Debunking the Photography Myth Everyone Has Believed
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- In this video, I'm going to dispel the myth that everyone believes about how to price your photography work.
Price your photography work the way that works best for you and your photography business. There is no one correct way to price your photography work, and what works for one photographer may not work for another. So don't let this common myth get in the way of your photography business!
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Spot on. This needs to be taught in every business school and to every economist.
It is taught in business school. You just have to attend class. Listen and comprehend.
They already do, It is called the Subjective Theory of Value. Just bare in mind that in economy value and price are two completely different things.
To elaborate on what you rightly said. One way to think of it is that clients fall into two categories:
a) The asked for photo is the end, something to be enjoyed.
b) The asked for photo is the means to an end, a tool to bring in income e.g. selling burgers.
I went to art school for 4 years. They always insisted that being a professional artist is 50% studio and 50% business.
Yet graduating required 32 studio courses and only 1 business-focused class.
Thanks for taking the time to talk about an important subject that gets far too little attention.
I've been thinking this way for a long while. Other photographers think I'm crazy for not having a "pricelist" attached for my for hire services. The simple fact is, I like to talk to the client and figure out what value they are attaching to the job, and therefore, what I will need to provide, which then results in the quoted price. That fits in with your theories quite well, and if they don't value the job as much as I value it, I have them find a different photographer.
May be a good strategy, but I'm sure they won't want let you know how much value they're attaching to the job if they know you're going to take it all from them in the price. There has to be some value left for the client to keep.
@@barneylaurance1865 Of course it would never be presented like that to the client. I just talk to them and find out what the job is all about. During that conversation, I will get a feeling for what they are expecting and I will price accordingly as long as it fits within a range where I'm willing to work. My goal is always to come about a fair price for them and me, where we both come away feeling good about the transaction.
I'm not a professional photographer, and you have absolutely nailed it. I could not agree more.
Here's another tip I was told years back and took too little notice of.... a well established commercial photographer once asked me "When you tell people how much you expect them to pay, how often do they say - 'WHAT??!! HOW MUCH???' - to which I proudly replied.... 'Never😇'... "You're far too cheap", he said, you should be pushing the envelope regularly to build your higher payers. He meant *new* clients not recurring business of course.
“Someone I like” …not love? Come on Scott, you can be more vulnerable than that😉 4:20
You can see my brain computing what I wanted to say haha
Nice to see I'm not alone in noticing that little "like" nuance. I imagine your partner, Scott - might well be a bit dismayed with that tepid pronouncement. 🤣
@@TinHouseStudioUK I hope that jacket is well made it is likely the last one you'll get! 😆
Yes! They are paying for a result! It brings us back to your perennial reminder of the Pricing Triangle: Speed / Price / Quality.
Love your work Steve
The value of the tips that you share is extraordinary, and I thank you, sir.
Wow, just wow. What an eye opener.
Thanks
This resonates with what I hear so many professional magicians say, that they charge for the time it took them "to get there", that famous "Picasso quote". Thank you, you set it straight in a clear way with very good examples, it's enlightening!
I loved the slight zoom-in, "I'm a slow learner!"...me too, Scott!
Photographer's charge according to the clients they attain. That is the result of who they market to, how they market, how they present their work, how they communicate, etc.
Completely agree. If a prospected client doesn’t want to pay your fee, it doesn’t mean they undervalue your work, they might just not need your quality of work or they might not need your kind of work at all. Nothing to be bothered about. Moving on. 😀
"im particulary fast at doing my job" "we ae charging for the value that we bring" "we are charging for our perceived value" these are all the things you are argueing against.......your reputation and ability is what you are charging for as its your credentials in giving people the confidence to deliver.
This is correct, but I do feel that our time also matters in the equation. When I am very busy I charge more because my time is a limited resource and the laws of supply and demand apply. Basically, as my schedule fills up my rates go up. If my rates exceed the value ascribed to the job/photos by the client then we simply don't work together. Conversely, if I have little work I might do a job under what I feel is fair value for a client that has a low budget simply because I have all the time in the world, so I might as well.
This is why in business and marketing classes, the selling point of a service is always how much value it'll bring to a company.
If the client says they're estimating £1M growth but they're only willing to pay £48 - if I can stake 48 and make a million, I'm in the wrong business. They're going to be charged 10% of their estimated growth.
THIS. This is exactly why I’ve declined pay-by-the-hour as a photographer. An art director once asked why. I said I would get PENALIZED financially for being efficient while a bumbling, slow fellow would out earn me. No thanks.
