Lessons
Class Introduction
04:35 2Common Myths & Unknown Truths
08:08 3The Road Ahead
05:22 4Find Your Passion
03:18 5Part-time, Full-time, Employed, Partners?
03:41 6Stop Wasting Time & Money
04:02 7Your 12 Week Roadmap
04:23 8Mind Mapping
02:25Select a Focus
02:51 10S.W.O.T. Analysis
04:14 11Strategy & Long Term Goals
03:42 12Values, Vision & Mission
05:40 13Quick Break for Econ 101
08:14 14Your Target Market & Brand Message
07:12 15Your Client 'Why'
02:26 16Document the Client Experience
04:47 17Business Administration Basics
08:56 18Book Keeping Management
05:23 19Create the Logo & Branding
03:21 20Three Pricing Methods
10:18 21Package Pricing Psychology & Design
02:03 22The Listing & Classified Hustle
04:51 23Make Instagram Simple
05:57 24Your Automated Pinterest Plan
03:16 25Content Marketing & SEO
06:03 26Your Content Road Map
06:41 27How to Craft Your Content
05:37 28Internal Linking Basics
03:21 29What is Sales? Show Me!
05:02 30The Sales Process
03:23 31Always Positive, Always Affirming
02:03 32The Second Money & Dual Process
05:51Lesson Info
Three Pricing Methods
So we are trying to look right now at direct competitors in your quality range. That's huge because you wouldn't be comparing apples to apples otherwise, right? So look at direct competitors offering the same product that offer the same level of quality. Those are the ones that we care about. What are their starting and average rates? Those should be pretty easy to find, a little bit of research, possibly a Facebook group or two posting and getting information. It's information that's readily available regardless of the arena that you're in. Three pricing methods. Here's where I want you all to start. Start with cost method pricing. Adapt it to demand based on your competitor analysis over time, aim for luxury. Demand is gonna be something that you adjust with growth. That could vary for every single one of you. Three months in, some of you might be booked to capacity. Six months in, somebody might be booked to capacity. It might take some of you a year to get to that place. But this i...
s that place that you adjust once you start getting to a range of clients that, "Okay, I've got a healthy amount of people coming in. "Let's bring the price up "because I can't handle that much more." Okay, we adjusted demand. Cost basis is to get us clients now. If you're asking how do I get people now, we're gonna go based on that. I'm gonna give you two approaches where you don't have to hurt your own brand perception by starting with a low price for some, and by posting a relatively higher price for others. We'll talk about it. Luxury is what's gonna come with time. This is that elusive $10,000 booking to go and shoot I don't know, Barack Obama's dog that nobody ever gets. But does Barack Obama have a dog? (audience murmurs) He'd pay $10,000 to have his dogs take a picture, like he would but that's that high end shoot, right? That's where we all aim for. You can get there eventually. There's no one magic bullet that's gonna take you there other than just time and the developing of your product. Let's start with cost method pricing and for those that are in the workbook, this is workbook zero six pricing. We're gonna discuss what it is. I've given you guys a template. The template has just ideas of what potential costs might be to give you an idea of where to start. What it is, cost method pricing is simple. You determine the costs that are going into the shoot. These are hard costs. These are out-of-pocket costs that you're spending to actually go shoot. You think your camera's part of that? Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. You buy your camera and then for some reason, we don't actually apply the cost of it to each shoot that we take it on. In accounting, it's called depreciation. You depreciate the asset over its lifespan, which means how many of you are buying a new camera once every three years? Raise your hand. Once every two years, raise your hand. Once every five years, raise your hand. Okay, so somewhere between three and five years is the lifespan of your cameras, your lenses, all the equipment that you're using, which means that you would say, "Okay, if I do 30 shoots a year "and I'm gonna use my camera for five years, "that's 150 shoots. "I'm gonna take my equipment and divide it by 150." That is the cost that you apply to every single shoot. That's an out-of-pocket cost. Makes sense? 