSITE! Design it so it is consistent with your branding. Personalize your list to fit the style of photography and/or design you are now planning on, even though that may change in the future. You should plan to use this pricing sheet on your first full client shoot, so you can try out your prices.

IMPORTANT!  Print out a color copy of your Pricing Sheet on portfolio paper (.50 Spori Color Printer is fine) and bring it with you to the Excursion.

A. STUDY THESE TIPS and/or read the articles in Resources, above.
1. Anchoring: Offer one session price much higher than you expect to get, so clients will consider your lower price reasonable in comparison.
2. Simplest number listing. Studies show that leaving off the dollar sign, decimals, and zeros will increase sales. Example:  299 not $299.00
3. The Power of Number 9:  Consumers will choose prices that end in 9 more often, even if it costs more. Example: When given three options: 34, 39, 45… a majority of people chose 39, even though it is higher than 34.
4. Offer three options to move the average session price higher. Make your middle option the target session and overprice the highest option. If you only offer two session prices:  99 or 299, most clients may pick the 99 session. But if you offer three options:  more people will choose the middle option, which raises your average session price:

• Standard:    99
• Deluxe:      299
• Premium:  599

B. Pricing Sheet Examples

Pricing: Vanessa Godfrey (1)

Pricing: Vanessa Godfrey (2)

Pricing: Zoe Esplin

Pricing: Josh Peterson(1)

Pricing: Josh Peterson (2)

Pricing: Katie Anderson

3. Contracts

When it comes to the legal aspects of your business – you need to protect yourself and your business by obtaining model release forms from those you photograph. You don’t want to have a client sue you for not delivering a product or saying you did not fulfill your end of the agreement. Download the contracts below and use them for your shoots and get in the habit now of getting these model releases for the legal side of your business. You will be required to obtain these on each portrait session.

Photography Contracts
These contracts have been provided courtesy of ImprovePhotography.com on behalf of Jim Harmer. Jim Harmer is a former BYU-Idaho Communication major. Many professional photographers pay hundreds of dollars for these contracts, so this is a real value!

Download and review the contracts. Add at least 5 model releases to your camera bag (or a Model Release app on your mobile device)…and start using them with each shoot, so you have proper permission to use the photos. You will also need to show all your model releases from each shoot at the end of the semester.

4. Copyright / Branding

Protecting your work from those who visit your site is important. You can do several things to discourage people from downloading your images, taking screen shots of them, and using them without crediting you. Also, avoid uploading your images on Facebook. If you do, you are giving Facebook and others the rights to sell your images and profit from the without your permission! Follow these precautions to deter image theft:

1. Add a watermark logo to all images uploaded anywhere!
2. Do not upload high res images. The longest side should not be larger than 1024 pixels.
3. After this class, add a “No Right Click” plugin that makes it very difficult for people to download images from your site. (They can still screen shot them, or hack into your code to get them, but most people will not go this far. Nor will most try to remove your watermark.)