Do you give discounts AT ALL?

Slightly different question, and don't want to hi-jack the friends/family freebie threads.

Do you ever give discounts... not to family and/or friends, but to regular paying repeat customers? Or, customers that you know give you great word-of-mouth advertising and send new customers your way?

Just curious.

Yes.

Certainly, though not an across-the-board permanent rate, just on certain orders, to say "Thanks for your custom"

TJ

I charged a day rate for shooting of $650 30 years ago for 10 hours (from my door back to my door) & included 50 "Free" miles. (That's how much I hate paperwork & I'm not going to nickel & dime a client anyway).
For a good client who's in a budget bind, I'd offer an (infrequent) 1/2 day rate. Keep in mind that the first time you cut your prices for someone, everyone else will hear about it & it will soon become your "Normal" rate.

Rather than cut my day rate, I might be more flexible in charging for the license of rights for a particular image.

On large event shoots I depend on print sales and I offer 20% off for the first week of print orders. When there is a deadline people tend to order more than if there is not. And a discount deadline seems to generate a lot of sales.

Of course this is different than a standard hire-to-shoot job. For those I typically do not offer discounts unless it's the slow season. Then I might offer more incentives than discounts. For example, a $75 sitting fee for an hour, but then give them $75 voucher for my site for print sales. They see this as a big savings, but in reality it costs me very little to do.

I steeply discount additional prints of the same image.

cdifoto wrote in post #11456277
I steeply discount additional prints of the same image.

I see this as a common practice. Many photographers offer 'package' deals of many different sizes of the same image and price it cheaper than if the prints were ordered individually, but it must be of the same image. Am I missing something... I have never had a lab charge me less for multiples of the same image.... or more for different images. I get the up-sale part of selling packages. I sell them as well. But I don't see how it is cheaper for the same image vs different... ?

Yes, for repeat long term clients.

Voaky999 wrote in post #11456591
Yes, for repeat long term clients.

same.

also read this: http://www.tofurious.c​om …ow-to-handle-discounters/

Dermit wrote in post #11456558
I see this as a common practice. Many photographers offer 'package' deals of many different sizes of the same image and price it cheaper than if the prints were ordered individually, but it must be of the same image. Am I missing something... I have never had a lab charge me less for multiples of the same image.... or more for different images. I get the up-sale part of selling packages. I sell them as well. But I don't see how it is cheaper for the same image vs different... ?

Because you only process that image once.

KhanhD wrote in post #11458006
Because you only process that image once.

Ah, I see this a fit for some types of shoots then, makes sense. For event shooting if it's on my site and for sale what they see is what they get. All the images are already generally processed. Lightroom general. So once they are bought for the most part the image gets sent to the lab with no further processing.

But when I do portrait sessions I can see now why. Yes, I do sometimes a lot of post processing especially for head shots. So this would make sense. I guess I don't get a lot of same image high volume orders for these types of shoots.

A different rant I have is when youre selling gear and your friends want it for 25% off asking price.

I don't get many repeat customers, in weddings, but I do tend to give free prints if someone makes a big order or comes in for a portrait session. I only tend to do it with bigger orders.

tim wrote in post #11458719
I don't get many repeat customers, in weddings, but I do tend to give free prints if someone makes a big order or comes in for a portrait session. I only tend to do it with bigger orders.

The cursed repeat wedding photographer. Would make a good movie.