Lessons

Lesson Info

12:00 pm - Pricing

Let's jump into pricing row pick drew drew drew the three most common tax to setting your price and very often are one has anybody else doing it? What? What are they pricing? Okay, I'm gonna get my prices around there. I'm going to start out what it seems like everybody else is kind of doing number two I want to create some packages. How do I group together prints that combination of product and I think most people get when they put him into certain package. It says that that's how I'm gonna do but something by packages or collections third ala carte I'm gonna come up the individual prices for everything I sell and then see what people want to buy those the three most common past that people set their pricing I have done all three I have found in my experience that by selling collections and packages I tended to not sell as much as when I sell all a cart again you're going hear different for me from other photographers everybody does their what makes sense for them. But I found that if...

I want the emotional engagement to be fully on the images and what we love best about the images, the last thing I want to do is squeeze all that into a set parameter grates and since you love these forty six images, how exactly do we make that to love my fourteen's one eight by ten and a campus wall piece like it didn't equate I wanted to start with if you love all this, what do we create for you that's the best fit and we're going to do that utilizing a very simple ala carte pricing we're going to just tally up everything that we know you love and that's gonna be your final invoice do you see that it makes sense? Um that's different than how I did weddings with weddings it was extremely focused on time everything about my wedding packages and I always sold weddings of wedding packages was was around the amount of time I spent there so the first time it would spend there would be about five hours that was about the minimum time. And then it was like seven hours and then it was about nine hours and then I had the unlimited packages, whether which is those were the really big packages. The wedding packages started at seventy seven hundred and that was the five hours plus of these albums and as we upgraded it was more time a little bit more products more time, a little bit more product upto are twenty thousand dollars collections which were the unlimited a good amount of products, and then at the end of the day most people were somewhere in the middle are average wedding package was fifteen five by the time I stopped doing weddings and that was for about the last year and a half and that's how much I love my family but what I found there is that if people came back to me and said you know I love package thiss a love of the eight hour package of the nine hour package or whatever the case might be because we would go ahead and customize it for what they wanted less hours more hours but my budget is at x what can you do for me instead of saying ok let me take some dollars offer discounted I just said all right what can we remove from the package that is a cost to me that you may not care so much about so we can keep it in line with your budget but I'm also not taking a hit and that is the same thing I would say with photography at the end of the day we're looking through portrait photography specifically if we're at the end of the day if we've tally up the invoice it's a little higher than they expected and like oh you know what we bring that down like five hundred dollars or so sure let's go back and look you said you wanted this piece framed but let's go right to the things that are gonna cost me a dollar amount and start pairing those down versus let's cut out images because I know where my costs are I know what my markups are you know what? I have to pay a lot more for verses I've already done the work I can't get the time back that it took me to shoot this and at this I want to save that first because I already did it. I haven't gone out and purchased the frames yet that's the that's the answer to a question I get a lot about what about people tried discounted negotiate? Sure let's, go ahead and work on this together but let me start taking things off to bring it down versus just simply bring down my price um, so when people say ok, I got all that what should you do, which you charge? What should I charge? Got it that's how you do it that's, how they do it that's how they do it I'm so confused. What do I charge? The honest answer is, I don't know, I can't tell you what you charge because I don't know your market. I don't know where you live, I don't know who you're marking, teo, I don't know if you're low volume and high dollar or high volume and low dollar I don't know what your business operation expenses are, I don't know what your cost of goods sold are I don't know what vendors you are using I don't know how much effort you put into finishing products if you do it on your own or if you outsource it and there's a cost associated with that and if you do it yourself how long it takes you I don't know anything about you specifically which is why you have to figure it out based on these variables which we can talk about so that you can but I will say that simply looking around and seeing how people do it and not taking into all those things into consideration your time your effort your experience your cost good sold your business operation expenses you're finishing efforts your target market your geographic market your determination of being a low cost high volume are high cost the volume studio if you're not taking that into account and simply just doing what somebody else is doing you're doing yourself a disservice right if you're building your prices start with a few basic premises that would be true for you regardless of where you are first of all give your client less to choose from when they're overwhelmed with a lot of choice they tend to not choose it all give them less things to decide between and they will buy more as much as possible possible simplify your pricing my pricing is on a price sheet like this that is what