From: "Ken Waller"
Kenneth Waller
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/kennethwaller
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Sessoms" <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: Someone asked about prints of event photos
> From: Larry Colen
>
>> I got an email that someone had asked the event organizer about
>> prints of my photos from the dance workshop a couple of weeks ago.
>>
>> In several years of doing photos at dance events, this is the first
>> time that this has happened, and I've got no idea what, if anything,
>> to charge beyond the cost of printing and shipping.
>>
>
> In the business portion of my classes it is recommended that the selling
> price for prints should be at least 4 to 7 times your cost of the print
> (where "cost of the print" includes what you have to pay for the print
> itself, any matting and/or framing, packaging, shipping ...) in order to
> recover your overhead costs.
Around here that would lead to some very costly prints, especially if you
don't do the mounting, matting & framing yourself.
I generally charge twice my cost.
>
> More if you actually want to make a profit.
So 4 to 7 times your cost doesn't make you any profit? That's a hellova
overhead.
No shit. That's what I thought until they showed me the spread sheets &
I saw all the little things you never think of as being costs. Even when
you don't have a studio.
The way it works out, your costs for a few small prints are larger than
your costs for a lot of large prints. It's backward from what you'd
think (from what I thought anyway). You need 7x costs to break even
selling small prints, while you can charge less - 4x costs to break even
if you're selling a lot of large prints.
Seems like the real thrust of the lesson was you can't make enough money
selling small prints because no one wants to pay as much as you need to
charge to break even.
I still don't really understand it that well. We don't get to our core
business courses until the final semester next summer. But that's what
it's all based on, photography as a *business*. That's why I'm going to
school, so I can learn the business of photography.
If you want to stay in business, you got to at least have more revenue
than expenses. That's assuming you have another source of income to
support yourself. If you don't have another source of income, you got to
make a profit before you can pay yourself.
In my case, I do already have a small "outside" income that covers my
basic living expenses, so I can afford to take less profit & still have
a good living from my photography business. I'm looking for about $2,000
a month in "income" == profit, and to get that I expect to have to
generate about $8,000 - $10,000 a month in revenue.
And because I'm more or less going to be a wedding photographer, I
expect I'll have to work hard 6 months of the year to make the revenue
$20k a month to balance the other half of they year when there's not
many weddings taking place (i.e. $0.00 revenue).
Realistically I hope to start out generating $2000 a month revenue my
first year, and to make $200+ a month "income" out of that.
I can already take good pictures. What I'm getting from school is how to
do that with maximum consistancy, i.e. 99+% "keepers"
... more than just "keepers" really, I want to consistently produce
photos that will please a customer so they'll come back again and again
or recommend me to friends & family ... and buy lots of big prints so I
can still make a profit while selling at a lower percentage markup.
Side note: If they buy the big prints, you can then afford to discount
the smaller prints somewhat. It's when all they want is the small prints
that you really have to jack your prices up to cover your costs.
I expect to learn the business aspects necessary for me to earn a living
from photography. Which in turn is a means to an end of being free to
travel and take the photographs *I* want to take.
Let my photography business support my photography hobby.
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