Happy New Year to you all - clients, friends, colleagues and especially my students. It is the time of year when we assess our past and make resolutions in many areas of our life.
Resolutions in your photography business are important too. As you know there are many pressures that hinder your profit making such as micro stock, low balling competition, amateurs with high-end dSLR's that aren't focussed on sustainability, and the perception that "anyone can take a decent photo, so why hire a pro?"
I've had several discussions with photographers about low balling and amateur competition. My response is always, "Don't focus on them, they will not be able to sustain their business for long." Typically these people either have lots of money obtained in other ways, or another job that enables them to offer bargain priced photography on the side, just because they love to take pictures and they think it's fun to see their photos in magazines once in awhile. My advice to non-professional photographers is: Go ahead and take great pictures, but please charge proper rates. There are lots of sources on pricing, especially when it comes to licensing fees - Foto Quote, Editorial Photographers, and professional photographers like John Harrington who just feel it's good to share their pricing models. Typically photographers are very closed minded about sharing prices in their market, but the reality is by doing so, you can raise the bar.
There is a lot of photography work in my market in Calgary, but there are also many clients who offer next to nothing for professional photography. I recently had a discussion with a colleague and we both had terrible experiences with the same client which was an ad agency, that also ran a magazine. The scenarios were similar; rush job, no money to pay for photography, wanted to trade for ad space, poor management on client side and lots of other screw ups like no photo credits or returned phone calls. I talked to two other photographers who had worked for the same client and they both had similar experiences. We all did one or two jobs for this client and then realized that it was not a client we were interested in keeping. None of us will work for that client again. We all gave the client a chance, and were hoping for a return on our investment. I figure that within the year, no one in the city will work for that client because word will get around about them. So my point is, that it is important to network and share with other photographers so you can either collectively avoid those clients or collectively educate those clients and perhaps raise the bar.
After all, if they can sell "Fair trade coffee" we should be able to sell "Fair trade photography" that sustains us for the long term, allows us to take a salary, send our children to college, and save for the future with some sort of investments to live off of in our retirement. Isn't that what the clients want? We deserve the same.
Not sure where to start? See the Cost of Doing Business Calculator on the NPPA site. You may be shocked at the results.
Resolve to be a better business person in 2008. Estimate fairly and include licensing fees in all your quotes. If everyone does it, the clients will expect it and will get used to it. If they can't afford professional photography, they need to reassess their needs and their budgets, and not expect photographers to lower their rates.
2 comments:
Why should amateur photographers who are able to supply bargain priced photography not do so? When doing business in any field, one does not care about what the competition is doing as long as they can make a profit on their own.
Hi Curt. Thanks for your comments. I guess my reply to you would be, "Instead, just supply those same images at a decent price." In my experience, when I was starting out, I gave bargain basement prices for my photos - especially to small magazines - thinking it was the way "in". It was fun to get published in the beginning. The only problem was, I stayed in the bargain priced category. When those clients had a bigger budget to pay for higher priced photography, they ended up hiring a high-priced photographer because they only thought of me as their bargain supplier. I ended up having to keep a full-time job to support my photography.
At some point I realized I had to get to the next level. I had to raise my prices, as it was actually costing me a lot of money to supply those bargain-priced images. I couldn't upgrade my camera, lenses or computer, as I didn't make enough profit to do so. In the beginning I also spent a lot of money on slide film and processing.
In theory, your comments sound reasonable, but in practice even as an amateur, you will not be able to sustain your "business" with the constant upgrades required in digital photography. If you want to go in business selling your photos, even as an amateur doing it part-time, act like you are in business. You may be surprised!
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