'Cause we generally only think about out-of-pocket like the gas that I'm using, food that I need to buy, props that kind of stuff that I need for the shoot. But we don't think about the gear that we've already once purchased because we already purchased it but it's part of your cost. Set your desired hourly wage. This is where you set your desired capacity now. So now you've got 10, 15 shoots coming in and you say that I'd like to shoot 20 total shoots per year. You set your desired capacity, you raise prices without pricing out and you adjust as needed. The goal is to match the demand and approximate your competition now. Then I want you to transition to this. Many of you are gonna be in this place right now. If you already have clients coming in, you're in this place right now. If you don't have clients coming in, start with cost method because that's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna show you classified listings to get people in the door for 400 bucks, 500 bucks, 800 bucks. And it's gonna have nothing to do with the price that you show on your website. This is just to get those first few clients coming into the door and we're not gonna tarnish our brand perception on the website by showing a website price lower than what we wanna be charging. So the website price is gonna stay a little bit higher. The classified listing price is gonna stay lower. We won't tarnish because we're not gonna tie the name back directly. So when people see the price point over here, there's no name on it until they click through and they see it. But we keep them separated so that way when someone Googles it, they don't find, "Oh, you're charging this over here "and you're charging this over here." That will tarnish your brand name. So this is where I want you guys to be and this is the fun part. (whiteboard creaking) Okay, I'm gonna turn this just a little bit so I can stand here and see you guys. So we're just gonna create a graph. We're gonna be working mostly over here and basically what we're gonna have is on the Y-axis, we have our quality level, right? On this axis, we have our price point and you're gonna map out those competitors that based on height, you're gonna go up in quality. I hope that none of you are competing down here. Let's just not compete over in this range. You're going from good to best, okay? We're not competing in the craptastic arena. So along the good, you have these ranges and you're gonna give it numbers if you need to. If you wanna go and get down into it, give your competitors numbers or whatever it might be and plot them. So you're gonna say this person is at 4k and they're exceptional. Their work is great. There's another person in that arena at 4.2. There's another person in this arena at 4.5. There's another person in the same quality range and you're gonna plot these out onto this map right here in different areas where they all fall in place. Where do you want to not be? Circle the big clusters and stay away from those? All you have to do is if you offer this quality, you adjust back to 3.9. You just stay right outside of the box. Does that make sense? So this area is the area of heavy competition. This is the area we want to avoid. Avoid. You could go up here, couldn't you with the 10k? There's not that many people up there. That's where you're aiming at. You're looking to map out this strategic environment and if your quality level is that good, and there's nobody, there's like two other people competing up here, that's a great place to position yourself especially if you already have people coming in. Luxury method. This is down the road. It has to do with quality but the quality is implied at this point, just like with a Bentley, with a Mercedes-Benz, with a Louis Vuitton bag, with every other luxury item, a Tesla, Apple computers, quality is implied. You don't need to talk about it but it's assumed that you got it. Made sense? More importantly, is the brand perception then quality because at that range, at this luxury price point, are all of your competitors offering a pretty good product? Yeah, they're all right up there. There's gonna be differences in style but they're all doing something really great. So this is about perception. And what you do is you set a symbolic or perceived price. It has nothing to do with your competition. In fact, the goal is to be greater than the competition. My goal is, if you wanna come and book me, you're gonna spend more than anybody else because when they leave my studio, I will convey the fact that what they're getting is better. So you will spend more but that price is gonna set the tone right up front. This is a place we're gonna get to. We limit the number of bookings so I tell my clients that I take on a maximum of 20 client commissions per year, which is true. I'll take on a max of 20 weddings and we adjust as needed. Would I take on 21 or 22 if they came along? Sure. Would I tell clients I'm fully booked when I hit 20? Absolutely. I'm fully booked for 2018. Cool, it doesn't mean that I can't take an additional client. It means that I wanna create scarcity so that they understand the value of this product. And the product is you. This is why we talked about that earlier in the previous segments, what is the product you're selling? It's you, you're the ultimate limited resource and we have to convey that in the way that you price and the way that you talk if you ever wanna get to this place of luxury.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Bree Day
Harald Weinkum
Student Work
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Business