How to charge?

[delmama]

I am just starting out and i'm doing most of my shoots with family and friends of friends of friends without advertising. I was doing free sessions for some of my close friends but I want to start charging, I don't want to be very cheap because it is time consuming and I am a stay at home mom of 3 under 3 so I dont want to take any of their time, this is something I am doing on my spare time until my kids are a little older, here are a couple of shots that I made so you know what type of work I do.

I have some Christmas photoshoots coming up as well as 3 newborn and 1 maternity and I have no idea how much to charge.

Thanks.

[SouthernImages]

The first thing to do is research your local market. It shouldn't be too difficult to find some prices on local photographer's web sites, especially for portrait sessions.
Once you have a price range, you want to price yourself in the middle.

There is a number of different schools on actual pricing:
- Do you charge a session fee?
- Do you offer "digital negatives" and if so, for how much?
- What size do you want to promote? small or large?
- Do you want to do online ordering?

There is no right or wrong answer to these questions.

Personally, I don't charge a session fee, but I require a prepaid minimum order (with full money back guarantee). This might not work for most people.

I highly recommend getting the Photographer's Pricing Guide (http://www.stacyreeves.com/photographers-pricing-guide/). Especially if you want your photography to be more than a hobby.

Here is the magic formula to price your photographs: (Your Photo Costs + Profit Wanted) * (business cost factor)
Photo Costs = cost to print the photograph, expenses (gas, etc..), your time to retouch...
Profit Wanted = how many $ do you want to put in your pocket for this
Cost Factor: 25% for taxes (you do report this income right?), licenses, insurance, etc... Cost of doing Business. This cost factor is usually around 1.5

Here is an example:
It costs you $2 to do a 4x6: $0.50 to print, 10 minutes to process, etc...
You would like to put $2 in your pocket
If you use online ordering, and they take 20% in various fees, you would also have to account for that!
You would charge (2 + 2) * (1.5 + 0.2(online fee)) = $7


IF you don't charge a session fee, my humble opinion is that this is not enough!
If you charge a session fee, this might be reasonable.

[delmama]

great thanks!