blurry_image wrote in post #13454866
Maybe they only paid a sitting fee to cover time and talent of photographer ?
How many images are you putting on this free cd? If you shoot 200-300 images are you giving them all the images? Raw or jpgs? Are you going to edit every image or do something silly like give them unedited images that might make you look bad if they put them online? What usage do they get with the images on cd?
I am not being a dick, I really would like to know what you all do because
once those images are gone so are lots of ways to make money off that client. Personally I would never give away unedited images and I would not want to edit "stinker" images or those not worthy of printing/selling, you know? Too much time.
How much do you suggest he sells this cd with images for?
Interesting topic...
Times are changing. Back when I was doing photography for an income (20 odd years ago) reprint orders were a big factor. Nowadays this is less so, and clients want digital images as that is how they tend to view them. This doesn't mean that they won't want a couple of prints to hang on the wall, but big reprint orders are not as common as they used to be.
You say that once the images are handed over on disc, so are lots of ways to make extra money from the client and I fully understand where you are coming from. However, as most clients want a disc these days, NOT offering a disc means that you will make nothing from them at all, as they will go to someone who does. You make up the difference by building the reprint order money into the package. I used to charge around £400 for a wedding and would expect to get around £250 - £400 in orders for reprints, duplicate albums etc. (remember this was a long time ago, that would be a lot more today). After paying for getting the reprints etc. done I would expect to make £200 plus in additional profit from a typical wedding.
Now, if I was offering a disc, I would assume that it would get copied and passed around, so relatives no longer need prints etc. However, I would simply charge (based still on those old prices) £600 for a wedding package to include an album and a disc. The disc would contain all the good images (the duplicates with blinks etc., or anything else I was unhappy with, would not be included). They wouldn't be at full resolution, they are intended for digital viewing so only need be sized for that, say 2000 pixels on the long side. I would also do a batch resize for facebook sized images to put on the web. I would do basic editing on them, but no retouching, that doesn't take too long to do, if you get things right at the shooting stage. OK, I would be unlikely to get a big reprint order, but that's OK as the profit that would have made was built into the package price, so I would still make the same profit. Naturally, the album shots would be fully retouched etc.
As I say, this is academic for me as I no longer shoot for money. I get the impression that most wedding photographers give about half the images on the disc, as jpegs with basic batch processing, and maybe a few individual tweaks done to odd shots. A studio session with the 200-300 shots you mention might result in 50-60 on the disc, as many will be near duplicates. You do not need to edit the bad shots, you simply bin them as always, nor do you need to give unedited images as you can quite quickly batch process for most of the work (assuming that your shooting was consistent).
Giving a disc isn't the ideal answer for many photographers, I am sure we would all like to hang onto all digital copies and just sell prints. However, the clients these days want discs and you have to provide what the client wants. If 4 out of 5 enquirers want a disc, you have the option of providing a disc and getting 5 clients or not providing a disc and getting one client. You would need one heck of a reprint order from that one client to cover the lost income from the four who went elsewhere.
As with many businesses, times change and you have to adapt or die.
