Walter,
First, a disclaimer. I don't think my opinion would be a representative one on this matter either from a typical photographer's point of view, or from the potential clients': I don't fit the typical profile. So, take it with a grain of salt. What to charge - is a hard question. In any case, - read this: http://www.danheller.com/biz-prints.html#5 It may or may not be directly applicable to your case, but very reasonable arguments are listed there. I think that Walmart "sports pacakge" (3 8x10", 4 5x7', 2 4x6" and 8 wallet prints) is a marketing ploy. I wouldn't see what's special about such a set, and why would one want it. Personally, I'd rather offer photos priced "a la carte", with discounts for multiple (mix and match) photos from the same client/order You can choose between two models (typical for event photographers for this sort of public events): 1. "Cheap and dirty" or 2. "Great but more expensive" or some sort of combination between the two. (From your description, I suspect your clients will gravitate to the former one, but you need some flavor of the latter to attract the attention) Here is what I mean: 1. Once you shoot all your photos, you don't do much of selection (I still would remove obvious misses.), upload them to the website, and let the clients choose and order. Then you adjust the chosen photos before sending them to the printer (photo lab) 2. You do careful selection and adjustment of your shots (can be a big drag in case of 1000+ photos). Then you post the resulting photos to the web for the clients to choose and order. Practically (depending on demand and number of images), - you might to do a hybrid between the two: develop just a bunch of selected photos - to show a representative gallery, but then dump all photos with just a minimum selection (as in 1.), clearly indicating that they are yet undeveloped. This would save a lot of time and energy, especially in case of small number of sales. If you are using LR, you might consider this plugin: http://lr.theturninggate.net/html-galleries/ttg-client-response-gallery/ (or something similar from the same site) that will help in the ordering process. One of those templates can even be coupled with an online direct-printing services. I didn't find it useful for myself - you really need a constant flow of customers to justify using that printing service (Fotomoto or FoxyCart). HTH, Igor Thu Sep 9 11:14:46 CDT 2010 Walter Gilbert wrote: Hi all, So, here's my situation. I ran into an old high school friend who's coaching several athletic teams. He's seen some of my photography and asked if I'd be interested in doing some team photos for them -- soccer and basketball. I told him I'd be interested in doing it, but I've never done that sort of thing before. He essentially said the main thing the kids' parents are concerned about is pricing, and feels pretty confident that I'm competent enough to handle the task based on what he's seen. Thing is, given my lack of experience, I'm not sure how much to charge these parents. I can go through Walmart for the prints, which seem to be pretty reasonably priced -- the standard sports package being $15.00. I don't know if any of you have any experience in this type of work at all, but any guidance would be much appreciated. I've never done any sort of professional work at all, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to how much I can fairly charge these people for my work. But, I'd like to be able to make a buck or two someday, if only to subsidize my photography addiction. Are there any rules of thumb or standard formulas that I could go by, aside from asking other local photographers what they're charging? Thanks in advance for any advice anyone can give me. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