Different art director hired me for a cover shoot. When I photographed Bill Gates and Warren Buffet their handlers gave me about 15 seconds each back stage. Think those magazine cover shots were worth $1 because I got it done that fast? Nope.
It’s about VALUE, not time.
Pretty much the same philosophy as Chris Do, which I love because it's really pragmatic and gets feelings out of the way. You're getting paid based on the problem you're solving for the client. If your client has a million dollar problem and they need you to solve it, you're gonna get paid according to that. But not every client has a million dollar problem. I've done shoots for billboards and national campaigns on a Monday and then shot a restaurant on a Wednesday. It would be absolutely ridiculous for me to charge the same fee, even though the same skills are being applied because for the restaurant it's literally a bad business investment to spend that amount of money on a photoshoot when they don't even have the means to extract the same profit from it as a big brand.
Another brilliant thing Scott drilled into my head when I started watching him, is that your fee is tied more to the market than your expertise. You showed examples of dark moody restaurant photography vs bright graphic minimalistic food/product photography. While both were executed at a high level, the prices were at opposite ends of each other because the market for one is recipe books vs the other being for million dollar billboard placements.
Usage. What is it being used for? Advertising, editorial, corporate are all different. National ad campaign is much different than wedding. Most people shooting big budget ad campaigns have reps that negotiate this for you.
It all comes from the story that Picasso drew a picture on a napkin for the waitress who asked him to, and when she wanted to take it he said it would be many thousands of Francs. She protested that it only took him a couple of seconds to do, to which he replied it took him his whole life (or something pithy like that). As a pro working for 23 years, I can agree. You sell at the price the client values the product/service at. Always.
You mean you sell at the price you value your product or service. And tell the client to f-off.
This is not just true in photography. Unfortunately, the customer's perceived value of something is often oddly skewed. I promise you that nurses save more lives every year than doctors, but in a US hospital, a doctor might spend 10 minutes a day with you and bill hundreds of dollars. Meanwhile, you are getting 24-hour-a-day nursing care and the bill for those 24 hours won't be much more than what the doctor is billing for his few minutes.
This happens in photography too. Lot's of people will hire "Uncle Bob" to photograph their wedding because they don't fully appreciate the value of an experienced wedding photographer until AFTER Uncle Bob screws it up.
It's still perceived value. People value doctors more because they are better, more skilled and qualified for diagnosing and performing extremely complex procedures (such as surgeries), something for which nurses are not qualified at all (and I live in a country where nurses are extremely qualified and competent). Doctors time is more valued, therefore not to be "wasted" with minor/routine tasks, which more and more gets handed over to nurses for that very same reason. So nurses become the "lower end mass market", so they save more lives with the same logic that a photo booth serves more portraits than a high-end portrait photographer. The same way an Uber serves more rides per year, but it's a pilot that earns more and takes you across the world. Etc, etc, etc. Value doesn't come from quantities, even if it's "lives" (look at firefighters and rescue teams, they also save lives and usually even risking their own, some earn less than a McDonalds trainee).
Agreed. I did a comparison of others in my photographic space. Based on some known pricing I have a reasonable guess as to where I can set my pricing. This is, for me at least, step one is starting my own business. Took 6 years since I first picked up a camera and 1.5 years since I started working as a commercial photographer for a company.
This is why I'm so fed up with clients asking about my rates when I reach out to them. If I knew their budget I'd cater my time and effort accordingly.
I was just thinking about this with a possible paid gig for a new club. Thank you for the insight.
Preach, Brother Scott!!
Thats hitting the nail on the head!
Most spot on video in ages
So yes, what someone is willing to pay depends on the value to that person. But that's not what you'll charge. That's the upper limit on the amount you could theoretically charge. In reality you have to leave some value there for the client to keep. If you put it all in the price then there's nothing left for them and they might as well have not transacted.
Equally the minimum price you could charge is what it costs you to do the job. But you don't want to be at the minimum, if it was then as a seller you're getting nothing out of the arrangement.
So the price always has to be somewhere in the range between costs to provider and value to the client. Normally it won't be at either end of that range. Where it sits within that range depends on competition, negotiating power etc. Generally you'll have some consumer surplus and some producer surplus. Read some price theory.
And of course there's a lot of secrecy in the process. The client may not want to disclose how much they really value work to avoid paying that much, and the produce may not want to disclose how little it costs them.
