Bill, I agree completely. A local friend has a thriving wedding business, but it was 'in the tank' late last year as bookings dried up for 3 months. He charged a premium price and had 8 photogs working for him. He did serious soul searching, tripled his advertising, and cut back to 5 photogs. (And he's back involved - hands on shooting the weddings.) Bookings are back up and he's on track for 300+ events this year. Getting his costs down was very important, but cutting price was never an issue. And the customer and then their parents make multiple runs at getting price reductions, first the bride and groom negotiate a price, then the parent comes back and wants a cut, and even after the fact the bride's mother has said none of the 1,346 shots is any good! (A sure precursor to asking for a reshoot or price cut.) This guy is a good photographer and a good businessman. It kills him to turn people away, but he does over price. You pay him the full price, up front as a retainer and he holds the date for you. If dad refuses demanding a re-negotiated price, goes away, and returns 3 weeks later, the date is gone, sold out! The attitude pays in repeat business for him. Some of his most ornery negotiators show up 3 or 4 months after the wedding, to book a date for the other daughter's wedding! :-) Sadly, he's a Canon shooter... Regards, Bob S.
On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 8:56 AM, William Robb <[email protected]> wrote: > Repost from April 1, 2001. > Perhaps it bears repeating. > > Don't be a cheap whore, you won't get respected for it, and when > you want to graduate to being a high class whore, no one will be > willing to pay you for it. I have seen it happen before in my > under populated part of the world. > People will only value your work as much as you do. > > The guy I mentored with had a thriving weekend wedding business > going. In 1972, I started going out on paying jobs with him, > learning how to photograph weddings. By 1975, he had over a > dozen photographers working for him, shooting weddings. Over > time, these people started going out on their own, becoming > competition for the trade. Eventually, the market for wedding > photographers saturated to the point where my mentor decided to > become more competitive. He started dropping his prices. He is > now on welfare, and pretty god damned bitter about it. > > Being a cheap whore is always a mistake. > > People will pay quality money for what they percieve as a > quality job. By charging cheap, you are sending a message that > you don't think your work is worth their money. This is not a > strategy for long term business success. > > You want to know > what happens in markets where someone comes in and low balls the > available work? Everyone suffers for it. The photographers > suffer because some idiot is saying that photo portraiture isn't > worth paying for, and everyone has to drop their prices to > compete. The clients suffer because with the new, lower pricing, > quality suffers, because it isn't worthwhile to do a good job > anymore. > > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
