You guys must be really sick of these

[Albert Street]

How much do I charge? Now, I've read through the sticky and searched for similar topics and found good information. But I just wanted to see what you guys think about this.

I'm a BMX photographer and a company is interested in purchasing some photos I took of one of their riders. I can't say for sure what the images will be used for, possibly an ad in a magazine.

I was thinking $200-250 per image. Does that sound about right to you guys?

[sspellman]

Albert-

Commercial use of images is based on many factors including image size, territory, frequency, length of time, type of media, etc. You can find image use price calculators at major stock agencies like Getty. Without much more information, it is impossible to help you calculate fair value.

-Scott

[Albert Street]

They will be full resolution digital files. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by territory and length of time.

[Albert Street]

Anybody else have any input?

[sspellman]

Albert-

Territory could be a state, country or worldwide. Length of time would be the amount of time that the company would have permission to use the image. The value of an image to be used in a communit newspaper print ad once would be much different from a world wide print and TV campaign for 5 years. The details are important, and you need to know them before you make the sale.

-Scott

[DarrenL]

Before you can work out a price you need to know exactly how it will be used, bill board, poster, flyer, magazine, tv advert, newspaper, internal company magazine. From this you can work out what size it will be used, 1/4 page, 1/2 page, centerfold, front cover etc. You you have this then work out how many people will see it.

i.e a full front cover of a international magazine is worth more than an half page inside a small national magazine.

Darren

[MikeMcL]

do you have 5 agencies pounding at your door to buy the rights to the same images? If not, consider those prices to be good and fair.

As said, you may be short changing yourself a bit, but they are worth nothing if you don't sell them.

definately confirm the usage. if they want it for a magazine, and one month of circulation, i think your prices are in the low end of appropriate. they should jump on it.

[amfoto1]

Hi Albert,

You really need a lot more info to determine a fair price. You have to ask the client some questions before you can possibly come up with a price quote:

Is the image being used editorial or commercially (for advertising)?

If the former, your prices are reasonable, maybe even a little high if the image is used small and buried inside, or perhaps low if it's a prominent cover shot or the feature illustration for an article.

If for an ad, as you suspect, your prices are probably quite low. Just how low depends upon circulation & distribution, frequency the ad will appear, use in multiple (different) ads, size the image will be used, if they want industry-exclusive use, if they want rights to re-use it in the near future that are as yet undefined, and possibly more. Of course, this all assumes you have a model release from the rider(s) if they are recognizable, which would be prerequisite to any commercial usage of the image.

For use one-time use in a small ad in a single magazine of moderate circulation, you might be talking $500. For more extensive, multiple use (which is more likely, repetition if one of the mantras of effective advertising) in a much larger ad, multiple magazines of significant circulation, you might be talking about $2000-5000.

Generally speaking, commercial usage of images can be expected to bring 5X or 10X the fee that the same image would bring for editorial usage. But, even this is only a rough estimate.

George Lepp, who mostly shoots wildlife and nature, cites ones image that he sold for $250 for use in a textbook, and licensed for $24,000 to Kodak for an international ad campaign.

Once you have more details exactly how they want to use your image, a book entitled "Pricing Photography" might be the best $20 you ever invest. It only gives you guidelines, but has a lot of details and even provides sample forms for image licensing. Note the section in there about "buy out of all rights", which is something many photo buyers seem to ask for at the opening of negotiations, and most photographers either try to avoid entirely or may charge a six figure fee for!

[Albert Street]

Thanks for all the replies guys, you gave me a lot of good information.