After that I responded in kind to someone saying sports photography is easy and unimportant.
What I said was:
"Look, you're not doing anything artistic here. People are paying for someone with good equipment and the right timing to push a button at the right time."
Which you didn't contradict, and I elaborated on later. I don't know if it is "important", and it's certainly "easier" than a commercial photoshoot of the new Lexus or an 8 hour wedding.
Glort - actually, the idea of 5x7 should be irrelevant. The OPs stated purpose was he wanted parents to buy larger prints to make their kids feel like stars. That's an emotional goal, not a business goal. So, if you want to get down to it, the question becomes - is the OPs goal:
1) help kids feel like stars
or
2) increase profits
The fixation on 5x7 as the smallest print is irrelevant to #2. The OP could simply charge the same price for 4x6 as 5x7 or do a number of other things to drive up profit. Or shift the profit more to the booking end and away from print sales. Again, it becomes a question of whether or not this is a business or emotional decision. What some of us are trying to point out is that it is important to understand your clientele and what there wants/needs are. Then find a profitable way of meeting those needs. If you're going to cloud the business aspect by projecting your own values as a parent onto your clients ("I dont understand why every parent doesn't want large sports photos on the wall") that's a problem.
So, I submit it is time for the OP to decide what the goal is - to have parents display large images on the walls so kids feel like stars or to increase his profits.
In general, I can only surmise that the market in your country is vastly different than the market here. I don't know a single shooter in the United States that is shooting Little League and making $1000 a day. None. It's entirely possible not a single shooter in the US is as good a business man as you are. But the only people I know of that are bringing in that type of revenue are people shooting tournaments or gymnastics meets with multiple shooters. A completely different business than what the OP is doing. It's also possible that there are plenty of US based sports shooters making that type of profit on average for a day's work and they just don't come to Dgrin.
Quite honestly, my own business shifted my profit 90% to up-front fees. I don't rely on prints to make my profit. Now, I also admit I don't do a lot of the sports work anymore because the market isn't there in my area to make the profits I want for my time.
Now if the OP cares to look on other forums, one of the best baseball photogs in the US - Paul Aleese (he routinely photographs the Little League World Series) can be checked out. He's got some good information on what is profitable and what isn't here in the US. Bottom Line - if it's profitability that you're after - the notion of whether 4x6 is offered as a print size in your smugmug site is far from a determining factor.
forgot to mention - the other shooters seeing profits of $1,000 a day are doing T&I work. Much, much, much more profitable here in the US than doing action photography when you calculate it as an hourly wage. But, it's a different set of tools (lights, backdrops, tripods, etc) and difficult to do well as a one-man show. You need 2 shooters (and preferably a third person to handle money) to do it well.
As a follow-up to my posts - I was contracted by the same parent to shoot her son's basketball game and to do his senior portraits. About the same amount of time for both. Care to bet which one was more profitable? Also care to bet from which shoot the mother has a large photo hanging on the wall? How is this relevant? If the goal is documenting important memories and getting those memories on the wall - there are much more important memories than the majority of sports events a child participates in (again, assuming we're not talking Little League World Series or State Championship wrestling victory). If the goal is profit for time spent - that Senior Photo location photo shoot was more profitable.
And, most importantly - in NEITHER case was my profit based primarily upon what print sizes the client ordered. And in neither case was I paying Smugmug 15% for fulfillment.
Similarly I photographed the daughter of another client - in Lax and then, wait for it, senior photo. In Lax I captured the only goal the girl made (she wasn't a starter) - but Lax isn't the end-all-be-all of her existence - certainly not important enough to be on the wall. What is on the wall in their home? The senior photo and a "family" shot the husband commissioned for Mother's Day 2 years ago. Like most parents, the lax shots were "nice to look at" and "great photos" but they really didn't capture that important of a moment and the resulting image just doesn't compete with a staged photo for how it looks on the wall. To be sure, there are parents obsessed with their children's sports - a previous client insisted on collages and 8x10s for his "sports room" of his son. But those parents are few and far between in most league sports.
