{"id":5148,"date":"2011-03-16T09:17:51","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T14:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=5148"},"modified":"2011-03-16T09:45:33","modified_gmt":"2011-03-16T14:45:33","slug":"on-photography-pricing-and-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2011\/03\/16\/on-photography-pricing-and-deals\/","title":{"rendered":"On photography pricing and group deals"},"content":{"rendered":"

W<\/span>e had a really interesting discussion on Twitter this morning about professional portrait photography rates, and I thought it was one of those conversations that would be interesting to port over here to the blog. <\/p>\n

You know those daily coupon deals, like Groupon and Living Social and Kahoot and the rest of them? I think I get a dozen or so of them every day, and while I’ve found some awesome deals (like a free membership to the Museum of Civilization, and half-price meals at East Side Marios) most of them I delete. A few of them I snicker first and then delete. And some just make me go “Hmmmm.” There was one today from a local photographer who was offering a $120 photo package for $40. Included in the package was “One-Hour Photo Shoot, One-8×10 Print, Two-5×7 Prints, Four-4×6 Prints and 16 Wallet Prints and a Digital CD of all Photo’s” (sic). And I thought, “Seriously?”<\/p>\n

So I mentioned it on twitter, and all my photographer friends said, “I know, isn’t that insane?” while all my non-photographer friends said things like, “Well, it’s probably good for exposure and building a client base”. And I’m sure a few people thought, “Photography is ridiculously expensive, what nerve they have charging that much.”<\/p>\n

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So let’s look at the deal from the photographer’s perspective. Those deal networks aren’t free — Groupon takes up to 50% of the fee, from what I’ve heard, and the others take in the range of 25% to 30%. For ease of counting, let’s assume they take 25% off the top, which leaves the photographer with $30.<\/p>\n

For that $30, here’s what the photographer has to do: get in contact with the client and set up an appointment, show up with all of his\/her gear (or have the available studio space, which adds huge overhead), spend an hour taking pictures and say another half hour getting there and back. That’s at bare minimum two hours, or $15 per hour. <\/p>\n

It takes me about four hours to sort through the pictures from a session, select the best ones and polish them up. (Caveat: this is my favourite part, and I linger over it. So let’s say for the sake of argument the photographer is super-speedy and can do it in two hours.) So now we’re up to four hours, or $7.50 per hour. And then you have to contact the client again for the image selection process. You either create an online gallery, or sit in front of your computer with them, or at bare and unprofessional minimum, e-mail the low-res files to them. Another hour of work. And then the client picks their faves, and you have to prepare and submit them for printing. Even at Costco’s rates, you’re looking at $10 worth of printing. So that’s $20 divided by five hours, which is $4 per hour. <\/p>\n

And THEN you have to think about taxes (say 30%) and equipment (say another 30%). You’re at less than $2 per hour now. Realistically, I think you’re actually at a huge loss by the time you’re done, and this doesn’t even address the opportunity cost of your time as you work with all these cheap clients when you could be drumming up business with paying clients — or working at McDonalds, for five times the hourly income. And you’ve given away the digital negatives, so that client has no reason to ever come back to you for future prints and lord knows what they’ll do to the images. <\/p>\n

So the discount deal is obviously at the ridiculously cheap (and, IMHO, ultimately worthless) end of the spectrum. Sure, the photographer may build some clients, but they’ll likely want the $40 deal next time. And I think the photographer undervalues him or herself by setting prices too low. And I genuinely believe there’s an argument to be made that it devalues the profession of photography as a whole.<\/p>\n

I’m very lucky. I’m not making my living at this, so I have nothing to lose except my time, and I still wouldn’t devalue myself like that. I have to admit, when I first saw the going rates for professional family photography, I balked at first too. Why would someone pay $150 just for a session fee when you can get a portrait package at Loblaws for $45? I only have to look at the packages I’ve bought from Loblaws over the years to know the answer to that one. It’s like the old $10 haircut — you only have to get one once to realize that you really do get what you pay for. Some people are totally happy with a $10 haircut and more power to them, but it’s something that’s important enough to me that I invest in it. It’s worth it to me.<\/p>\n

Pricing photography is a minefield right now. You price yourself too high and the phone doesn’t ring, but you price yourself too low and you get plenty of calls — but find yourself working for peanuts, run ragged and barely able to pay your bills. <\/p>\n

Of course, this issue is not limited to photography. We’ve had four contractors come through the house to give estimates the repair the drywall we pulled out of Tristan’s room. Two of the first three were plenty affordable, and they would have happily slapped up some drywall for us. But the one who quoted us the highest (by a considerable amount) price also seemed to really know what he was talking about. He offered insight and advice and opinion. And we’re going with him for exactly that reason, because his prices speak to the quality of his work.<\/p>\n

So what do you think? On twitter, the photography crowd was unanimous in their disapproval of this kind of drastic price reduction, and agreed that while there is plenty of room for specials and promos, this cut-to-the-bone approach would ultimately be counterproductive. I’m curious as to what you think!<\/p>\n

Edited to add:<\/strong> apparently this is hardly an original thought, right down to the McDonalds analogy: http:\/\/thebusinesslens.com\/2010\/09\/15\/groupon-photography-sessions-vs-working-mcdonalds\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a really interesting discussion on Twitter this morning about professional portrait photography rates, and I thought it was one of those conversations that would be interesting to port over here to the blog. You know those daily coupon deals, like Groupon and Living Social and Kahoot and the rest of them? I think … Continue reading “On photography pricing and group deals”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5148"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5153,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5148\/revisions\/5153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}