my pricing looks like if you put less things on your price point priceless you're minimizing complexity and you can talk the things up that are on your prices you have more time to talk about the things you do so I would much rather hear great story about the five or six things that you want to highlight to me versus a rundown of the forty things you're selling because I can actually invest emotionally and those four five things I can touch them I can get a sense of myself having these products we don't sell a lot of products in our studio we sell the control board's word from arctic ashore we sell the canvas pieces we fell the obviously the prince white house does our prince the floppy prints we sell framed pieces and we have a framer that does all that that's under the bucket of just framed pieces way sell albums and we have three tex albums that we show right there and we can keep drilling down to customize it exactly for you but that's not the initial presentation initial presentation is here. The few products we sell this is how much I love them and why you'd buy them in certain things and oh, you want this album ok, here are some of the cover sample you know options for fabrics here some of size is doing a magazine style where the image is part of page or would you like it to be framed on a mat on the album we'll drill down then but first we want to make the decision of the product you want and sell that do you sell the do you allow the clients to purchase the sideshow that you develop for them yes they can buy that on dvd for two hundred fifty dollars so they can have the slide show on dvd it's just me and you guys sitting here for a while oh right I just need to stretch I think the audience of stretch yes they can they do that I really want to go for a run on our lunch break and we all go for a group run yes they could buy the slide show on dh that comes on dvd and it if they want to buy it they have it virtually extended amount of time I think about six months is about the average that we keep it up after the place their order what that does is give us gives us virtual business in terms of that yes. How about a files single and discuss let's take a moment. I think it is I think I have a slide coming up on this but let's just throw ourselves in it shall way where is it? Um I'll just run into no no it's it's a big question that I get all the time here when people say to me do you sell can I buy the rights to the photographs I mean say no we don't sell the rights the photographs but we do sell the rights to reproduce the photographs we do give you a copy of all the images we shoot put that on dvd and allow you to put that as you wish for a fee oh ok so first and foremost the question has come up I've responded that no we never saw the rights we don't give them away to clarify because that's important then I explain why I clarify you know the rights to reproduce them but we own them sort of thing you know I say it the way I just said it I don't see it that way on them on dh then they had been no asking do you sell them? But the unspoken question of course is for how much so I first I say yes we do that and then I say we do that I love of course selling the prince and the albums for a reason and let me tell you what the reason is and then I explain about the fact that we put a lot of effort into color correction the finishing touches all the things we care about that it's part of our vision when I'm out of the chute I will be shooting you and seeing some things but later I like to feel that in and finish the images and then when we send out the print the sheer number of times the print comes back and it's not right it's not that our lab didn't do a good job but sometimes when I'm sending in a five by seven image and I'm quickly it's looking at on my file it comes back as a twenty by thirty I'm like how did I miss that I miss that and editing or the leicester cook cook cho comes back and there's there's a drink on it and you guys seem that where there's something that stuff on it I send a piece at to get framed it comes back and there's a little chip in the frame we have such a level of perfection around the prince that come back to us and we own that because we care so much about the quality of our work and then I talk about the fact and yes I do all this I talk about the fact that obviously there's so much goes into this and we really care and I'm invested that way and so yes we do sell the rights to reboot reproduce its twenty nine fifty two thousand nine hundred fifty dollars no not twenty nine dollars and fifty cents we do sell the rights to reproduce and we also make sure we give you a great letter that explains exactly how we want you to have these printed and we don't want you to have these printed on what you've got by that time is the same thing that I address in the very beginning, which is when people ask you your session v I am not apologizing, I am not going to not tell you, I'm gonna tell you right away that I'm actually going to tell you, but first I'm going to take a moment to explain the why and bring it to life. If I immediately save you, you do sell the rights, tio producer, do you sell the rights to the address? Yes, it's forty nine fifty it was a very, very different response than yes, we dio and in fact, it's actually the rights to reproduce because, you know, in terms of reproduce the images on your own and everything I just said and then it's for this price, and then I go on to say, but also many of our clients appreciate the fact that we offer it is a gift after a certain purchase for us, the purchase point is five thousand dollars after they've spent five thousand dollars on a full collection of things, then we will go ahead and give them the rights to reproduce as a gift on dh. So what we find is when they're ordering process meant there were people who were collecting in the invoices that, like forty, one hundred there, like just a way that does come up so let me talk specifically about when people when I have talked to people in workshops and they come back and they say that sounds great except the fact that I can't sell