Ask a potential client to pay $300 for a photo shoot one child at a sports event and most here will laugh at you. Ask them to spend $300 for senior pictures and they're ready to go. Ask for $150 for 1/2 work to take a few photos at the park for "mother's day present" (where you're editing 8 photos not 100) and they're fine with it.
So - the moral of the story is - just because YOU as a photographer/parent have one set of values - don't assume those values are indicative of your clients as a whole. And if you really care about allowing parents to post precious moments on the wall, it is often useful to let them tell YOU what those precious moments are.
John I agree with you, but I think you're extrapolating on my goals. Mostly it is to get people away from 4x6s and into 5x7s. IMO these are still scrapbookable, but will stand out in the sea of 4x6s. I don't expect many people to frame an enlargement on their wall. I do wish they would also buy 16x20s for $25 to give to their kids for them to tape up on their bedroom wall in a disposable manner. Most people in my town have $25 to blow. It's funny how many $25 "Phiten" necklaces are at the fields, and how many German cars are in the parking lot. But a 5x7? Whoah, slow down, that's a serious outlay, apparently.
Like you, this year I decided to get my money up front, rather than wait for print sales that may not happen at all. I only shoot kids who's parents prepay a minimum of $20, which I then turn into a $25 print credit. This has solved a great number of issues, and profit is up.
If all I cared about was profit I would forget action shots and just do boring T&I. Or I'd forget sports altogether and concentrate on my real money-maker, real estate. Next Sunday I'm shooting 2 houses. I'll make $800. And with the 5D3's in-cam HDR, it's so easy it's almost stealing.
-Jack
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
IMO these are still scrapbookable, but will stand out in the sea of 4x6s.
To you, but what about your customers? Most people I deal with still scrapbook or photo album 4x6's. They just do -- scrapbooks are standard 12x12 sizes. It leaves the proper ratio for a 4x6 to look good but a 5x7 not so much. Inertia also takes hold and the customer stays with what they have until they are forced into something else. As a scrapbooker, I personally have scrapbooks already "designed" for 4x6 prints and wouldn't switch over to 5x7's unless I absolutely had to.
Do you want profit, or good will or to give the customer what they ultimately want? Once you have answered that for yourself and your customers, then you should know whether to drop or keep 4x6 prints. Glort's advice can't be beat for pure profit and business sense. But -- to add a little mystery to this posting about the inner workings of US office politics -- Glort's advice would have cost me a full time non-photography job if I hadn't built up good will. When the seniority/layoff games hit, I called in my favors. Sometimes the benefit to our photography isn't money.
Only you know what you want your priorities to be when providing your services...
I suppose the only answer other than do nothing is to make 4x6s and 5x7s the same price. All I want for myself is good will and enough profit to make the effort and time worthwhile.
-Jack
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
Glort - what I'm saying is - whether your smallest print is a 4x6 or 5x7 it is my belief and experience that today profits should not depend on such small print sales at all. Individual print sales should be a secondary revenue source. Quite honestly that is why in many cases I simply contract to provide digital images. They have the option of buying prints through me after I demonstrate the quality it provides but that is a service with little mark-up. I charge for my services producing the images. Thererfore I do not care whether they use 4x6 or 5.7 or wallet-size. It's irrelevent to my business model. I think fixating on physical prints ordered on-line via smugmug is a bad idea - it's not what the market seems to want for this type of thing.
I think these days if anyone is going to pursue the action type work you need something better than the traditional " Shoot and hope" method of sales.
I think Jacks Idea of pre- paid is great and I'd be interested to hear what you are doing as well.
Pre-pay is the only way to fly. A lot of people simply view the pictures online, email the link around to friends and family, put a link or a screenshot on facebook, and then they're done with them, they don't need to buy. And watermarks do nothing to discourage this or encourage sales. Many of these people have every intention of buying prints, but then they never get around to it. Pre-pay solves this problem completely.