…. Love your work, A very simple concept, but totally true, it’s brilliant. How much is it worth to the client in sales? Budget more gain more. Could not be simpler, but yet genius…love your channel ❤❤
Well said and spot on.
Of course you are right. Perceived value is what a customer is willing to pay for. The trouble is that if learning a specific trade necessitates several years training and an official qualification - e.g. an aircraft pilot who may even have to pay for his training himself - the perceived value can have little relationship to the costs incurred and the intelligence needed to be able to deliver the service required. I must admit that I do not even have an inkling of an adequate solution.
In my professional life (not photography) we speak of output (what we create) and outcome (the value our output has for the customer). And the outcome, what you name the perceived value, defines the price. And I would say that this is true for photography as well.
Thank you!!! nice point!
excellent explanation... "perceived value by the client" 👏 unfortunately, this value seems to drop year by year.
In sync with you Steve !
Well said. Dead on. You're paid what the market thinks your worth. Love your channel.
Fair point about 90%. Doesn’t equipment use also come into play. Studio rental camera rental. Amount of assistance duration of shoot… just curious. If this is standardised for you per shoot in your price
Kind of, but they are different line items which are based on the job rather than the photographer. Some jobs need low rentals, others need huge rentals and crews, but my fee remains the same.
Yes...but kind of also no.
I know plenty of very successful specialist wedding photographers who charge by the hour. There's a minimum number of hours to get them at all and it's an hourly fee that is designed to always get them to a certain total for the day...but it's an hourly fee nonetheless. Their skills garnered over time are built into the cost. To generalise a bit, if you were to be hired by men for the heterosexual wedding photos purely on the perceived value, you'd get far less money than if you were to be hired by the women for their perceived value of the photos. But that's not how it is. (It might be in commercial food photography, I don't know, but as that's the point you're making, i guess it is).
There is no one single way of doing things correctly. If you were to only stick to your "perceived value" rationale for charging, you'd be able to charge millions of pounds for simple portrait headshots to "some people" because they perceive that looking a certain way in their LinkedIn profile is what gets them the next multi-million pound contract. It's just not as simple as that and it never was. There is a maximum amount everything is chargeable for...and there should also be a minimum.
Sometimes you have to enforce a value to educate the client that there is a minimum, otherwise everyone would just come along and say "i don't value that so i'm not paying it" and everyone would be paid peanuts for everything. There are standards, there are minimums, there are accepted prices.
So everyone isn't "wrong" with your clickbaity title, and neither are you.
How do you know how much the client values the work? Do you just ask or do you have some fixed prices for different kinds of jobs? Basically I'm asking how do you know how much you can ask and are you willing to lower your initial price if you feel like you are going to lose the client?
One day, corporate decided to let go of Gregory, their most senior engineer at the plant. Months go by and corporate applauds itself for getting rid of the overhead of their operations.
Then one day, the generator at the plant stops working. All of the engineers try and try to get it running, but it never starts up again. Replacing the generator will cost millions of dollars. They call up Gregory and ask if he'll take a look. He agrees, but only if they're willing to pay his service fee. Corporate finds this amenable.
He comes in, looks inside the massive machine, and asks for a hammer. He crawls up inside, makes one loud "ping" as metal hits on metal. Crawls out, hits the starter switch, and the generator starts up immediately.
He says, "that'll be $10,000".
Corporate replies, "uh, that's a lot of money for 3 minutes of work... make sure you itemize your invoice as to what cost so much."
Corporate hoped to learn from his invoice what he had done so they never have to hire him ever again at an exorbitant rate. It finally shows up in the mail a week later.
Invoice of Gregory:
- Transportation costs: $35
- Hourly Rate: 0.05 Hr x $100/hr = $5.00
- Knowing where to strike the hammer: $9,960
It's an old story, but a good one. Know your market rate and know when you have knowledge others do not.
It's the Paula Scher quote from her designing the Citibank logo in a minute and charging hundreds of thousands. It's what she said to the Bank when they queried the price. Aparently.
You're right Tin House,and that is the most insane, dumb idea ever. That's like I charge to spin at your club based on the amount of time it took me to learn how to rock crowds. That's like paying a pilot who took 10 years to learn more than someone it took 5 years...really not too bright...