mine for twenty nine fifty that's fine, what is your price? Because it's going to very based on your market, your geography, your operational costs your time? How many shoots you d'oh? What that number is that makes you happy when I say I sell the rights to reproduce for twenty nine fifty I'm talking about what the number that makes me happy. What number makes you happy? Because it may not be the same as mine, it might be more expensive than mine, it might be much cheaper, but if you have anything on your priceless that when you sell it, you go us. I hate that they bought that do not have it on your price list if you did all that effort and at the end of the day you want to make sure you secure at least this amount of dollars for it and you're happy that you've secured at least this amount of dollars make that your number for me it was that member between twenty nine fifty and the five hundred dollars session fee I'm at my average sale and I'm fine, I'm good, I'm happy that is the answer to the digital negatives don't come and part of that let me take it a step further. What we've done is evolve as the market evolves, social media has changed a lot of things people are now more you know, I wanted my home, but I also want on my phone I want to be able to have an airline piece, but I want to carry it. I want to put it up on facebook for my friends to see my grandma is not coming any time soon I'm going to put it on her facebook page because she is a rockin facebooker great what we do now is any image that you purchased over eleven by fourteen we will give you the lower his version watermarked to include on your social media put on your phone that is a concession we didn't do that a year ago, but if I set there with my head in the sand and said this is the way it falls down, it is the way we're always going to do it I'm an idiot as things change, I need to change, I need to stay fresh and curtain with the market I don't need to give everything away and go out of business I don't need to say well, did you just say that? There's, a new photographer two miles down the road who is doing everything for two hundred dollars everything's changing guys no because the more that comes in the more I get separated in the market the more I am standing alone on what we all want to d'oh we want to stand on our market why would I make sure I blend in as much as possible to keep my clients happy that's the opposite of the direction I want to go in yes we do sell the rights to reproduce it's for this price let me tell you before I tell you the price exactly why it's that price all the effort and energy and that partnership that we're going to put into it together is going to bring us to that price and also we'll give that to you and you have the opportunity for lo rez model marked images after certain purchases what do you think do the terror dance what do you think I mean we have ah lunch break it's a goodbye there any other questions about digital negative I'm just focused on lunch break I guess but I want to make sure this is like perfect yeah the do you sell j pegs or raw files or if they're if you sell just j pegs do offer it for an up charge if they want to buy the ross I've never had a client asked me for the raw images ever, ever it's becoming more and more commonly as people become more and more time I'm seeing that younger clients so okay, if you know I'm not saying I'm not saying anything wrong with that I haven't had that question yet we sell everything is j pegs simply because of the time we're done finishing it it's finished on a jpeg file, andi so even though we shot it wrong, I certainly would have the raw images, but are you asking if I would sell my original images that I don't finish because the answer's no, clearly no, no, no, no, no why? Because you know what my photographs are what I click my photographs and my delivery isn't when I went out in clicked my photographs are the combination of what I clicked, what I created, what I generated from an emotional response perspective and when I sat down and processed it to finish it to the point of what I wanted to make, how many times you sat there and said this would be the perfect shot at that stupid trash cameron in there I have the power to remove a trash can, you know is this it would be the perfect shot if I had had three point lighting on him because he's on the edge and there's a little bit of a shadow and but the mood is perfect now and miss the perfect moves those shoes, this perfect mood and in photo shop I have the additional skills to finish this and light him how I wanted to do it on the spot I'm not ever going to miss the moment and the experience and the emotion for a technical, but I'm gonna bring the technical and later and that is my photograph I will not give you the original files because those aren't my photographs that's what I snapped that's what a lot of effort went into it you saw everything we do in a shoot that's not nothing there's a lot of effort to get to that raw file, but I finish it and that's part of what you're paying me for if I were to give you the raw files I'm doing you a crazy to service I'm staying here here's half the effort or whatever it isthe I want to give you the whole effort and that is what I'm proud of the finnish file that I'm done with you're going to see me shooting tether tomorrow you'll see what I'm capturing raw you're also going to see what it does to the client. I don't do incredible amount of over crazy photo shop I actually like photographs versus illustrated prince that's what I produce, I don't make a lot of composites and this and that I like clean photographs and my finishing is usually that alright boost this get that it's not crazy over the top, but there's definitely a before and after and I'm going to show you some of that tomorrow. To we'll see if some of that. Today, when we go through images, we'll see some of what that difference is. But often the most perfect way to present this image to a client has to do with just a little extra tweaking in terms of crop and lighting and then getting or something subtle and that's what I'll give you.