My minimum pre-pay is $20. I then give the customer a coupon code for a print credit worth 25% more if they do it before their team's picture day. (i.e., $25 coupon for a $20 pre-pay)
I would get out of the print business altogether and only sell pre-pays for digital files, but so far my tab at SmugMug is net positive - some people are spending more than their print credit when they finally order prints. We'll see how it shakes out after all the coupons are used. So far I am ahead by $300.
Interesting thing there - out of 223 pre-pays (a little less than half the league), only 44 have ordered prints so far, and the season ends this Saturday. The print credits all expire 12/31/2013.
Hmmmmmm... maybe next year I should offer a level of service that gets you unlimited prints at cost and free downloads... say for a $50 pre-pay... this would also circumvent SmugMug's 15% commission... hmmmmm...
-Jack
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
If these were my kids I'd buy them posters to hang in their rooms.
I wouldn't. A: Rooms are cluttered enough, and there's not really wall space in the house for temporary posters b: We frame things we put on the wall so they look nice, that would be an extra cost c: It's a nice picture, but just making it bigger doesn't make it better - there's nothing added to it, like the other person who added the team name and all that to make it "fun" . As a kid, I don't every remember wanting a 5 foot high picture of myself to hang in my room.
It's just a personal thing - it isn't a product I'm interested in (as a parent).
To answer Glort's question and for Jack: when I do shoot sports it depends on the sport but typically I calculated out my total time for the job (including post processing) and calculated a price based on $20 per hour. They then got a DVD of the digital files. Special prints or anything else was after market. I have no time for T&I. Right now I value my time more than I value a side income. In this manner I always knew I was making $20 an hour (including PP time). By the time I switched to this model I was also weening off my time shooting sports. So, I wasn't targeting an $8,000 profit. My goal was to get rid of the wasted time spent shooting games and making zero or only $20. I also didn't have to worry about creative posters, 4x6, 5x7 or any of that. Again, I was (and am) in a different situation than Jack - with different goals. Now, I do other work just via word-of-mouth for about that same price point - $20 per hour. The only difference is I'll charge a premium for Senior Portraits because the market bares it. And I will usually include prints in that service because that way I guarantee quality prints. I'm still making the money completely up front. But that way I can get the prints directly from Bay Photo. Again, I no longer actively advertise nor seek more work because I don't have the time. So I cannot say my model is a good one for Jack. You can tell with that amount you couldn't earn a living doing it.
Pre-pay is the only way to fly. A lot of people simply view the pictures online, email the link around to friends and family, put a link or a screenshot on facebook, and then they're done with them, they don't need to buy. And watermarks do nothing to discourage this or encourage sales. Many of these people have every intention of buying prints, but then they never get around to it. Pre-pay solves this problem completely.
I think it's a great concept.
I totaly agree about people not buying online. I tried it and all it did was kill onsite sales. I would never do an event I could only sell online and I really wonder how the people that do it ( here anyway) make any worthwhile money out of it.
I think it would take a LOT of effort to get people to pre pay here. I couldn't even get them to book their kids ride for me to cover with no obligation to purchase images. I think people here are a bit slow on the uptake of these concepts.
Interesting thing there - out of 223 pre-pays (a little less than half the league), only 44 have ordered prints so far, and the season ends this Saturday. The print credits all expire 12/31/2013.
When ever I have done any sort of pre-booking for any sort of work, I have always had a significant amount of unclaimed shoots no matter how many times we followed them up.
I have been to sales seminars where they promote the coupon/ voucher model because of the amount of people that buy but never redeem them.
I went to one seminar and they were working on a 50% redemption rate. Many people in the audience thought that was too high and their redemption rates had been significantly lower.
