what to charge? company headshots

So a company wants to hire you for head shots for their office wall. What do you charge? What about $100 an hour and $25 each? They want all the pictures on a cd with full printing rights. If they want all rights to the pictures, what about $800 for that part?

Five figures easily for 'all rights, forever.'

It just doesn't work that way.

I charge $220 per head sans licensing, which they can purchase accordingly.

Figure out exactly WHAT they want to use the images for, and we can better help you.

They could theoretically take one of those headshots and put it on the side of a 747, in a national ad campaign, and you wouldn't see a penny more.

It's all about licensing with corporate. The bigger the figure, the more it cost. He more the photo will be seen, the more it cost. I would never allow full rights unless it's a ton of money. Say $20k

pbisfun wrote in post #12379941
So a company wants to hire you for head shots for their office wall. What do you charge? What about $100 an hour and $25 each? They want all the pictures on a cd with full printing rights. If they want all rights to the pictures, what about $800 for that part?

First, forget the "dollar per hour" in terms of your billing. It's a factor of your fee computation, but not part of your billing.

If I'm going on location for such work, my billing is based on how many half-days I'm going to spend there, with one half-day being the minimum. A location job, all told: Checking gear, selecting gear, packing, traveling, unpacking, re-packing, traveling, unpacking, re-checking...I never count that as anything less than half a day for even the simplest jobs. Usually, these are half-day jobs.

I'm in a small midwestern town and my clients are small and medium businesses. My daily rate is $500 per half day and that covers from one to five commercial headshots delivered on a disc, all with one setup. Using a laptop, we'll select the finished image (singular) of each person after each is taken, I'll do moderate retouching (nothing like my regular level of "comprehensive" portait retouching), and at the end of the job, I'll burn the DVD, deliver the invoice, and we're done.

There is an additional per-pers fee for additional persons over five, with volume price breaks for each additional five persons. So it's a quite steep $500 for one person if they really want me to schlep to their site just to shoot one person, but it drops down to a very reasonable $40 per person if they want 20 people with the same set-up. Changes in setup are $50 each new setup.

This buys them an exclusive perpetual license for everything except wall portraits, television, billboard, and packaging...those licenses are extra. I don't place a time limit on it because realistically they need to be updated every couple of years anyway. Most of my commercial clients get these updated annually.

Pricing for wall portraits follow my non-commercial wall portrait pricing scheme, even if the wall portaits are intended for offices. They're still going to involve the same level of detail and work as the non-commercial wall portraits, which is considerable more than headshots get.

I too, am in a similar situation. Before I bought the company I worked for, we charged $250 per hour and that was it. I'm positive we lost thousands of dollars on commercial work and since I'm the new boss, things definitely need to change!

Someone told me that charging hourly for commercial work isn't smart. It makes sense now that I understand. Why be paid less if you get the shoot done quickly opposed to an amateur who takes twice as long and gets paid 2x more than you?

I'm still struggling to come up with a solid pricing structure but hopefully someone will chime in with something better. I was thinking about charging this for headshots:

$200-$250 location fee (initial fee may be waived if shot in studio)
$50 per head
$25 per hour for retouching
Usage fees are determined on end output

I like to use these websites to determine what to charge for licensing:
http://www.d-65.com …pherresource/pr​icing.html
http://photographersin​dex.com/stockprice.htm
www.gettyimages.com (great price calculator but it seems a lil' steep)
www.istock.com

It's up to you to figure out what the market in your area will bear when it comes to licensing fees. If you charge too much, you might end up losing the client. Then again, it helps filter out those who aren't willing to work with legitimate photographers.

Hope this helps and maybe someone will give better advice than me ...actually, I'm hoping someone will!!

^^^ why wave the studio fee? It cost money to own and maintain a studio, charge for it like a rental. Technically if you aren't using it, someone else can be (putting money in your pocket).

Staszek wrote in post #12385262
^^^ why wave the studio fee? It cost money to own and maintain a studio, charge for it like a rental. Technically if you aren't using it, someone else can be (putting money in your pocket).

It's not waiving a studio fee, it's not charging a location fee.

The overhead of maintaining the studio should be built into the basic pricing structure. Every job should help pay its percentage of the studio overhead--even the on-location jobs. The extra cost of going on location should be on top of that.

RDKirk wrote in post #12385757
It's not waiving a studio fee, it's not charging a location fee.

The overhead of maintaining the studio should be built into the basic pricing structure. Every job should help pay its percentage of the studio overhead--even the on-location jobs. The extra cost of going on location should be on top of that.

I see what you did there.

RDKirk wrote in post #12385757
It's not waiving a studio fee, it's not charging a location fee.

The overhead of maintaining the studio should be built into the basic pricing structure. Every job should help pay its percentage of the studio overhead--even the on-location jobs. The extra cost of going on location should be on top of that.

