Head Shot Fee

Kronie wrote in post #16175183
Look at it in this perspective:

Electrical engineer "A" is a self employed sole proprietor, his home is paid off and he doesn't have any debt. His wife who is in the same situation makes $250K a year. Engineer A is bidding on an installation job and knows there will be competition so his quote needs to be low.

Electrical engineer "B" owns a big company and employees 375 people. He has a fleet of vehicles and two warehouses and everything if financed. His company has no real cash in the bank and relies on receivables to pay for payroll and loan payments. Engineer B is bidding on the same installation job, he also knows there will be competition but can only bid so low because of overhead costs.

Obviously A can undercut B because of his financial situation. Its no different for any other profession. Lots of variables dictate your price, the least of which is what the other guy is charging. (although its nice to know)

You got that backwards. EE "B" did not get big loosing out on his bids. He knows the current cost of doing business and pirces accordingly, and gets the jobs, hence he is the "big company". Little guys try to make it all on one job, adn they never last. Come and go. I see it all the time. You even got that resoponse in this thread. "Make as much as you can". Yeah right, try that out but don't go spending all that profit in one place.

Landcruiser wrote in post #16175819
You even got that resoponse in this thread. "Make as much as you can". Yeah right, try that out but don't go spending all that profit in one place.

Just for the record, every job I've ever done, I've gotten 'as much as I could get'. And I've never done a job for less.

Landcruiser wrote in post #16175819
You got that backwards. EE "B" did not get big loosing out on his bids. He knows the current cost of doing business and pirces accordingly, and gets the jobs, hence he is the "big company". Little guys try to make it all on one job, adn they never last. Come and go. I see it all the time. You even got that resoponse in this thread. "Make as much as you can". Yeah right, try that out but don't go spending all that profit in one place.

I will take your word for it but personally when I am dealing with contractors and smaller jobs its the little guy that comes in under. Sure sometimes the larger places have better deals on materials due to volume but the labor is going to be way more because they have more overhead.

At the same time I do see your side with the make it all in this one job mentality. I have had estimates from larger companies right in the ballpark of reality for the job and the little guy estimate is 3 times more.

Holy buckets, the sniping on this post is amazing. I am not a pro photographer, nor will I be for quite some time.
But I do have a corporate job where I have to deal with costs. When I am asked by someone to take pictures, I usually try to understand their needs, from that I extrapolate my time and costs and usually come up with a figure based on that data. I know what my time is worth at my skill level. I usually go 150% on costs and then add the two together. That is where I quote people for my price. Some have said I charge too much, but others say yes on the spot. So it is probably somewhere in between that I should be charging to maximize my side income.
But I don't do this for a living, so it is not that big of a deal at the moment.

Lowner wrote in post #16175752
Almost, the differences were minimal given the size of the contracts! But even if not we would happily share details, although not the price until after the contract was awarded.

Given how alike pro togs cost base is, it should be a very simple thing to answer.

..."almost" isn't "too the penny". Lets be specific here. How big a variation are we talking about here? A dollar? A hundred dollars? A thousand dollars? Why don't you share with us your last successful bid and share with us the price of the competitors. If you are saying you could generate a multi-million dollar bid with no knowledge of any of your own business's costs/expense/local business environment I would I don't believe you. But that is exactly what you are asking us to do.

Take headshots in my region for example. I found myself asking the same question as the OP a few months ago. I already know my CODB. So I went out to the marketplace to find out what everyone else was charging. Several photographers were charging about the $130.00 range, with a sliding decreasing scale as more and more headshots were ordered. At my CODB I could be profitable at this range of prices: but only just. Others were charging $2-400: which would be more comfortable at my CODB but my product is honestly not up to those prices. One of top studios in my region was charging $45.00 for headshots: and at my CODB after taxes/expenses/petrol I would have only made about $5.00 from the shoot. How was this photographer able to get his prices so low? Well he has an outstanding reputation (and deservedly so: he is a great photographer and a great person), and has empty studio space in the middle of the CBD that he can keep filled at those prices. Other photographers on Trade-Me were only charging $20.00 for a shoot.

So I could tell the OP to charge anywhere between $20.00 and $400.00. In fact any of us could tell the OP that. But that doesn't really answer the OP's question: or do you think it would? I can't actually charge $20.00 for a headshot and make any money. I could tell the OP to charge $130.00. But that might not actually cover his CODB. But you seem to know all so why don't we ask you. Does $130.00 cover his CODB?

The OP asked us "what to charge." No one on these forums is in the postion to give him an accurate answer to that question: its not because we don't want to share (and this forum is evidence enough that you are absolutely wrong...we share information here all the time) its just that without any further information it would be irresponsible for us to throw out random figures. You wouldn't quote for a job if it would result in your company losing millions of dollars, would you? But without more information from the OP that is exactly what you are asking us to do.

You've ranted before about photographers in the Business forum. It gets tiresome. You are simply wrong. The professional photographers in this forum are extremely generous with sharing information. I sometimes spend hours on replies here helping out other photographers. I've gotten a lot of help from other photographers here. I've even shared my business plan with a couple of people on these forums. And many others here do exactly the same thing. Photographers share stuff here all the time: its the very purpose of this forum and if people didn't share the forum would have died years ago.

