How much to charge a local mag to use a photo for an ad?

I snapped some shots at a local grand opening party for this little local magazine, and one advertiser in the magazine would like to use one of my shots in an advertisement inside the magazine. So im wondering how much i should charge for the shot? As I move forward in my career as a photographer I know I need to start charging for photos and rights of useage. The mag is prolly only 40,000 distributed right now in central FL area.

Thanks,
JTP

You really need to buy the book "Pricing Photography". It's available from Amazon.com and elsewhere. You will use it repeatedly, I'm sure. Just keep in mind that it's simply a guideline or a starting point, you'll end up charging whatever you can settle on via negotiations with the client. There are other books on this topic, too, as well as some that also provide example of imaging licenses.

To come up with an initial asking price for this image you also need to know how large the ad will be.

Referencing my older copy of the above book, basic pricing (for circulation under 100K) is:

1/4 page: $700-850.
1/2 page: $900-1200
Full page: $1000-1500
Back cover: $3000-4000

Now, this is for one insertion in this one publication. You might adjust prices downward a bit due to the smaller circulation (40K, above prices are based upon 100K).

Any additional insertions of the ad with the same photo would be at a somewhat reduced cost per issue, varies depending upon the total number of insertions. A two page spread using your photo would not necessarily double the above amounts.

Other rights they might ask for - which would add to the cost - are: reuse after one year, exclusive use, unlimited use or a buyout of all rights, or some combination of these.

You could also try http://www.asmp.org/ . I haven't been to their site in awhile but they used to have a guide for what to charge.

A national magazine could generate those prices at that circulation rate, but I don't believe a regional magazine could. Based on what I see, about half that shown seems more in-line with pricing I've seen.

FotoQuote is a good resource that is based on historical data, and gives you a range of prices for all sorts of assignments, editorial, advertising, and corporate scenarios. You can also customize it to better match your market and own pricing methods.

Another good resource to use for pricing information is Getty, Workbook Stock, or other larger agencies that sell to advertising markets. You can sign up as a buyer and price out similar images in the same markets and use that as a basis for your usage.

sfaust wrote in post #5385593
A national magazine could generate those prices at that circulation rate, but I don't believe a regional magazine could. Based on what I see, about half that shown seems more in-line with pricing I've seen.

Actually, the quoted figures are stock prices for local, consumer magazines, as described by the OP. Not regional, and not national.

This info is drawn from "Pricing Photography" by Michael Heron, et al, which is based upon surveys of photographers.

However, your point is a very good one. Prices vary a lot by location and for many reasons; the info I provided is from an older source (2002) and there has been downward pressures on stock prices in the past 5 or 6 years; and in this instance the OP is dealing with a magazine that has considerably smaller circulation (40K compared to "up to 100K" from the quoted figures).

All this is why the above figures can really only be used as a starting point, and ultimately the price will be whatever the buyer and the seller can agree upon in their negotiations.

Yes, Fotoquote is another way to go. Or, yes, do your own survey of some of the traditional stock agencies. Another software that's available is PhotoByte. I've just installed a free trial of this s'ware and am trying to get familiar with it. (Note: ASMP doesn't seem to have a pricing module on their site any longer. Neither does PPA. But, I found a link to PhotoByte and some others, at one or the other of these orgs' sites.)

In the end, I think it's fair to say that any pricing method(s) you choose to use can only provide you with a starting point for negotiations.

Alan, I hope you have better success with PhotoByte than I did. I really wanted to use the software because I liked many of the functions and features. But after really trying hard to make it work, I dumped it for FotoBiz and BlinkBid. I just found PhotoByte very counter intuitive to use, plenty of holes here and there, no plan to fix or update the software by the author, and he has all but abandoned it. I didn't want to use that as a basis for managing my business into the future.

The combination of FotoBiz (with FotoQuote), and BlinkBid works very well for me so far. Very intuitive, not as feature rich, but it all works and works well, and the authors are behind the software and making updates. BlinkBid is also under development to integrate with QuickBooks which will be a very nice feature since I run the accounting through it.

I agree that any pricing data researched is only a starting point. One of the things that I did to try to make the data more palatable was to compare pricing at the major stock agencies, FotoQuote, ASMP, EP, and local data and information gleaned, and then use the tools in FotoQuote to adjust its database to match the average of those prices. Now I have a reasonable database of 'average pricing', which I can then adjust based on the client, project, local market, and so on. Its given me the confidence to know that my pricing is at least reasonable, and enable me to stand behind it. FotoQuote has ways to modify the pricing data, so it makes it fairly easy to adjust as needed.

The Editorial Photographers site has historical data as well, and tied to specific magazines/publishers. They also have some good data on the contracts being offered to photographers, both good and bad. Its another resource that unfortunately isn't as up to date as I would like, but still contains good data for making those pricing and contract decisions.