School Photography

Hello I have a school contacting me for want to be there photographer for the whole year. My first issue is they are wanting 40% of all gross sales made by sales of the pictures of students that are taken for yearbook and things like this. To me 40% is excessively high. How am I going to make any money at that high? Is that the norm? I wouldn't mind say 15% but 40% to go back to the school that is state funded and doesn't need money to begin with. What have you guys ran into.

This just makes school photos expensive.

If you normally charge $10 for a product you will have to charge $17 in order to give the school their 40% and maintain your profit or charge $14.20 to give you the $8.50 that you say you would be happy with.

To be on the safe side I'd work on increasing your prices by 50% and giving the school 40% of that new figure.

You could of course try and negotiate a lower rate because the 50% increase may make your prices uncompetitive - then again if they are making you an exclusive photographer and giving you access to events where you will be the only photographer price may less of an issue as you would be the only game in town.

Although in these circumstances you need to be sure how they will stop mom and pop from using their own cameras / camera phones etc.

The normal rate of return to schools for pictures is between 35 - 45% depending on if the company is trying to get the school away from another company or not. Normally they will offer a higher amount for the first three years. That is for the normal package of "school pictures". Many school picture companies will also write into the high school contract to shoot: groups, several activities, several sport events, Homecoming, and in some cases Prom into their contract. Unless you are going to get some type of "exclusive" coverage you will be hard pressed to make many sales from normal sports and school events.

Years back I was an elementary school principal and the 40% profits from the sale of school pictures was the only source of funding that I had for school programs. To bring the Center of Science and Industry on Wheels to our school cost $1,500 and state funds could not be used for this type of activity. All of the money went to the district treasurer so it was not a "slush fund" that a principal could just spend. We had to have a listing of activities that the funding would be used for during the year and that had to be approved by the Board of Education. Don't know if it is the same in Arkansas or not. But I do know that if it had not been for the profits from the sale of school pictures, there would have been no enrichment activities happening.