Charge what you can get away with!

Im trying to figure this area out myself. Ive seen people recommending:

1 - charge an hourly fee for while you are photographing
2 - charge a licensing fee for each image that is used. specify its limits so they have to pay more if they want to use it for more and/or longer.

A while back I remember somone saying they charged a 3rd fee, in the film days it would cover their film expenses, but in the digital era they still charge it even though no one else in their market was, and the clients were happy to pay it or didnt know any better. I cant remember more details though, perhaps the person that said that years ago will read this?

I think my goal will be $150 an hour, minimum 4 hour/half day. $50 a head shot which includes basic processing. Additional travel expenses are extra if they want me to travel outside 1.5 hours from where I am.

One thing I remember being recommended is when invoicing them, offer them a 10 or 20% discount if they pay within 2 weeks, your bill will get tossed to the top of the "to pay" pile. Of course adjust your pricing so your back to the regular prices after the discount.

GerryDavid wrote in post #16176750
One thing I remember being recommended is when invoicing them, offer them a 10 or 20% discount if they pay within 2 weeks, your bill will get tossed to the top of the "to pay" pile. Of course adjust your pricing so your back to the regular prices after the discount.

I don't agree with this one. You're basically saying to the client hey I charged you 20% more than I needed to or than the job was worth as I'm happy to take less money if you pay me sooner. It also sends messages that you need the cash flow.

How about having a business model that has a sufficient cash flow beforehand? Do this on every invoice over a year for a business invoicing for a total of 100k and you've lost 20k straight off the bat. A 20% impatience tax. Why not charge an interest charge for late payment? There is your incentive for them to pay on time and if they don't they invoice gets larger (write it into the contract of course). If they don't pay on time you make more money.

memoriesoftomorrow wrote in post #16176794
I don't agree with this one. You're basically saying to the client hey I charged you 20% more than I needed to or than the job was worth as I'm happy to take less money if you pay me sooner. It also sends messages that you need the cash flow.

How about having a business model that has a sufficient cash flow beforehand? Do this on every invoice over a year for a business invoicing for a total of 100k and you've lost 20k straight off the bat. A 20% impatience tax. Why not charge an interest charge for late payment? There is your incentive for them to pay on time and if they don't they invoice gets larger (write it into the contract of course). If they don't pay on time you make more money.

I dont think its legal for someone to charge a late tax, but I could be wrong. that was my thought a few years ago when I had a client order an album and take forever to pay for it *im still waiting, its 3 years, I now take payment in full before I start work to avoid this, but thats for non commercial work*.

I think its standard practice for many businesses to offer a discount to be paid quickly. Otherwise you might be waiting 6 months for them to finally get around to you.

And its not 20k lost when you wouldn't have charged that much to begin with.

Say your normal fee would have been $1000 for a project, but before talking to the client you upped your prices so they hired you on $1200. 20% is a bit much, I think it was 10% that was recommended before.

Ideally its best to be paid before hand because once they have the product in hand they are not in a rush to pay you. But from what I've heard that is not standard practice?

GerryDavid wrote in post #16176906
I dont think its legal for someone to charge a late tax, but I could be wrong.

It isn't a "late tax" in your contract you have it clearly spelled out that late payments are subject to interest charges. Your terms and conditions for payment need to take account of regulation/legislation that applies to your business/industry. You can't do something retrospectively.

And it is 20k LOST as they clients accepted the job with the original quote amounts. Which means they WERE PREPARED to pay it. They didn't agree to the work being done at the lower price originally did they?

None of this is answering the OP's question.

It is not rocket science, so come on, tell the man!

GerryDavid wrote in post #16176750
A while back I remember somone saying they charged a 3rd fee, in the film days it would cover their film expenses, but in the digital era they still charge it even though no one else in their market was, and the clients were happy to pay it or didnt know any better. I cant remember more details though, perhaps the person that said that years ago will read this?

Not entirely sure, but that may have been me. I posted about the 'digital fee' that I charge which was initially added when I switched to digital and helped do 2 things...first to pay back the initial investment I'd made in my digital equipment and secondly to help off-set the loss that I was experiencing by no longer selling film and Polaroid. Clients did and still do accept it (generally without question), and it goes hand in hand with my earlier comments about getting the most that you *can* get for a project.

Lowner wrote in post #16177289
None of this is answering the OP's question.

It is not rocket science, so come on, tell the man!

I think I understand your tag-line now. I'll be sure to ignore you in the future. You have no interest in actually helping the OP, you're just trolling.

It depends on your skills, the usage of the photo, expenses and complexity for the shoot, travel time, and deliverable. For a basic executive headshot photo shoot in less than 2 hours for commercial use in my area, I would charge around $500.

ok, i'm not a pro nor am I a moderator but I think things have gone far off topic from the OP.. If you do not have anything constructive to add to the OP I suggest you start another thread