Let’s face it, there are many different business models out there and it’s hard to find a pricing guide that can incorporate all of them. While I don’t claim that this can do everything for everybody, there’s a few additional things I’ve included to help make it more versatile for you and how you run your photography business.
If you have a question about how to incorporate something that isn’t on this list, contact me and I’ll do my best to answer you as quickly as possible. Thanks!
Just Starting Out
Items in lists don’t apply to me
I’m just starting out
Adjusting for your experience
Other Income
Second shooting for others
Pricing other services
Other personal income
Products
Adding Portrait Sessions to Wedding Pkgs
Adding on Second Shooters
Shipping and Pricing
Numbers
Amount Needed vs Retail Price
Adjusting for PayPal and Credit Card Fees
Where to put sales tax
The items in the list don’t apply to my business. What do I do?
The items have been added as an example to help you think about things you may not have considered. Simply delete the ones that don’t apply (click on the cell and hit the “delete” key). Additionally, you can add other items that may apply to your business but that aren’t on the list. The items are for example only, so please customize it as much as you need to suit your business.
I’m just starting out and am only doing photography part time. This seems too complicated to apply to me.
Nonsense. You are choosing how much you want to make, how much you plan to work, and how much you plan to shoot, so as long as you’re realistic about how you answer those things, this guide works for you as well.
If you’re just starting out and are only looking to make enough to pay for your gear and business expenses and don’t need any additional income on top of that, enter 0 for the monthly and yearly personal expenses you want to pay for with photography money. Then only put in a reasonable number of shoots and number of hours that you plan to work. You won’t have to charge nearly as much as someone who wants to make a profit doing this, but at least you’ll know how much you need to charge to pay for your gear.
How do I adjust this to reflect my level of experience?
You need to put a lower number on the “Personal Profits” page. You’ll have lower prices that way. The bummer about just starting out is that you have a lot of expenses so most of the money you’ll be making will go right back into paying for the gear you need to run the business. Keeping realistic about your profit goals will help your prices to more accurately reflect where you feel they should be.
I second shoot for other photographers. How do I take this income into account?
On the “Personal Profit” tab, enter the amount you expect to make annually in the “Other Business Income” list (columns G & H). This assumes you don’t get to set your own prices for second shooting.
I offer other services through my business (such as graphic design or workshops). How do I determine pricing for these services as well?
If you want to determine how much to charge for these services, you can treat them as a “Type of Shoot”. You won’t enter anything on the “Personal Profit” tab in the “Other Business Income” list, but you will list it and its expenses on the “Business Expenses” tab.
Then when working on the “Time & Workload” tab, you’ll take the number of hours you need to do this service and use the calculator in column F to determine how many shooting hours it would be equivalent to. You’ll then take the number in cell F9 and enter it into row 16 as the average hours of shooting, even though it isn’t shooting-related. You can also add products to the product list and create packages just like you would for a shoot.
I have a second job that helps to pay the bills that isn’t related to my business, so I don’t need to pay for all the things you list on the “Personal Profits” tab with just photography income. What do I do?
This list should only contain the things that you want to pay for using income from your photography. If you simply want to contribute $500 a month to your household’s income, then you can delete everything in the list and just put a flat amount of $500 as a monthly contribution.
Or, you can put all your household expenses in there, and then insert the second income as a negative number (that is, put a minus sign in front of the number). This only works if the second income is less than all the other items on the list combined.
I offer an A La Carte engagement session to couples who don’t book me for their wedding as well as an engagement session add-on for a wedding package. How do I price these?
I suggest creating an engagement shoot as a “Type of Shoot” on the “Business Expenses” tab as well as an engagement shoot product on your “Products” tab.
This allows you to make sure that you’re making enough on the stand-along engagement shoot where the client is not also purchasing wedding photography, and it allows you to price it lower as an add-on to a wedding package since you’re already shooting a wedding and making profit there.
If you want these prices to be the same, simply set the “Selected Retail Price” on the “Products” tab for the engagement shoot add-on to be the same as the stand-alone engagement shoot.
How do I price a second-shooter add-on to my wedding packages?
Add this as a product on the “Products” tab. Your expenses will include your payment to the other photographer as well as any additional costs (such as extra meals, transportation, rental equipment, etc). You’ll also have to spend additional time finding a second photographer, discussions about the shoot, transferring images, culling and editing the additional photos, and so forth.
Why do I include shipping in my product costs?
You may or may not need to include shipping in your product expenses on the “Products” tab depending on how you conduct your business. If you do not charge your clients for shipping fees, then you need to take it into account in your pricing.
If you ship your product directly to the customer and charge them for the shipping fee, then you do not need to add it here. The list of things to include are simply examples to help keep you from forgetting something, but they can all be changed or modified if it doesn’t fit your business.
On the “Packages” tab, why is my “Amount Needed” (row 24) different from my “Total Retail Price”?
The amount needed does not include the cost of goods sold from the products that you’ve included in your package. The difference is simply the amount of money you’ll need to spend to deliver the products included in your package.
If you haven’t included any products and just set it up as a session fee, then your “Total Retail Cost” should match the “Amount Needed” number.
When you add products to your packages, you’re also going to have to pay to produce and deliver the products you are putting in your packages. So you can’t include the entire “Selected Retail Price” towards the “Amount Needed” or you’ll end up paying for the product out of your profits and not make as much as you need to.
How do I incorporate PayPal fees into my prices?
As annoying as it is to have to pay fees for people to use credit cards, it is important to be able to accept them as people will spend more money with you if they know they can put it on a card. Proven fact. So it’s worth the little bit of extra hassle or expense to do so.
The easiest way to include PayPal fees is to do it at the very end, after all your prices have been determined. It’ll increase your prices by about 3%, but absorbing the cost yourself will end up costing you a higher percentage of your profits. I give an example in the workbook explaining why that is, so I won’t rehash it here right now. But it’s significant.
To do this, go to the “PayPal-Adjusted Prices” tab of the workbook. You’ll see two lists – one is your packages list and one is your products list. They should all populate automatically. All you’ll need to do is to go through and choose your final selected retail price based upon what the guide says your PayPal-Adjusted Price should be. I like to have my prices be nice round numbers, so I pretty much just make them look nice without changing the price hardly at all. These are the prices you show your clients.
Where do I enter Sales Tax?
You don’t. You simply apply it to your sales as needed when making the sale. In most states of the US, you are technically just collecting sales tax for the state and sending it to them at regular intervals, so it shouldn’t affect your pricing at all. Definitely charge this in addition to your prices and do not add it into your pricing. Consult your accountant for more information about how and when to apply sales tax as it varies greatly from state to state.
Have more questions? Ask away! I’ll add them to the list as they come.