You want me to pay for those???
In the past few weeks I’ve read a number of really good posts about pricing. This one, from Joel on Software, was about software pricing but is very applicable to pricing almost anything. If you read the entire article you’ll see the difficulties. Also, Paul Butzi has a number of posts about pricing. Well worth the read. Start here and read forward. There are lots of great points and comments as well. However, in this post, I’m talking about freebies. Price-free!
My friend Richard and I have a lot of interesting discussions regarding photography, particularly on the topic about making money. Richard and I are a lot a like in some ways. In other ways, we are very different. One of those ways is that Richard is a natural hustler. That word hustler is not used in a derogatory way by any means. It just means that he’s on the ball when it comes to money making opportunity, and photography is one of his tools.
While staying at his house I had the opportunity to test drive his 24″ iMac. I’ll save that topic for another day. While moving pictures from his PC to his Mac, he indicated that a large number of pictures should be delete because the opportunities didn’t work out. Some where of sporting events, others were of a modeling event.
Basically, here is what happened: Someone asked him to come and take pictures at an event and ‘promised’ some money, to be given at a later date, based on a number of orders. So, essentially, he photographed on ‘spec’, or speculation.
So, Richard went, did his job, but the orders were not forthcoming. I’ve found that people get cheap after the fact. If you can get them printed and into their hands at the event, you have much higher sales … as well as higher overhead. But, our story continues: After a few of these events, he received e-mails asking him for JPGs so that they could print out their pictures! Wow! Not only did he not get paid, they liked the pictures, didn’t want to pay for them, then asked for originals. Interesting. He now, rightfully so, has a policy of getting paid upfront for his time, then, if they wish to order pictures, that’s fine too. He’s also set a reasonable price on obtaining the JPGs, should the party desire it. This gives a deep understanding of session fees. Sometimes, it’s all that you are going to get!
It’s happened to me a few times, too; although, I am not a hustler like Richard, I do attempt to sell some of my pictures from time to time. Mind you, I realize that everyone and their brother seems to have digital camera and can take “great” snapshots; This breeds, I believe, an environment of valuelessness, where the photographer’s photograph is considered just a snapshot, similar to what they could get from one of their friends.
To the recipient, or subject, it seems as if the expenses of the photographer are inconsequential. If asked to go to an event, there are travel expenses, not to mention the cost of the equipment, processing time after the event, etc. Photographers, like anyone else, like to get paid so that they can buy more equipment and keep up with their hobby. These same people who ask for freebies, would probably never ask a singer to sing for free, or a magician to perform his act gratis.
Certainly, making money in photography can be difficult. No, strike that! Making a living in photography can be difficult, especially trying to be an event photographer. Well, no solutions, just food for thought. I’m sure that the rest of you have probably had this experience, or similar, as well.
And here is something else to think about with the theme of pricing… an artist who has their songs on iTunes gets somewhere around 5 to 10 cents per 0.99 sale. Look at the effort that goes into recording and producing a single song versus a photograph and ask yourself, what would a photographer think about getting 10 cents for picture. Of course, there are economies of scale at work here, but it is interesting nonetheless to contemplate.
@Mark: Well, that’s more less exactly the price range that you can expect from one of those microstock agencies such as istockphoto. I’m always wondering whether the sheer number of sales could possibly make up for the ridiculous price…
That then relates back to Pauls comment – this certainly creates the general feeling, that a photograph is pretty much worthless. And, to be frank, a lot of them are. In my mind, the problem is really how to separate – during marketing – the usual snapshots from high quality photos (high quality in terms of technicalities and artistic value).
Interesting thoughts.
I had an interesting experience with a large shoot.
I was approached by an organization to do a picture directory. It involved about 150 families. I had to come up with a pricing scheme. Some people told me to charge the organization a flat “Day Rate” and charge people for packages…Hmmm…interesting, but since I had never done anything on that scale before I didn’t know how efficiently I could do it and didn’t feel that would be fair to the organization. Ok method 2; a sitting fee which could then be applied to packages that get ordered over a certain $$ amount. Sounded like the best option…Well…Not really.
In comes Olan Mills, the international company…They charged nothing, no flat day rate, no sitting fees, and provided the directories to the organization for FREE! They relied on the package orders (very pricey ones at that) that they took right at the shoot. Needless to say there was no way an independent photographer like me could compete with that, especially printing up 150 FREE full color photo directories.
Companies like Olan Mills and Lifetouch Studios make it difficult for independent photographers to do larger scale jobs which is where the $$ is.
I’ve also had people have the nerve to email me and ask me straight out if I would send them full size files because they couldn’t print the ones from my site(s) big enough…Hello? Of course they wanted them for free too.
It’s frustrating indeed.