Licensing Custom Images - Commercial Photography

I'm curious. I've done a lot of reading, and it appears most commercial photographers charge a day rate fee, and then license the images.

So I've been asked to shoot some hotel rooms. Its a good sized company. The images are for use on a website and possibly some brochures.

To simplify things, lets say they ask for shots of 5 different hotel rooms, and they choose 10 images they like. Assuming they want 1000pixel long edge images, how do you price out the licensing fee for an annual license?

Or - do you price these shoots another way. The images, other than to the customer are useless to me. So how do you maximize your return on the shoot? I don't even have an order of magnitude for licensing fees. It appears a royalty free license with Getty is approximately $240 for an image like that. That seems excessive, but I've never worked in this corporate financial realm before.

I don't want to sell myself short, but I'm also building a relationship with a lot of earning potential.

I'm in NY State, USA.

my 2 cents...

Hotel room shots are the kind of thing they will shoot once and likely not change for years and years (until they do a makeover of the rooms). They are a bit different than other commercial stuff that can get dated quicker. So you should be looking at a longer term for a license.

Here is what Fotoquote says at 100% rate scale (which is the best rate you could hope for)

For a Local Market, Medium size Web image for 5 years + $679US. But as you saw from Getty the RF price is much less.

I would likely be in the $100 range for RF image (for my market), plus my my time & expenses to shoot the images (likely a day to shoot and edit - so about $1000). Total for 10 images shot, edited and RF license = $2k.

I actually shoot for few hotels, My deal is very simple...

All expenses - room, travel - I can feed myself, but most of the time hotels offer food from the hotel for free... I don't eat it anyway

Then I price them for a job $300 for single things like: Pictures of Room, next $300 Pictures for Atrium, next $300 Picture of Meeting/business area.. then if they pay you can give them deal like: I'll shoot gym for free or half price...

each of the priced job in hotel is getting 3 pictures with 1 year usage license, additional pictures is $100 and here also you can work a deal I - if I shoot for few days - Offer 10 pictures for $500 there was no hotel which would refuse this offer

this way you make from one job: let say 300+300+300 = 900 then extra package $500 = $1400 not a bad paycheck for usually one day of work... Editing is included of course I don't charge extra.

Then you can offer extra usage license for $500 for the 2nd year and then I offer $200 for 3rd,4th and 5th... I do not offer more than 5 years

Good Job and have fun !

I'm so glad I found this thread! I don't get commercial jobs very often, but they do come up. Is there a way to find these market numbers without having to purchase software, like fotoquote, or blink bid? I don't have enough jobs to really justify the purchase at this time. What did people do before software? Is there another way to reach an estimate, even if it means I'm spending a bit more time on the estimate?

Thanks.