CD of a player

I do photo at my university. I have a parent asking for about 45 photos of their son. However they want a DVD of it. Curious how much would you guys charge a parent for a DVD of 45 shots of High rez photo edited on a dvd?
I was thinking around 200$ but i don't know if that too high?

$40 per image for full size files from me, no matter how many they buy but would like to change that so the more you buy the more discount you get. For that many, I'd say minimum of $250-300 range.

40 bucks is a good price per single edited image. they'll soon cut down their requested numbers of pics though. You could tell them you do not sell digital images, or, if 40 bucks is too steep for them, you could sell them individual prints. in the 10-20 dollar range.

You may not be conscious of it, but you're diminishing the value of the product based on the fact that it's on a CD rather than prints...and you expect the client to feel the same way.

Well, you're right--they won't want to spend anywhere near as much on a CD of 45 images as they would for, say, 45 8x10 prints. In fact, they would not have even asked for 45 8x10 prints without already realizing that it would be expensive.

But from your business point of view, editing 45 images (to whatever extent you edit your images) represents 100% of the same labor up to the point that you either burn a disk or upload images to a lab...and that represents 90% of the total cost of sales to you.

Those aren't arbitrary numbers--in my business, I would still have to charge for a CD of images 90% of what I'd charge to deliver 8x10 prints of those same images in order to put the same amount of money into my personal checking account. Even more easily than I can burn and package a disc, I can upload images to my lab and have a box of prints drop-shipped to the client...the only difference in cost is the printing, and that's only another 10% of the total.

The problem: People don't value CDs for personal commission work, regardless of the images on them (it's not the same circumstance for commercial work--that's a wholly different ballgame). People expect to spend maybe only 10-20% for a CD of what they'd expect to spend for an equal number of 8x10 prints (and let's not forget that a CD of high-res images can produce much better than an 8x10).

That's the main thing that sucks about selling digital images without a mandatory print package.

I always approach this question by first asking myself what I need to have for an average sale to sustain my business. Once I have that number it easy to figure out the DVD or cd price.

RDKirk wrote in post #11388081
You may not be conscious of it, but you're diminishing the value of the product based on the fact that it's on a CD rather than prints...and you expect the client to feel the same way.

Well, you're right--they won't want to spend anywhere near as much on a CD of 45 images as they would for, say, 45 8x10 prints. In fact, they would not have even asked for 45 8x10 prints without already realizing that it would be expensive.

But from your business point of view, editing 45 images (to whatever extent you edit your images) represents 100% of the same labor up to the point that you either burn a disk or upload images to a lab...and that represents 90% of the total cost of sales to you.

Those aren't arbitrary numbers--in my business, I would still have to charge for a CD of images 90% of what I'd charge to deliver 8x10 prints of those same images in order to put the same amount of money into my personal checking account. Even more easily than I can burn and package a disc, I can upload images to my lab and have a box of prints drop-shipped to the client...the only difference in cost is the printing, and that's only another 10% of the total.

The problem: People don't value CDs for personal commission work, regardless of the images on them (it's not the same circumstance for commercial work--that's a wholly different ballgame). People expect to spend maybe only 10-20% for a CD of what they'd expect to spend for an equal number of 8x10 prints (and let's not forget that a CD of high-res images can produce much better than an 8x10).

That's the main thing that sucks about selling digital images without a mandatory print package.

Good points, reminded me of a few phone calls I've received of how a parent wanted every single image buy one by one digital online for $40/each it'd be hundreds and sometimes over a thousand. They all wanted to pay in the 10-20% range and just had to say no, or if it was a message not even reply because it's not worth it.

One thing I never get are these people who sell digital files for say $5-20 and then sell prints at $15-20. My game fee starts in the $250 range at a minimum, if someone paid me to go shoot a game and get them all on disc that's where we start (depends on rights transferred, on what they expect to do with the images, etc). So, if someone wanted to come along and just pick and choose from that game, that's where we start to if bulk is something to do/look at. It's a double edge sword, I've had print orders over $250 from individuals numerous times - so that almost makes you not want to give a "break" on digital files.

Personally, I don't even "sell" digital files for private-commission clients. If they buy a certain amount of prints, I give them the files as a freebie.

I do expect that when 30x40 digital picture frames drop to $300 or so, people might be willing to spend as much for an image as they will now for a 30x40 print.

In fact, some wedding photographers are starting to market digital albums sold in iPads--the iPad itself with the album images already loaded is part of the sales package. It remains to be seen if that's a real seller, but obviously their wedding packages have to be substantial enough that the cost of the iPad is a relatively inconsiderable part of the total cost.