So you've printed your photo out, you've decided if you wanted to frame it or not frame it. How much money have you spent on making this photograph Start to add it up and I don't mean just the photo itself, the photo itself, the print itself, maybe you spent $20 on it. Maybe you spent $100 on a big 30 by print, Maybe you spent a couple 100 on the frame. Maybe you spent $10 on the frame. But also how much time did you put into this photo? How much time did you spend editing? How much time did you go out to get that beautiful sunset on that coast? How long did it take you to drive out there, spend money on gas. How much did that lens cost? There are so many factors when you're trying to sell print that are different from actually going out and shooting for like a wedding or a head shot session. So let's talk about your hourly rate again. How much time do you feel like is worth one photograph? Now let's take an example of just a simple 11 by 14 photo which is about that big you've spent,...

I don't know, a really professional print shop. $30 printing it out on matte paper. You then bought a frame story. You bought a frame that costs another $30. So we're up to $60 on just this physical thing. Cool. Now I spent an hour driving out to the spot to take this photo because I don't live too close to the to the beach And then I spent about an hour and a half hanging out waiting for the moment to just be right. And I used my nice mere Lys camera so I've spent two hours doing that I think came home and I spent roughly 30 minutes to an hour editing it and then out putting it and sending it to the print shop before him and then spent another 30 minutes driving out to pick up this photo. So now I'm at a total of four hours plus $60 of a printed photo. So let's just say that four hours to me was worth on the cheaper end $25 an hour that I spent. That's you know, $100 of time that I've spent working on that photo now you can decide what your hourly rate is. But I'm just throwing $25 out. So that's $100 that I've spent My time doing plus six. It's $160. So now if we sell this print that's framed print For $160. Do you feel like it is worth it to you to do that? That's up to you. You have to decide what your markup value for this giant print would be. I would personally say Selling prints at cost is a very good way to start. But if you seriously want to make money at it, you need to start upping the price. You can round it up to $200. So you've made $40 on top of all this work and time Um in monetary value you've only spent 60 and you spend your sending it, you're selling it for 200. So you've sort of in reality made a lot more cash than you spent. But also you gotta take into your time, you've spent time doing that. You could have been doing other things or shooting other things. So you kinda have to balance how you feel about that. Um And I think a lot of photographers, professional photographers use that time as time that they could have been putting into their company, putting in other places spending with their family. So you want to get paid for that time or if you're just worried about that being the hobby part of it. And the monetary value of it is more important to you spent $60 on the print and on the frame then selling it for $200. Seems like a lot more money. So it kind of depends on how you want to do this. You can make smaller prints for less money. Big giant prints, you can double the price of the time it took you to do it and the time and the amount of money that it costs for you to make that and that's really where you're gonna start to make your money now if you're only making $40 extra or you're only making $20 extra, it may not be worth your time unless you're doing that a lot now if you only sell One or two prints a month and you really need to be making money and this is becoming a bigger business for you. You need to be asking for more money. Real big professional photographers are asking for upwards of $300-$500 for 11 by 14 size print. Now again maybe you can start to talk about how you're only gonna sell one of these online or you start to build a presence, you're only gonna sell five of these which makes them more worthwhile and then you're gonna kill the negative. Um Or you're gonna make a giant print and spend like $1000 building this big print. This custom frame and you're gonna sell it for $5000. Either way, that's how you sort of start to figure it out, find out how much it costs to make the print, find out how much it costs to make the frame, calculate your hourly rate, how much time you want to be getting paid creating this photo and decide how much you want to mark it up For that. Do you want to take 50% of that and add it on. Do you wanna take 100 to 200% of that? The big the big thing here is to decide what your market ability is where you're selling it, who's going to be buying it and see what's gonna work out for you. This is another thing that you're gonna have to kind of feel out, see what other prints are selling for. And this is all very physical. When you're selling online you may just be selling the print without a sort of frame or you may be selling it through a website and they'll sometimes already have suggested costs for you. So that's also another way that you can kind of go about doing it. There are certain websites where you can put up a print, set up a price and then people will actually start to order them online. You have to do anything Phil is going to go through a couple examples of online ways of selling your prints.

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Philip Ebiner

Professional video & course creator, photographer & teacher to 1mil+ students; 10+ years experience with 1000+ videos.

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Will Carnahan

11+ years experience as a cinematographer, camera operator, and photographer. Working with Disney, Nike, ESPN, PredPol and many others.

2,000+ classes ranging from fundamentals to advanced techniques.

How to Price Your Prints

How to Price Your Prints

Lesson Info

70. How to Price Your Prints

Lessons

Welcome

Why Do You Want to Start a Photography Business

What Kind of Photography Business Do You Want to Start

Important Personal Note from Instructor Will

Case Study Starting a Photography Business

Quiz - Chapter 1

Introduction to Basics of Starting a Photography Business

Choose Your Business Name

Choose Your Business Structure

Register Your Business Name

Get Your Federal Tax ID

Get Your Business License

Get Your Business Bank Account

Register Your Online Accounts

Branding Your Business

Set Your Prices

The Photography Gear You Need to Start a Business

Case Study - Business Basics

Case Study - Equipment

Quiz - Chapter 2

Intro to Getting Your First Paying Clients

You Need to Prove Yourself

The Best Place to Find Your First Clients

What to Charge for Your First Clients

On Set - Partnering with Other Creatives

On Set - Getting Work in a Competitive Environment

Use Your First Shoot Wisely

Case Study - Getting Your First Clients

Quiz - Chapter 3

Introduction to Create Your Photography Business Website

Why You Need a Website and Platform Options

What Needs to Be On Your Website

Design the Perfect Portfolio

Case Study - Looking at Photography Websites

Quiz - Chapter 4

Introduction to Expanding Your Online Presence

Use Instagram to Grow Your Business

Use Facebook to Grow Your Business

Get Listed on Google

Get Listed on Yelp

Get Listed on Review Sites

Using Craigslist to Get Work

Case Study - Expanding Your Online Presence

Quiz - Chapter 5

Introduction to the Photography Business Workflow

Step 1 - Meeting Your Client

Step 2 - Booking Your Client

Step 3 - The Shoot

Step 4 - Editing Your Photos

Step 5 - Delivering Your Photos

Case Study - Business Workflow

On Set - the Shoot

On Set - Backdrop Placement

On Set - Paper Backdrop Rolls

On Set - The Back Light

On Set - Interacting with Clients

Quiz - Chapter 6

Intro to Business Infrastructure and Continued Growth

Productivity Tools to Make Your More Efficient

Get Business Insurance

Accounting Tools & Tips

Business Tax Tips

Scaling Your Prices Up

Use Conventions and Meet Ups to Grow Your Business

Case Study - Business Growth

Quiz - Chapter 7

Intro to the Selling Prints Section

Why Should You Sell Your Prints

Choose a Printer

How to Price Your Prints

Selling Your Prints Online

Selling Your Prints in Person

Wrapping up This Section

Quiz - Chapter 8