Peter Jordan wrote: > One thing never to do when talking with your customers is to > relating what you charge with what it costs you. They won't > recognise your cost structure and vastly underestimate your > costs.Say you go into a restaurant and query the �5 that they > are charging for French Onion Soup. If the restraunteur says > that he needs to charge that to cover his costs, you start > thinking about onions at 30p per pound and scream rip-off. If > he says that this is one of the better restaurants in town > and people come here for the ambience, food quality and > service that can make a meal out special and memorable, > customers may react differently. (although there will always > be the cheapskates that you never will convince).
Reading this thread, I'm amazed that anyone becomes a professional photographer, so the public at large should be damn grateful some do! Taking it as read that going 'pro' means you are capable of consistent, excellent photographs, you have to then translate what people ask for into what they *actually* want. They don't want to spend much money when any other professional working at weekends or public holidays, would charge the pants off them. Then there are the cost sides, before you start taking photos. In today's friendly society, you need insurance to cover theft and accidents (caused by outside elements or your own assistants!), insurance to cover your own clients and others for tripping over your tripod and suing you for their own misadventure, overheads on keeping stock of film etc, your time for creating records for the tax authorities, invoicing, advertising (whether in print or web based), meetings with the bank or potential clients. All of this (sure I've missed much too) must be put into your charges, because the bottom line is the fact it is now a business, and there are many hours of work which aren't chargeable hours behind the camera. Anyone who makes a good living from this, deserves too. Darn hard work. Malcolm
