How much to charge?

[Doug]

The owner of the gym I go to has offered me the opportunity to use some of the little used space as a make shift photo studio. She said many of the people who come into the gym are interested. She said I can put some package deals together. This sounds great, except I am not too sure what to charge. There are a couple of established professionals out there, and one advantage of coming to me would be that I don't cost as much as they do. Any ideas of how much to charge?
doug

[TheObiJuan]

what equipment? strobes, softboxes, octs?
What camera, tripod,lenses and etc?

Will you include post processing, prints, and etc?

Price is determined by image quality and presentation.
Image quality is determined by the photographer and gear.

[cwphoto]

Price is determined by what the market is prepared to pay, that's all.

What sort of work are you hoping to market? Is it portraits of people doing a workout? Please be a little more specific.

[kbm]

Hi Doug,
Great idea.
First of all add up your all expenses for one month and divde that by the amount of hours you plan to work. That will provide you with your hourly costs for starters.

After that put down on paper certain ideas and how long it would take you to do a basic number of certain different packages in hours.

Ask yourself or the gym manager what do you think your clients would like as a photo/print/cd disc package? How long would it take you to do in hours.
Dont leave out the post production work on the photos. How am i going to present them to the clients, cd, album etc? What is your hourly rate going to be?

Then build a complete portfolio around those ideas with different variations on say your standard package, that way you can build deluxe, super deluxe packages etc. You may want to give them gym related names or some thing unique.

Regarding your final price, ask yourself these questions: Can I do what I say I can do, Can I do it very well?, Is my experience and quality below, average or above what your competitors provide? Can i provide a service that is different from my competitors, if not you need to find a Unique Selling Difference otherwise you are not giving your clients any reason to use you.

Depending on your answers "Your final price is and always is based on what your clients are prepared to pay for your unique service.".

Remember these, Clients want personal and consistant service that is genuine, clients will pay more for a service or product if you can provide a better product backed up by awesome after sales service and follow up. For example you should call them in a minimum 3 months not more, to do an update program so they can see their improvements at a reduced offer as a existing client. Another way of saying thanks i appreciate you as a client.

Doug,
There are only 3 ways to grow & increase a business's income:
1- More customers
2- Sell more to each customer at point of purchase: eg: upsell, cross sell
3- Sell more often to clients

Tip: always give your client something that they are not expecting, eg a gift to say thanks, an extra set of prints for free, and extra cd disc of photos, a thank note with 2 movie tickets, it doesnt really matter what it is but it must come from the heart. If you think its to much bother to impress your client then your not ready for business.

If you provide the "good" unexpected experience your clients will rave about you to others who are their friends and friends alway refer friends when they have enjoyed a great experience. That in turn saves you money on advertising.

Sorry if have said to much but business marketing is one of my passions and enjoyment, so i hope its helps you out a bit.

Keep us posted on how you go and remember if you need any help let us know back here at the forum.

Good Luck
Cheers Kev

[Doug]

Thank you so much to all who have given input. Just to give all of you a bit of background. I have always been very interested in photography. The film and developing however was very cost prohibitive. Digital helps alot in those areas. About 1 year ago I bought an Olympus C765. I used a friend as my "test model" (she is extremely photogenic), and we did a few shoots. I could tell that with each session we were getting better, and so I invested in a Nikon D50. I have expanded the glamour or model photography a bit as I have a site on onemodelplace.com. My member number is 149699 if you want to see just a few of my pics up until now. I also have a shoot with two aspiring models in two days, so I am excited.
Anyway, I would not be taking pictures of people working out, but hopefully of studio type pictures. That is why I have a room I can use. So if anyone has a place that sells backdrops, please let me know. I also have two umbrella lighting units, tripod, and remote shutter release (I did not know how important that was until many of my pics kept blurring).
Mostly families come into the gym, as it is primarily a bedroom community. Smaller, so I know if I put out good quality, the word will get around fast. As I mentioned B4, there are two very established local photographers, but they are more pricey. That is why I want to make sure I don't charge too much, as my cheaper price would be a selling point. Aslo I can go to a person's house, which I am not sure the others would do.
I never thought of giving incentives, such as movie tickets for higher packages, but that is a great idea. My time would be primarily set up and break down, downloading the pics and any photoshop editing. I plan on giving prints, and I would either have them printed on yahoo or mpix. Yahoo prices are 8x10 $1.99, 5x7 $.59, and 4x6 $.19. So that gives some more information without me getting more wordy. And please check out my model pics of onemodelplace.com and let me know what you think or what I can do differently. I am here to learn, not to have my ego massaged. Thanks in advance to all of you!!.
doug

[Rhys]

Charge what everybody else charges so you don't undercut people and so as you get the full value of what you do.

[cdifoto]

I don't believe in giving out unrelated freebies as incentives. It undermines the perception of the quality of your work by making people believe you HAVE to give away freebies just to get attention.

The only things I've done is thrown in a free 4x6 of a photo when a customer ordered a few larger prints (over $100 worth) and had trouble with my checkout system (PayPal was being screwy), or frame the 20x30s in inexpensive poster frames when they order a couple of that size (only for a repeat customer), etc - kind of a compensation for a bit of hardship when things don't flow smoothly.

I believe in impressing them with the final product (and yes I've failed at that on occasion...consider my first and only wedding)...not more of it or something else in addition to it.

I don't give away free bubble gum or balloons or whatever to get you to hire my services.

[Rhys]

As a business guru once said - the trick is in giving added value or perceived added value services. Put a higher price than you normally charge up on your price list then give people 15% off as a "special offer" as long as they spend $200. That way, everybody who wants less pays more and everybody who pays for the special offer thinks they're getting a special but are in fact getting your normal rate.

[cdifoto]

As a business guru once said - the trick is in giving added value or perceived added value services. Put a higher price than you normally charge up on your price list then give people 15% off as a "special offer" as long as they spend $200. That way, everybody who wants less pays more and everybody who pays for the special offer thinks they're getting a special but are in fact getting your normal rate.

Yeah...$100 or more in photo prints gets 10% off if you enter a coupon on my website....$50-100 gets 5% with a different coupon, and $1-50 gets no discount.

I'd do away with the coupon codes because IMO they're a little cheesy (gimmicky) but I haven't figured out the code to take off the discounts automatically yet.