No session fee, per se. A good idea?

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and the topic of no session fees came up and it got me thinking:

Don't charge a session fee, per se. Instead, collect a retainer fee of $XXX when booking a session and then let clients use that amount towards their print purchase after the session. Does anyone around here use a system like that and find it successful?

I would think your "retainer" would have to be pretty high to truly cover all expenses. That or your print costs would have be to be really high. Either way, I would think customer would want to know exactly how much they could order based on the retainer.

From a customer stand point my wife strongly dislikes this model. I run most of our business moves past a bunch of her friends as they tend to by our market.

rivas8409 wrote in post #17145530
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and the topic of no session fees came up and it got me thinking:

Don't charge a session fee, per se. Instead, collect a retainer fee of $XXX when booking a session and then let clients use that amount towards their print purchase after the session. Does anyone around here use a system like that and find it successful?

I wouldn't utilize the services of someone with that model. What if I didn't like the images enough to buy $XXX worth of prints?

In we effect that model really is just a free session with a minimum print order after the shoot locked in by a partial payment for that print order in advance.

You're basically saying to people the real cost of the shoot in the minimum print order amount which they have no choice in. It says they are buying prints no matter whether they like it or not.

Littlejon Dsgn wrote in post #17146567
From a customer stand point my wife strongly dislikes this model. I run most of our business moves past a bunch of her friends as they tend to by our market.

Great idea to have a focus group... what models do they like?

chight wrote in post #17147029
Great idea to have a focus group... what models do they like?

We try and put together very simple packages. All our packages include digital images as well as that is the #1 thing we have been told our customers want. 90% of our sessions are digital only packages.

An example we just sold out on a Boudoir special, 1 hour 10 digital images for $250 additional digitals are $5 each. We make it clear we do basic retouching nothing excessive so as long as I get my lighting set up right each images takes about 10min from import to export.

We hold our focus groups every other week at our game nights that we host. All our friends expect to have a few questions bounced off them before they leave, at our last party we didnt have any questions and a couple friends said the party was not complete without a photography business discussion.