Package Pricing

I need help in this situation, Just starting to sell prints and really have no idea what to set my packages at...I was hoping some of you could post your package pricing. I shoot senior portraits, models, and family photography.

Well that's one hard question to answer. I don't know what your total costs are as to your business, do you? Plus have no idea of the quality of work your doing.

Take the amount of money you want to make and add the cost of the prints. For clients that order packages, have a small discount for them.

It always costs more to buy just one. You will make less money per images printed, but more per client.....which is the idea.

Another suggestion would be to look up the other photogs in your area and look at what their package prices are. If your work is comparable, then your prices should be as well.

This is one of those things are are best on your location and prices are different from place to place.

Ernst-Ulrich Schafer wrote in post #11240127
Plus have no idea of the quality of work your doing.

There is a link to the site in the signature.

Ernst-Ulrich Schafer wrote in post #11240127
Well that's one hard question to answer. I don't know what your total costs are as to your business, do you? Plus have no idea of the quality of work your doing.

research is your friend

TGrundvig wrote in post #11240168
Take the amount of money you want to make and add the cost of the prints. For clients that order packages, have a small discount for them.

It always costs more to buy just one. You will make less money per images printed, but more per client.....which is the idea.

Another suggestion would be to look up the other photogs in your area and look at what their package prices are. If your work is comparable, then your prices should be as well.

This is one of those things are are best on your location and prices are different from place to place.

This helps quite a bit...honestly we have been making most of our money with the on location shoot. Usually carging $300 for the session (2 photogs) and then selling individual prints or a CD for $200...the reason we sell the cd for so much is because i know o an extent that i am giving lots of money away with the cd but have no idea how to set up a package for them to buy....thats why i am stuck where i am now lol...but i have noticed oter photgs in my area, lure in clients with half of my session fee but have packages starting at $450..so they steel my business with the look of cheap pricing but then make up for it with print orders...m not hating on that...just tryin adjust my game so i can compete.

TGrundvig wrote in post #11240177
There is a link to the site in the signature.

THIS. Plus i have actually posted some new work of ours on here.

Ahhh....maybe you can offer a 'special' like half off session fee with purchase of certain packages. This way, you give them more options. Higher session fee and less for the CD, or lower session fee but you buy prints from us. Just a thought.

thanks, i actually hate selling the cd just because i know that i am giving away alot of money...i am coming up with a package plan right now and hope to post it shortly.

LNJ Photography wrote in post #11239459
I need help in this situation, Just starting to sell prints and really have no idea what to set my packages at...I was hoping some of you could post your package pricing. I shoot senior portraits, models, and family photography.

Make sure you have truly calculated all your costs of the sale, which is much more than just the prints, and should include a fee for your own labor (imagine that you have to pay an employee for those tasks and calculate that labor for the time necessary). So driving, shooting, retouching, packaging, et cetera, all involve labor costs as well as material costs. Sales taxes are part of the cost of sales.

If you have to rent equipment or venue space for that particular job, that's also part of cost of sales. The spurt of ink you use for any test prints is part of sales, as is the spurt of gasoline you use to drive to the client's home or to Starbucks for a consultation.

Obviously you're going to have to use average figures for a lot of the cost of sales amounts. For instance, you may determine that the averge driving distance for consultations for your jobs will be 10 miles and base gasoline costs and driving time on that. You may determine that your average shooting session will be an hour and the average amount you're going to spend post-processing and retouching will be an hour, and base labor costs on those numbers.

Also determine your annual overhead and divide that by the number of sessions you predict realistically being able to schedule during the year (remember that you're also not not likely to fill 40 hours a week with shooting sessions). Regular equipment maintenance (including equipment replacement that does not increase capability) is part of overhead. You may have office employees whose roles are not based on the number of sales (such as a receptionist)--those salaries are part of your overhead. Insurance, professional certs and organizational fees, business and employment taxes, mortgage, other lease fees are overhead.

The sum of those two figures represents the amount you must collect for each job just to break even. Notice that labor (whether yours or someone else's) is calculated as an expense of the job.

Then there is a small percentage of profit, which is the amount your business needs above all expenses (and, again, your own income is an expense, not taken from profit). Profit is what you plow back into the business to enlarge it, including equipment purchases that increase business capabilities (if you're a corporation with stockholders, profit would include their dividends). Multiply the sum above by the percentage of profit you think you'll need and add that.

So there you go. You now know the minimum you have to collect on each job, and you'll have to design your sales plan around that figure.

According to back-calculated figures from Professional Photographers of America, successful photographic businesses are able to keep the Cost of Sales figure no more than about 25-30% of what they charge the client. In other words, what you have to spend to make a particular sale should not average more than 30% of what the client pays you (30% for a photographer without a separate retail studio, 25% for a photographer with a separate retail studio). If it averages more than that, you need to find a way to reduce per-job expenses or increase prices.

But keep in mind that this PPA figure is also a back-calculation based on industry statistics...it's possible for a particular photographer's cost of sales to run somewhat higher if his overhead is lower than average. That 25%/30% difference for the studio already takes that particular factor into account.

What this back-calculation of statistics does indicate, very importantly, is that regardless of other factors, most successful photographers are able to keep expenses down to no more than 25% of their prices. A photographer might be squeaking a living with a higher expense-to-price ratio...but somewhere he's losing money compared to the average successful photographer.

wow thank kirk, that was a mouth full but worth the read!!!!!