On point 👍
to make it short they pay for the result that we provide, the final image. If they want quality and style they pay more, it they don't need quality they pay less
There is an apocryphal story from the chemical industry about a process operator who ran a critical piece of equipment for many years. Some weeks after his retirement this unit stopped working and was costing the plant 100s of thousands of pounds per day in lost output. In desperation the plant manager called the retired operator to come in a try to fix it as a contractor. The operator came in picked up a sledge hammer and hit the casing of the unit where upon it started working again. The contractor submitted an invoice for £25005 for this service. He was asked for a more detailed breakdown of his costs, his answer: £5 for hitting unit with hammer, £25000 for knowing where to hit it.
I've heard variations of this story over the years. In the context of this video, however, the 25,000 is not for knowing where to hit the machine, but knowing how important it is to get it running!
Charging per hour is wrong, it is better to charge a creative fee per day even if the job took 7 hours instead of 10. This says that the entire day is booked for the specific client and no others. No matters how long the job take if the results is here at the end.
Getting paid to deliver what the client asked for, and is willing to pay for accordingly.
Yes, agreed, but your fee does factor into their perceived value of your service, I think. Let’s say, as an extreme example, if they could get $5M in sales off your photos but your fee is $4M, they’d still go for the the guy whose photos they project would get them $4M but cost them $50k. Obviously the numbers are dumb, but it shows that their perceived value is not independent of what you charge, right? Or am I missing something?
photographer are charging according to ther social group and geographic location , and this is the reality
Could be useful in negotiating fees as well.
What is it worth to the client? is one aspect, the other is, is the photographer able to produce high enough quality to meet the clients needs. I now see value in what I can produce. When.I first started I didn't feel that I was producing something of value, now I do.
Old guys will remember Kodak's Vericolor 2, and why it was the weapon of choice for wedding photographers. Well... 39 years ago last week I had a wedding shoot disaster.
It was our own wedding. We'd booked a local press photographer, because of his reputation and I knew his work, too. I was happy to pay a premium for him.
The silly chump double-booked himself, and sent a dep, who arrived with Fujicolour, "because I like the colours".
'High June' in 1984 was very hot and sunny with clear skies, and sharp shadows. My mother-in-law wore a broad-brimmed hat, and consequently was invisible in most of the formal photos.
I'd even brought up the subject of film stock when we met the photographer originally, who assured me that Vericolor was what he always used.
So yes, we clients are prepared to pay for what we deem important, and we have expectations, which better professionals meet.
By the way, Fujicolor at the time was new-ish to the UK market, and had, to my eye, a horrid green cast (possibly because the local pro lab was set up for Kodak stock, but I think it was just because Fuji at that time was poor quality). It took at least ten years for that to improve!
nice jacket
I saw Ice T post " My prices are based on my talent, not your budget" I just think wow what a terrible business model lol. kids saying "preach!" etc... He was lucky he was in the "right" place at the right time with the talented Dr Dre, he's no more talented than the next rapper. He charges for his name and value his personal brand brings not his bloody "talent". This sort of thing is what I hear photogs saying. like seriously?? How egotesticless can you get! 😅
so true.
On. The. Money.
I don't really fancy a photographer being there at the birth of my child.
Pretty sure I know the IG account you spotted this on.
No comment
This "myth" is the result of other occupations and professions having their economic ethos being coopted into photography. You pay a highly skilled and experienced lawyer a lot more than you pay a newly minted lawyer. You want an experience doctor or a specialist if you have a difficult health issue. Professional athletes get paid more if they win. In short, people who have experience or who have special knowledge or skills are always paid more than those that don't.
👌
At least your partner can be reassured that you “like” them 🤷♂️
Rest it’s on point 🤙
Can't say the L word online haha
@@TinHouseStudioUK Why?! 😅 Any laws against it?
Kind of disagree, I think.
I would hire you for your expertise or the value you bring as you stated.
Where does your value come from? It comes from all the learning you have done over the years, so in this sense I am paying you for the time you spent in learning, not in dollars per hour you were at photography school/apprenticeship/self teaching, but for the value you gained from that time spent learning your craft.
Otherwise why wouldn’t I hire my 12 year old son (who can take photos) to do the job instead of you? Because my son has spent no time at all learning the craft. You have. Therefore I hire you.
We might just be saying the same thing here so if we are, apologies.
I'm payed for what I know, not for what I do 😉
Great video! I sent you an important email. It would be greatly appreciated if you could give it a look and respond as soon as possible. Thank you!
Hey thanks for getting in touch! We receive a lot of emails and don't always have the time to get back to everyone.