More Help With Pricing

[laawaaris]

I shot the Festival of Lights celebration in Sugar Land Town Square. A nice affair with over 7,000 people. I met the Lighting Designer of the event and he told me he wanted to buy some of the pictures I took at the event.

I showed him the following as samples (http://www.trick-photography.com/melalighting/)
and he came back to me and said he wants to buy all of them as JPEG images.

He said that he wants a price quote in two different ways - one is if his company purchases the images and uses it for its own corporate use (website and so forth). Another is if he buys it solely for his own personal collection - no corporate use involved.

Anyhow, I have asked this question many times before, but what price is a good one to set on the images?

[zepp]

Originally Posted by laawaaris

...and he came back to me and said he wants to buy all of them as JPEG images.

Buy outright or license the images?

[laawaaris]

what is the difference (sorry for asking such a basic question, but i still don't have a strong understanding ...)

[dbphotos]

Originally Posted by laawaaris

what is the difference (sorry for asking such a basic question, but i still don't have a strong understanding ...)

Selling the usage rights (rights managed) means they get to use them for whatever purposes you agree to and you keep the copyright or they have the option of buy the entire image, copyright and all (I would not recommend this).

Always keep your copyright because you never know when an images may catch on and make you a lot of money. Just license the use of the image.

If you wants them for his personal use, offer prints only. If he wants them for corporate use then you can give him digital copies with an agreement of how they will be used. To price them correctly you will need to know how they are going to use the images; website, printed advertising, etc.

[laawaaris]

Ok, I understand now ... In my convo with him I asked him if he would use the images on a billboard or if he would run newspaper adverts and such with them - to which he responded that he would not do anything other than use the images on his website and in his personal portfolio.

I then said that I will sell the images to him but I will retain the right to use them for future commercial work. He understood and agreed. (It's kind of nice to work with another artist!)

I *think* I'm getting the hang of this thing. But now the major question is how much money I should charge for the images? He is ordering a volume of 9 images so I am thinking of giving a group rate - what would be a good price.

[zepp]

Bobby

So many factors come into play that it is going to be hard for a person here on the forum to tell you a price to license the images for. You must first know what uses the client is going to use the images for. Do they want to use them editorially, corporate, or for advertising. Pricing increases in that order. How long do they want to license them for? One-time, a month, year, two years, etc. Do they want the images exclusively during the license period. If so this means you can't license them elsewhere during this period but you do retain your copyright. Will the images be used for web or print. If on web, will the image appear on the homepage or a secondary page? How rare are the images? If they are a one of a kind image they are worth more than a more common image that could be captured by others easily. If you're selling prints, you need to have a State of Texas Sales and Use Tax permit and collect the tax for the State and submit it as scheduled.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in determining the pricing of the images. Here is link to a calculator that might shed more light on licensing options and pricing.

http://photographersindex.com/stockprice.htm

I would also suggest strongly you pick up a book about photo licensing and photography as a business. One I suggest very strongly is by John Harrington titled "Best Business Practices for Photographers".

Frank

[dbphotos]

You can use this site as a guide.

http://www.ssephotography.com/DotNet...9/Default.aspx

He's got pricing in .pdf format for image usage for web sites as well as some other pricing and release forms.