help with pricing.

it has recently been brought to my attention that i am not charging enough for my services.

i mainly work for friends and family and am starting to build client base.

i was recently charging 35 for the entire session which included goign to their loacation, doing a shoot of 2-400 images over a span of at least 2-3 hours, doing hours of editing, writing them to a disc and getting the disc to them with at least 200 pictures.

that is too much work and not enough money.

im losing money. and i need gear.

i want to start supplying prints..

i will be using walgreens.

but i have no idea of what to charge for them.

can anyone give me some advice on making enough money but not asking too much?

thanks!

easiest way is to check around your area at other photographers who you feel your images match in quality and see what they are charging...
the correct way would be to do a breakdown of how much your overhead is... insurance, gear, wear and tear, taxes and anything else a business entails then see how much work you are putting into a session and come up with an hourly figure. Then using this information you can figure out how much a print is worth for the time you have put into it.
post up some images so we can see what kind of work you do while you are at it, that will go a long way in being able to help you out...

$35 is ridiculous. Some good, experienced portrait photographers would charge $3000 for that, including some prints. Very few good portrait photographers will supply digital images, and the ones that do will probably charge per file, not per disk. $100 per file may be reasonable, or may be too low. Considering your time, your equipment, your training, your insurance, and your need to make a living, you need to charge professionally.

You can do it two ways:
- Minimal session fee (maybe $100) with prints ranging from $50 to $500
- A significant fee, maybe $750, with package or prints or a few low res digital files included.

That sounds like a lot of work for the money. But is money really what you are most focused on at this point ? That is, are you building a portfolio, gaining experience you do not have ? If you are confident about both of these then you totally need to raise your prices.

Good advice for the long term from bdpaco regarding breakdown of cost; but if you're just starting out it's irrelevant, because a developing photographer must also account for the 2 items I point out in my first paragraph.

The moment you lose focus on your bank account, you lose focus on your work.

Ah, I'm not making much on this, it's just to build my portfolio.
I can't seem to get ahead, maybe I need different work in my portfolio.
Crap, my car just broke down, there's money I don't really have or want to spend on repairs.
Car payments, insurance, gas, tires, I hope it all lasts till I have my portfolio stuffed full.

You like to take photographs! Outstanding. You want to continue taking photographs?
Where is the motivation? If you intend to make money at it when you get there, when will you be there?

Photography is Your Goal. Kewl
No money, No photography. No Money, No Photography.
???
Without money there is no camera, without camera there is no photograph.

But I just do it as a hobby. Kewl. Do you always give people your money as a hobby, cause if you do I wana come stand in the line.
???
Where you work for money, when you break down what they pay you by the hour?
You drive to work, how much does it cost you to drive there and back?
??? Car payment, Insurance, Gas, Wear and Repair per month < X amount of money.
Take X amount and divide, days in month you work at your day job. There's how much it costs you to drive to work each day. No you say, well you work to pay for the car, so yes!

How much do you make per hour when you break it down that way. Y amount of money.
--
Now you have a shoot to drive to.
Drive time, plust shoot time, process time- now you have how much time involved.
You know how much that days car expenses are, no you say. Well it cost yuo to drive to your day job. What the difference,, day job, night job ( hobby )

Ok so now we know how much for time and vehicle expence. XY
How much for the CD or Prints? Ok now you can add that in. XYY
X + Y + Y ='s how much it cost's you to just show up and shoot

Now you add in the cost of your equipment, repairs, insurance... It goes on till you list all that is involved and a cost on it, what it cost divided by how many uses you expect out of it.

If it is a hobby are you at least breaking even? If not the only person cheated is you.

This is just a pinch of how to go about figuring cost and then there's the markup, the money you can bank or spend, or reinvest in more gear.
Money may not be the goal but, lose site of it and you can't afford to reach that goal, your work will become humdrum, done every now and then.

Where's the Prize?

If you want to sell prints you better come up with a different plan than Walgreens. That's not a professional print (in fact, the Walgreens prints I have seen are awful). If you want to charge, give them something better than they can get for themselves.

well i never print. so i didnt know not to do walgreens. where do you recommend i print.. pretty much the only places around here that i know of is walmart, walgreens, officemax..what kind of sites are there.. i know of picnik and flickr

http://parttimephoto.c​om/

Seems to have some very good information--nothing new from a professional standpoint, but answers a lot of questions about how to fit "full time" professional practices into a part-time business and how-to's on making the transition from hobbyist to a profitable part-timer.

for prints you can use Millers, Mpix, Bay Photo or WHCC to name a few...all of these places do great work..

RDKirk wrote in post #11293475
http://parttimephoto.c​om/

Seems to have some very good information--nothing new from a professional standpoint, but answers a lot of questions about how to fit "full time" professional practices into a part-time business and how-to's on making the transition from hobbyist to a profitable part-timer.

Great link- thanks.

Printing FAQ: https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?p=3740438

Includes links to a few labs.