Some want something for nothing!

This topic's been beat to death...but....have been doing this for awhile now and have gotten thicker skin over the years, but still amazed how some still think that paying $20 for a 16x20 composite poster, is too much $$....wth is wrong with people! Some don't have any appreciation or understanding for what it takes to produce this...from studio/on-location to print......now, for all of us in the business, we know, but your average consumer only sees what they have in their hands.

The problem is you understand what it takes, they understand what value they place on it. Sometimes the cost of producing a produce is more than the market will bear. At least that particular market in this case.

Is that $20 charge for a reprint, or does it cover the cost of creating it as well? Frankly, I charge more than that even for reprints of an existing collage they've already bought. And I'm in the automotive field, which forces me to charge less than portraiture photogs do.

I can't imagine why anyone would think your price is high. Holy cow.

A problem I see is that many consumers go to a Walmart, or K-Mart, or some big-box store and see a very nice scenic photo, sometimes matted and framed, in the 16X20 or even larger for dirt cheap. In their minds, they can't understand why we as photographers can't give them the same size photo print for the same price. What they don't understand (at least consciensiously) is that a single photo, printed on an offset press, making thousands (if not tens of thousands) of copies, will be just pennies in production costs. They just don't connect the cost of a custom or even one-of-a-kind print. In their mind, the "why can't you do it for me at the Walmart price" question is their only perspective . . .

This is for the cost of my time behind a computer, shooting it, creating it and developing. I use a vendor because I don't print them in-house. The team is also provided with a package form to order T&I photos. I've kicked the idea around to somehow get the cost down, but I'd like to make at least a small profit...either that or just provide the posters for free and write it off in the taxes....any advice? What would anyone else do?

Totally agree with CraigPatterson and Golfecho....my skin can't be thick enough sometimes!

DD974 wrote in post #15163352
This is for the cost of my time behind a computer, shooting it, creating it and developing. I use a vendor because I don't print them in-house.

Yikes. That's your front-to-back price for a composite print? Even if you get a hundred of them from one school, you've got to be losing money. Either that, or you're working for a penny an hour. I'm pretty familiar with NW Pennsylvania, so I know your market won't be too willing to pay metro prices.

Nonetheless, I feel your pain. Please don't go any lower. In fact, you should go higher. Nice composite, too. If she was my daughter, I'd be very happy with that pic.

CraigPatterson wrote in post #15163505
Yikes. That's your front-to-back price for a composite print? Even if you get a hundred of them from one school, you've got to be losing money. Either that, or you're working for a penny an hour. I'm pretty familiar with NW Pennsylvania, so I know your market won't be too willing to pay metro prices.

Nonetheless, I feel your pain. Please don't go any lower. In fact, you should go higher. Nice composite, too. If she was my daughter, I'd be very happy with that pic.

That's for a poster only...my team/individual prints on photo paper from my lab are different, but have heard rumblings that I have high prices on those, but for the most part nothing negative. In this case I'll need 19 individuals of them and can get them printed at a cost that will allow to profit about $6 each...I know, hardly worth it. I know of a competitor that gives the players the posters (which they hang on the gym wall) in return for doing the T&I shoot/orders.

DD974 wrote in post #15162936
This topic's been beat to death...but....have been doing this for awhile now and have gotten thicker skin over the years, but still amazed how some still think that paying $20 for a 16x20 composite poster, is too much $$....wth is wrong with people! Some don't have any appreciation or understanding for what it takes to produce this...from studio/on-location to print......now, for all of us in the business, we know, but your average consumer only sees what they have in their hands.

Of course they don't know or appreciate what goes into it. Unless you are selling to photographers, How could they?
There are lot of things I don't understand or appreciate in other professions and frankly, I couldn't care less. Other things I buy and am interested in people look at me like an idiot for paying what I do because THEY can't see the value in it.
Other people that can will say " Geez, you got that cheap!"

I am having a Ring made for my wife for our 20yr anniversary. IT's costing $6k and although I have picked out all the quality stones and know their worth, to me personally I may as well be throwing $6k out the window.
The ONLY value that ring will have to me is the happiness and contentment I know it will bring my wife. Her e doing as women do and showing it off and getting the oohs and ahh's is the value of the ring and the ONLY value to me. Maybe there is some in being able to show that after a rocky 10 years with health issues, finally her husband has come good and is no longer a bum.