Hmmmmmm... maybe next year I should offer a level of service that gets you unlimited prints at cost and free downloads... say for a $50 pre-pay... this would also circumvent SmugMug's 15% commission... hmmmmm...
Here's an idea for a business model....
Sell $50 Photo credit vouchers.
Never attend a game or shoot a thing. stay home or go out and enjoy yourself.
Refund with apologies anyones kid you missed getting any shots of. IE refund everyone that complains before the voucher expires therefore meeting your legal obligations ( here anyway)
Pocket the substantial revenue from unclaimed and expired Vouchers.
I was going to suggest doing digital files but not being familiar with Smugmut and similar sites, I didn't know you could just do digital downloads.
Although I have more printers than I could pole Vault over, I'm trying to push towards digital files and putting them on USB sticks. They are just soooo much faster and easier than burning CD's, printing the disk, printing the slick, putting the slick in the cover, putting the cd in the cover and general mucking around. Select a bunch of files, drag and drop, 10 sec later hand the drive to the customer, Done.
I was getting flack trying to sell images on CD for $35 ea, I get enthusiasm when I offer an image on USB for $40! ( $35 for the image plus the $4 odd the usb's cost me)
When I was shooting horses we did Cd's. A few years back now but 1-5 images was $50, 5-12 was $75 and 10+ ( Kids must be from same family) were $100. Disks were 50% of our sales.
For what I'm doing now I'm offering a similar thing only on USB. Because I don't have the numbers of pics of each kid to sell, I lowered the numbers of images they get and as many people have more than one kid I shoot, I have a slightly higher price again for multiple kids.
Although I say "Up to 10 images" in the second price point, I'm charging enough where I play good guy and just copy all the pics of all their kids, hand them the drive, smile, say Merry Christmas (no matter what the time of year) and endear myself to the parents. THAT keeps them real happy price wise because they are getting something they didn't expect and value for nothing. Even if I "only" get $75 for 3 kids shot, it's putting me consistently above my $1000 a day target. Last gig I did was only 1100 Kids and I did $6240. I'm plenty happy with that for 5.5 days work.
I really think for what you are doing ,the download thing would be an awesome winner.
You could do something like $50 for unlimited downloads of one game, $150 for unlimited downloads for the season.
A guy I spoke to years ago used to do team prepaid for BB. He charged from memory, $300 to cover the entire team and provide 15 Disks with all the images he shot. It was up to the parents to work out who was in and who wasn't, He shot every kid on the team and provided the disks whether his fee was split between 2 players or the entire team. He was covering 3 day Tourneys mainly and said he rarely got less than 2 teams coming on board in a day and often Could get both teams in a game and pull that off 3 times in a day. Very respectable money.
People seem to love digital files here. They tell ME how they can email them, print all the pics they want, put them on their phones and computers for screen savers, put them in slide shows etc.
A lot of the clients sell themselves better than I could.
So next year Jack, you offer prints starting from 5x7's AND Digital Downloads. :0)
I think it would take a LOT of effort to get people to pre pay here. I couldn't even get them to book their kids ride for me to cover with no obligation to purchase images. I think people here are a bit slow on the uptake of these concepts.
There is a culture and expectation in my town of having photos taken in Little League Baseball, which predates me since forever. Not so much in soccer or lacrosse. Must have something to do with the "National Pastime" and Rockwellian aspects of Baseball.
When ever I have done any sort of pre-booking for any sort of work, I have always had a significant amount of unclaimed shoots no matter how many times we followed them up.
I have been to sales seminars where they promote the coupon/ voucher model because of the amount of people that buy but never redeem them.
I went to one seminar and they were working on a 50% redemption rate. Many people in the audience thought that was too high and their redemption rates had been significantly lower.
I'm sure. Furthermore, the years where I was offering expiring coupons for early orders, I was astonished by how few people took advantage of them.
Here's an idea for a business model....
Sell $50 Photo credit vouchers.
