Hi-

I'm a videographer addign photography to my business and I was wondering what prices I should set for prints and merchandising.

Thansk for any help

ExtraStep@comcast.net

Andy

There is not a straight forward answer for this, and a search in this forum will find lots of discussion.
The short answer: Do some research on your competition in the target market. Then price accordingly.

There is actually an almost straight forward answer... ... ... this requires some due diligence of investigation... ... ...
You need to find out what all the full times are charging for their services and do not undercut them...but you will
find some working super cheap and some working super high...go with the median or actually just a touch over
the median ... .... that way you are not undercutting not becoming the bane of working pros every where...
Now do a full blown business plan ... ... this way you can see what you really need to charge to be truly
profitable... ... ... in reality this should have been your very first step....

take what you need to live on financially for a year. break it up into 12 months. there you go. thats what you charge per session. for me, its $150/session x 6 a month to 'make it'

Exact pricing will depend on your market and you will need to do some research.

But for general philosophy, you have two options:
1: Decide to have merchandising and prints be a important source of income
2: Decide to have merchandising and prints be a small bonus and charge more for your time

I do almost all weddings and portraits, so I went with number 2, I simply raised all my prices and set the prices of my pictures cheap. I found that I could not always depend on people to buy the prints, so if they do its just an additional profit. But if they do not purchase prints, its OK cause I planned for that and my pricing for the session was enough to justify my time. In my market I try to figure around +/-$200/hr for my time and only like $1-$2 markup on the prints. Your market could justify way more or way less, thats up to you.

Alot of photographers do a great job with #1, and do a lot of upselling and packaging before the shoot, or obviously if you do fine art or landscape photography prints will be significantly more expensive as it is your main source of income.