Now the Jeweller and the gem broker could carry on about the work and effort they put into sourcing the stones and setting them etc and I couldn't care less. I have paid them for their work at the price they gave me, Wether they make money out of it or not is up to them.

Everyone will have a different value system and because some don't value what you do the way you want them to I'd say is more your problem than theirs.
Sorry if I don't appear sympathetic or am consoling you over this but I do know the frustration and I do believe the problem lies largely with yourself. Sympathy won't get you thinking or fix the problem either.

I don't know how many people are the "some " that don't appreciate the work you are putting in But if it's a few here and there, Well that's life, and if it is a significant proportion, then it's up to you to do something about it.

There is no point offering a product that you can't make profit on. Why do that? Maybe if you look deep it's an ego thing of sorts where you want to produce pretty pictures to show your skill with these things. That's fine but you can't then complain when other people don't see what you do in them of value them the same way. Maybe it's something else but in any case, If you can't profit from them, Drop the things.
It's the only smart business thing to do.

I was just saying the other day here how I never offered the real flash, expensive wedding albums. The profit in those was about 10-20% where I could make about 1000% on prints. Given there is only so much a couple will spend, Why burn a chunk of that up at 20% when I can burn a lot less at that rate and make 1000% on the rest?

I don't know your market but I do know unless you can use these things as a promotion tool in order to get in far more work where the end profit justifies all the work for a given sale, it is not viable nor smart to offer the things. It seems t me that every shooter offers something similar in that market so I think it would be hard to build value into it in the Customers eyes. Hard maybe but certainly not impossible. Sometimes just being the one guy who tells the story is enough.

Unless they do revere the product and it does hold some fascination/ importance in their minds, then you are in a very tough position. I get the impression this is an over saturated and highly competitive market. It may well be that it's just no longer a viable one. IF that's the case, the smart thing to do business wise is to find something else.

I have said that before with other things and I know it's not well liked but it is true.
Often shooters will come back and do a flip and tell you how much money they are making in the game rendering the complaint null and void in the first place or will tell you there is nothing else they can do.
If running a non profitable business is all you can do then it's time to sell up and move house to somewhere with more opportunities. There is no sympathy credits in business so you make it work or do something else.

I do know how you feel with tightarse clients wanting something for nothing. I get it every single day in my line as well. I had someone standing in front of me last week telling me my work was overly expensive because you could get a pic printed at Kmart for .60C. I told her that was like saying the ingredients in a loaf of bread only cost 25C so that's all it should cost. Pitty about the guy making it and delivering it and the Millions of dollars invested in the factory that produces it.
I told her that I did understand times were tough and if she couldn't afford the pics, there was certainly no obligation and she did not have to buy the picture if she didn't like it.

OF course the inferences in that had her pulling out the CC and buying the top package for all 3 Kids...... Still muttering under her breath mind you.

What I have done to address the problem with my work is invest in signage, mainly in the form of those roll up banners. I have put some little Cliché quotes on them like
" The type of photo not many people have in their family album" And " As a parent you don't realise how quick they grow up till it's too late" and a couple of other such quotes.

These are my own masterpieces ( or disasters) that I related to from my own experience as a parent and putting myself in the shoes of the people I am selling to. I remember thinking that the kids were always kind of the same but then you realise one day how much they have changed and how fast they grew up. That's what I'm trying to throw back to the parents I'm selling to and it seems to be working.

Another line that seems to work is to tell parents in a very casual, laid back way, " You know, that photo may not seem important now but I'm a bit further along the parent hood journey than you are. I can tell you first hand, when they are grown up a bit and you are looking for Photos to put on the slide show you are making up for their 16th or 21st birthday party, You'd pay a LOT just for the chance to go back and buy more photos of them at this age, no matter how many too many you think they have now."
Then I shut up.
I turn a lot of people around that way.

Another thing is people need to be able to justify and rationalise their purchases, Be that to husbands or wives, friends, other team members etc. You have to give them the excuse they need to buy what they most likely want but feel they have a need to Justify.

At the last Gig I did I kept having the parents tell me they liked the pics but had just spent so much on school Photos. I said do you have other school photos at home? Of course they said yes. I said do you have any other photos like this? Likewise they Didn't.
Many said it was the first time they had even seen photos like this. I said therefore, which pictures do you think you'll value more of your child in 10 years time when they are grown up and no longer look like they are today?
That worked pretty damn well.

