Photoshop work

[Crashoran]

An antique furniture company has recently contacted me via email. They want to know my rate for (using the pen tool) dropping out the background on each piece of furniture on 50+ images.

How much would you charge, and how do I protect myself (make sure I get paid)?

[d2creative]

Figure out how long it will take you per image and then using your hourly rate as a guide charge them per image.

[Crashoran]

Hmm..I don't have an hourly rate. I'll have to figure something out! Any suggestions?

[carrbowl]

If they haven't done the shots yet, I recommend a blue or green screen...It will make your editing multiple times easier. I've never done this, but have seen multiple times (from experienced folks) to ask what their budget is...they say people will give you their price range.

[JohnT]

$75/hr.

[Crashoran]

They've already taken the shots, they sent some samples over and the backgrounds are very busy and will have to do everything manually

[Crashoran]

Originally Posted by JohnT

$75/hr.

I gave them this rate and scared them off...e-mailed them back again and they said they found somebody else

[JohnT]

Originally Posted by Crashoran

I gave them this rate and scared them off...e-mailed them back again and they said they found somebody else

There seems to always be some who will do it cheaper.

[3n-Out]

This works well for me - not that I'm doing this in photography but in graphical work and websites and even server and networking and pcs.

Figure out your hourly rate - say 75.00

figure out how much per hour is a "lowball" price. Let's say 35.00 hour

Then tell them $35.00 hour - %50.00 up front %50.00 when the job is done.

You get the job!

Wait! What if they ask you how long it will take - "This is where you get paid for skill" say it takes you only ummm for something like that I would just say 5 hours.

Tell them it will take you 12 hours but that is a good faith estimate - That's the key!!! Then you can tell them to send you all the pics to get an estimate to the hour.

This does two things
A) It get's you all the images.
B) Gets you 1 hour of billing time for the estimate included in the estimate.

It's trickery in a sense, but perception of the Art of Selling works...

If they come back and tell you that is still a little high tell them you have all the images and you will give them a one hour discount since it will take them at least that long to email them to the "otherguy". If they still deny Thank them offer your services in the future and tell them you will imediatly Destroy thier images.

If you get it ...

Then you are only losing the job on the hours it take you to compete with your compitetion and not price. And since it only took you 5 you had 7 hours of wiggle room you had plenty of room to negotiate. That's Enough to play a round of golf and go on a paid shoot! All paid for! That's living...

Well, guess that is just the salesmen in me...