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As I have been helping photographers with their pricing and packaging, I’ve seen a number of common mistakes over and over again that are easy to avoid and will help boost your sales.
Before making packages, however, make sure you’ve worked through the Photographer’s Pricing Guide to determine how much money you need to be making on average per shoot. We’ll use this information in setting up your packages.
So let’s jump right in! [Click to read more]
There’s so many different wedding photography pricing models that sometimes it’s hard to know what will be most profitable for you and your business.
Should you have packages? Or go completely A la Carte? Which one books you more clients and gets you higher sales?
There’s an easy way to tell, and the answer will be different for each person.
So first we’ll look at 3 wedding pricing and packaging models, discuss their strengths and weaknesses, and then you’ll learn how to determine which one you should use to maximize your profits.
I love to eat. Give me something savory, like a juicy marinated tenderloin steak, grilled shrimp scampi, garlic mashed potatoes slathered in butter, and fresh green beans cooked just right with a crisp garden salad and a glass of wine and I am a seriously happy mama.
My mouth is watering already. Yours?
We don’t go to restaurants much (unfortunately) but when we do, my pet peeve is opening up to a menu that has about 300 different options.
Being the food lover that I am, I feel obligated to make sure that read through all of my options to make sure I get whatever sounds best on the menu. I don’t want bad food on one of the rare occasions that we go out to eat, so I sit there for far too long trying to decide what I want.
And I sit some more.
And we tell the waiter to come back again, and again, and again.
Finally, we give up and just make some decision. Hopefully it is good, but it is SUCH a frustrating experience.
I much prefer menus that are smaller, making my decision easier. I’m hungry when I get to a restaurant. I want to enjoy the company I’m with, not spend 20 minutes trying to read the menu and deciding what to order.
The same thing applies to the products you offer your clients. If you’ve ever had a client procrastinate on ordering or not place an order after seeing their images, you may want to consider how hard you’re making it for your clients. [Click to read more]
This post is Part 6 of The Modern Tog’s Photographer’s Pricing Guide series. Here’s the link to Part 1 of the Pricing Guide in case you missed it.
It’s finally time to pull together all the pieces you’ve been working on so far and decide what kind of packages you are going to offer. Before you do this, I highly suggest taking some time to think about your business model. Will you have multiple packages for each type of shoot or do everything a la carte? Or maybe you’ll have one package with several add-on options. Determining how to structure your photography pricing is probably the most difficult part of this step.
If you decide that having packages is best for you, click here to learn how to create photography packages that sell.
Let’s say that the average amount needed for a portrait shoot is $750. There are several ways that we can get to this number. You can simply charge a session fee and hand over the digital files or you can create a package that includes enough products you offer to get you to the price you need. When you do this, you need to be adding up the Retail Less Costs of Goods. If you use the selected retail amount, you’ll fail to account for the cost of goods and will make less than you should to reach your needed average.
For this example I’m going to create a package completely out of products I offer and not charge an additional session fee. I’ll use the following products as an example.
So if we want a package to be $750 after cost of goods, we can select both the Fine Art Album ($550 Retail Less Cost of Goods) and the Print Collection ($200 Retail Less Cost of Goods) to get us to exactly $750. We’d then have to add up the Selected Retail Price of the items to know what to charge our customers for this package. In this case, we’d have to add $750 and $250 to get $1000, which is what we’d charge our customers to ensure that we’re making $750 after we pay for the album and prints.
If you’re using the Photographer’s Pricing Guide Workbook, go to the Packages tab at the bottom of the screen. Then enter the name of your package in row 6. Click the cell right below that in row 7 and select the type of shoot from the drop-down menu.
Next, enter a session fee in row 8 if you wish to use one. If not, leave this blank. To add a product to your package, click on a cell and select the desired product from the drop-down list. To add another product to the list, go back to the “Product Pricing” tab (click on it at the bottom of the worksheet) and add it there.
You’ll automatically see the amount needed in row 24, as well as the amount in the package based on what you’ve added so far (row 25). What you’ll want to do is watch the number in row 26, which tells you if you’re under or over the amount you need (a parenthesis around the number means you’re under where you need to be at). My smallest packages are usually slightly below the amount needed, whereas the rest of my packages are about equal or greater than where I need them to be. Your business model should help dictate exactly where you want the packages to be priced in comparison to your average amount needed.
Finally, once your package includes what you want it to include, you’ll see your retail price (what you need to charge your customers) in row 27.
In our next post, we’ll wrap up this series with a discussion about how to take the numbers you’ve just computed and make them work in your market.
Want to see how I structure my Wedding & Portrait packages? You can see this free as part of the exclusive content I share via email. Simply enter your email below and click the button and I’ll send it right to you.