It goes back to the ring I'm buying. The value is not in the ring in any way to me. The value is in the pleasure my wife will get from it and what it represents as a token of my love and appreciation of her. Shooters have to forget about selling bits of paper x by X size and start selling the moment they contain and get on the level of their clients buying them and what the TRUE significance to them is. IT sure as chit aint a bit of paper X by X in size with some colours on it.

This is why I say sales and business skills are soooo important in this game, like all others. Your product is way above anything I offer yet you are having difficulty shifting it at a worthwhile price. I therefore say, how much are the photography skills really worth? This case proves not much.
What I sell is kind of unique but has none of the creativity, skill and effort your work does but I sell it by the shipload and make Very good money on it and the people are asking when I'll be coming back.

Sales is EASY because you already know what 90% of them are going to use an as an objection. All you have to do is sit down, think of a killer reply and then you'll be HOPING they lay that one on you because you know if they do, you have them.
They virtually give you the questions to the test in advance. All you have to do is sit down and work out the answers.

But, failing that, like I said at the start, if you can't make money out of a product ( or a profession for that matter) There is no point in doing it.
Either work out how to make it pay or don't bother with it in the first place.


Anyway, sorry for the boring rant, I hope there is something of some value in it for someone.

DD...

Looked at your composites on your site....VERY nice job on them!

tstowe wrote in post #15169567
DD...

Looked at your composites on your site....VERY nice job on them!

Been saying for awhile how he's ahead of the curve, next year plan on adding more graphics and everything to go along with "traditional" option - and I'm couple years behind on doing so. Just adding digital memory mates a few years ago first slow (new) but now most popular.

golfecho wrote in post #15163190
A problem I see is that many consumers go to a Walmart, or K-Mart, or some big-box store and see a very nice scenic photo, sometimes matted and framed, in the 16X20 or even larger for dirt cheap. In their minds, they can't understand why we as photographers can't give them the same size photo print for the same price. What they don't understand (at least consciensiously) is that a single photo, printed on an offset press, making thousands (if not tens of thousands) of copies, will be just pennies in production costs. They just don't connect the cost of a custom or even one-of-a-kind print. In their mind, the "why can't you do it for me at the Walmart price" question is their only perspective . . .

OTOH, even at supreme Chinese-kitch importer Hobby Lobby, such a framed print can go from $150 to $250, so it's not just a matter of what they've seen in stores. Even the average consumer knows better than to think a custom job is going to cost the same as Wal-Mart.

But it's certainly true that those clients simply aren't seeing a value in the work that goes beyond the cost. It may not have enough visual impact as a work in itself--something to improve about one's craftsmanship--or the client hasn't been sold on the value proposition compared to other things she's buying.

Market, shmarket. There are people in every market that buy their kids every new model of iPhone or Nike basketball shoes. It can be as simply as convincing them that a portrait that will give pleasure for generations is worth skipping the next iPhone model.

We have to accept that as photographers our perception of an images is more "honed" than the average man on the street. To him it must seem that comparing an A2 frame that comes complete with some mass-produced paper landscape from a hardware shop and a proper A3 ish photograph is comparing like with like. I see no way of overcoming that, those people will always exist. But hopefully there are also more discerning customers, and its these we should be targeting.

DD974 wrote in post #15162936
This topic's been beat to death...but....have been doing this for awhile now and have gotten thicker skin over the years, but still amazed how some still think that paying $20 for a 16x20 composite poster, is too much $$....wth is wrong with people! Some don't have any appreciation or understanding for what it takes to produce this...from studio/on-location to print......now, for all of us in the business, we know, but your average consumer only sees what they have in their hands.

Someone will complain about your prices no matter how high or low they are. There are people who complain about the price of gas but don't hesitate to spend even more on cigarettes and/or beer every week. If anything, I think you should up the price and make it an exclusive instead of trying to get everyone to buy one. Raise the price so high that you rarely do them but when you do it's worth every second.

I'm actually baffled that you'd set the price at $20 to begin with. That's absurdly low. I mean, that's "I have no respect for this photographer" low.

DD974 wrote in post #15163583
That's for a poster only...my team/individual prints on photo paper from my lab are different

Wait. What paper are you having the poster printed on? Maybe that's the problem. If it's actually thin poster paper, I can see why people don't want to pay $20. Make it $150 and sell it as a photograph rather than a poster...the same paper as everything else.

In other words, up the quality and don't use the word "poster" ever again. You know what people think of when they think of the word "poster"? - A $4.99 roll of Justin Beiber. Yeah. Run away from that.