So you're saying have a production fee as well as an on location fee? I suppose in order for me to pick up my camera, there will be an initial $200 + $100 if it's on location?

EOSBoy wrote in post #12388937
So you're saying have a production fee as well as an on location fee? I suppose in order for me to pick up my camera, there will be an initial $200 + $100 if it's on location?

I'm saying that every job should bear a portion of your overhead. You only have so many hours in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year, and only a small proportion of your total available hours are actually "billable" hours. That's a limit on the number of jobs you can do, and it may be even less than that. Say, you're exclusively a wedding photographer--weddings don't normally occur every day of the week and they're largely seasonal, again, limitations on how many jobs you can do.

Your overhead costs are relatively fixed--lease or mortgage on studio space does not change from month to month. So you determine how many jobs you're probably do during the year--say, 35 weddings if you're really busy. Part of each wedding fee should include 1/35th of your annual overhead.

That does not change, even if the actual "cost of sales" for a particular job changes. Say, one is a destination wedding with wildly different total costs from your usual wedding. It should still carry 1/35th of your overhead.

Paying for part of your overhead should be the first part of the pricing in every job. Every job has to carry part of the basic cost of staying in business, and you need to have that built in and identified as such in your pricing calculations...that's one of the ways you know from month to month whether you're actually still in business or in the process of going out of business.

RDKirk wrote in post #12389763
I'm saying that every job should bear a portion of your overhead. You only have so many hours in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year, and only a small proportion of your total available hours are actually "billable" hours. That's a limit on the number of jobs you can do, and it may be even less than that. Say, you're exclusively a wedding photographer--weddings don't normally occur every day of the week and they're largely seasonal, again, limitations on how many jobs you can do.

Your overhead costs are relatively fixed--lease or mortgage on studio space does not change from month to month. So you determine how many jobs you're probably do during the year--say, 35 weddings if you're really busy. Part of each wedding fee should include 1/35th of your annual overhead.

That does not change, even if the actual "cost of sales" for a particular job changes. Say, one is a destination wedding with wildly different total costs from your usual wedding. It should still carry 1/35th of your overhead.

Paying for part of your overhead should be the first part of the pricing in every job. Every job has to carry part of the basic cost of staying in business, and you need to have that built in and identified as such in your pricing calculations...that's one of the ways you know from month to month whether you're actually still in business or in the process of going out of business.

Thanks for the clarification. I've set my wedding prices to reflect the minimum amount of $1,600 that I need to make to pay for overhead each month. I've never heard of the 1/35th equation but I'll look into it more.

With that equation in mind, it comes down to $295. Does that mean I need to incorporate a studio usage or location fee of $295? Afterwards, the rest of the fees would take use of creative fees, risk, per image taken and usage? I wish there was a chart out there that listed all necessary list items that need to be charged!

Luckily, I just started reading a book--Best Business Practices for Photographers so maybe I'll get more clarity after reading it.

No, no, that was just an example figure I threw out if, for example, you expected to shoot 35 weddings during the year.

The basic principle is that you have "cost of sales"--which is your expense to complete a particular job--and overhead, which is the annual expenses you have to meet to stay in business. You also have to estimate how many jobs you are likely to have in a year (the example I used was 35 weddings per year) and use that number as the fraction of your annual overhead that each job must carry. Every job has to pay its fraction of your annual overhead.

Look for this book:

Richard Weisgrau, Victor Perlman, "Licensing Photography"
Allworth Press NY - 2006 - ISBN: 1581154364 - 208 pages

Best gift I ever got!

RDKirk wrote in post #12395859
No, no, that was just an example figure I threw out if, for example, you expected to shoot 35 weddings during the year.

The basic principle is that you have "cost of sales"--which is your expense to complete a particular job--and overhead, which is the annual expenses you have to meet to stay in business. You also have to estimate how many jobs you are likely to have in a year (the example I used was 35 weddings per year) and use that number as the fraction of your annual overhead that each job must carry. Every job has to pay its fraction of your annual overhead.

Ah, duh! Thanks for that. I had already figured the cost of doing business which then dictates the amount I should be making each day, week or month. I haven't taken the amount of each shoot into thought, though since it's so unpredictable.

The biggest issue I have is pricing for commercial work since there are so many factors in determining the estimate. Since I'm already in business, it's tough going about doing commercial shoots knowing I could be making a lot more if I had a solid plan. Luckily for us, there are good books and people like you who make life a lot easier

I apologize for the hijack!

One more thing, is there a sort of check list that you apply to commercial shoots? Take the OP's original question. How would you personally charge a client looking for company headshots? What would determine your estimate?

Would you charge an on location fee, creative fee, per head fee, usage fee and post process fee?

I think we'd all love to see a sample estimate. If anyone here can toss one together, I'll give you 50 e-high fives.

Damn, they stuck it too me, i did all of my companies for free. well my wage,