Calendar Pricing

[HillPhotos2009]

What is the rule of thumb or common practice for pricing calendars? A customer wants me to shoot a calendar for her of her horses, her trainer, her ranch, and herself with her horses to give as Christmas presents this year.

My "farm call" fee for ranch shoots is $175.00 then they choose 10 sheets from 8x10 - 11x14 for $225.00 to get prints. So I'm profiting off of the product and making a shooting fee.

This customer in particular wants 50-100 calendars. So,

#1. Do I charge the farm call fee plus hours of shooting and editing?

#2. Do I leave the product cost at my cost and let my profit be my hourly rate and farm call fee?

#3. Can anyone recommend a place to print that would give me a good deal on this volume of printing?

[StevenGWebb]

How you juggle the numbers is a matter of accounting. In the end you'll want to make a profit off the job. If it were me, I'd want to be able to see profit at each step. You know when you take your car in for repair there is a cost to you for parts and labor. The garage is not passing his direct cost for the parts; there is a mark-up for his effort in securing the parts. He's not depending on the labor charges alone to support his bottom line. You should not either. You do not have to itemize your customer's invoice to disclose where the charges come from but on the backside you want to win at each phase of the operation. Besides, you cannot know if you are making a net profit unless you consider the cost of goods and the cost of doing business.

I'm guessing your $175 farm call is only for your time, not for your time and 10- 8X10's. You are going to have much more time invested in editing and layout than you are shooting. You'll want profitable compensation for that. Your time and skill is worth something. The printing will also cost you something. You'll want a return on that investment as well. Think of this, an 8X10 print costs me about $1.50 in material to print myself; I certainly don't let them go for that price.

There are a number of print houses that do short run offset print jobs. I have information on a few but it will take me time to find them. I'll forward what I have in a PM later on.

Thank you for this post. I am an equine photographer as well and you've given me an idea I had not thought about before. I wish you great success on your endeavor.

Steven

[HillPhotos2009]

Thank you for your response, Steven. I did some research yesterday and the best I came up with was an Australian company to print 50 calendars for around $530.00. I checked all the standard go-tos for the non-photog do it yourselfers, such as Shutterfly, and they were exactly $500.00 for 50. But I'm not a fan. My dad prints calendars for us for Christmas every year and I love his photography, but the quality of the Shutterfly prints does NOT do his photos justice.

I was struggling with the decision of what to charge her hourly. My hourly rate is $65.00 which is really low, but I'm also an industry baby so that's where I believe my rate belongs. However, I'll be spending the night at the ranch Friday night so I can get up before sunrise Saturday morning and shoot until sunset. During the day they will show dress the horses and themselves and have their trainer come out in his show clothes for a shoot. So that's a lot of hours of shooting. The more I think about it, the more I think that these are going to be some awfully expensive Christmas calendars and wonder if she'd balk at the cost in the end and make the calendar herself like she did last year.

That being said, I thought about maybe charging $15.00/hr (my photo editing fee) for 8 hours of shooting even though I'll be shooting for more than 8 hours. But I don't know. I have a tendency to sell myself short a lot. I guess if I'm only charging for 8 hours but shooting for 15 that's a price break in itself and I should probably charge my normal shooting fee.

I'd like to look at the printers that you come up with and compare them with what I found yesterday. I really liked what I saw of the Australian printer, but I'm pretty sure that shipping will be murder and I'd really like to keep my business in our economy - not anyone else's.

[StevenGWebb]

Stephanie,

I'll look up the printers in short order. I just have to ask this nagging question. What's with the price break thing? We've all got to get out of the Sam's/ Walmart mentality of volume discounting. You only have a certain number of hours in your life to live you can't pass on a volume discount for time, it's not something you can get more of at a reduced rate.

People who want a BMW or a Benz can either afford them and buy them, or they can't and don't. The Beemer dealer doesn't say oh if you're buying one I'll let you have the second one at half price and if you buy three I'll give you one for free.

You may be an industry baby and you may be charging a fair hourly rate for your experience level. Don't further reduce your charge and work for free. That's (in your analogy) not only child labor but servitude.

Never feel uneasy about charging someone more than you would pay. Not everyone is governed by the same economic limits or values that you are.

[HillPhotos2009]

Thanks for that Steve, I like your way of thinking.