Never attend a game or shoot a thing. stay home or go out and enjoy yourself.
Refund with apologies anyones kid you missed getting any shots of. IE refund everyone that complains before the voucher expires therefore meeting your legal obligations ( here anyway)
Pocket the substantial revenue from unclaimed and expired Vouchers.
Hahaha, good one.
Last gig I did was only 1100 Kids and I did $6240. I'm plenty happy with that for 5.5 days work.
Wait, that's $5.67 per kid. That's terrible! Am I missing something? Does that 1100 include kids whose parents didn't buy anything?
I really think for what you are doing ,the download thing would be an awesome winner.
You could do something like $50 for unlimited downloads of one game, $150 for unlimited downloads for the season.
Well, there is only time to shoot each team for one game. There are 45 teams and the season is about 40 days long. Also I can count on one hand how many people are spending over $100.
This year I had 3 pre-pay options:
$25 credit for $20
$50 credit for $40
$75 credit for $60.
Out of the 223 prepays, 38 were above $20. Maybe the unlimited downloads and prints at cost should start at $40.
A guy I spoke to years ago used to do team prepaid for BB. He charged from memory, $300 to cover the entire team and provide 15 Disks with all the images he shot. It was up to the parents to work out who was in and who wasn't, He shot every kid on the team and provided the disks whether his fee was split between 2 players or the entire team.
I have considered this model. Something about it doesn't sit right with me. Half the league isn't even interested in photos, so that means a lot of people will feel forced into it for the sake of the team, and the people who do pay won't be happy to subsidize photos for people who don't. People already have to open their wallets several times for Little League - for registration, equipment, at the snack shack, and for the fundraiser raffle (kids are supposed to sell tickets, but the parents usually end up just buying their kids tickets). I don't think I want to force anybody to have to reach into their wallet yet again if they don't want to.
So next year Jack, you offer prints starting from 5x7's AND Digital Downloads. :0)
I think I'll price 4x6 and 5x7 the same, and offer a $25 credit for $20, and an unlimited-downloads-and-prints-at-cost option at $40.
-Jack
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
I think I'll price 4x6 and 5x7 the same, and offer a $25 credit for $20, and an unlimited-downloads-and-prints-at-cost option at $40.
What they buy after given the two sizes at the same price would give you better statistics of 1) what people want to buy and 2) what they are willing to pay for a given size. Or rather than rely on past purchases as your statistics, maybe you should just query the others direct on whether or not they would move up to 5x7 if the 4x6 option went away.
______________________________________
I do take a tiny bit of exception to the implication that a larger print size differentiates whether or not the photographer/photography is 'more professional' or that profitable businesses is the main indicator as who can be termed professional. Since the advent of digital, many professionals have never sold a single print and are still amazing professional photographers. Many professional photographers only make some of their money from profitable private/small businesses or taking photos while deriving their main income from a different photography related source (i.e. camera shop owner, non-profit, etc.). There are too many individual scenarios on what constitutes professional photographer/photography to lump them together for the purposes of discussing how one individual can make their photos stand out against the masses. Jack, if that is your primary goal, then ask your customers what it will take to make them more interested in helping you reach that goal -- ask them why they don't buy 5x7 or posters or ....? Customer surveys can do wonders
_______________________________________
Glort, FYI according to the Craft and Hobby Association, in 2011 the United States scrapbooking and paper craft hobbies comprised +/- $4 billion of the $29 billion spent on crafts and hobbies. Scrapbookers take their hobby/craft very seriously!
AlliOOP, a focus group is a good idea. However my prices are low enough already that I could price my 4x6s and 5x7s at $5 or even $6 and still be cheaper than the other guy's 4x6. So I could just do it unilaterally. Also, I am going to offer an unlimited downloads and prints at cost option next year for exactly the reasons you state.
nipprdog, because these are from my gallery where they are for sale. See my "Aggressive Cropping" thread, it didn't work. If I had cropped that photo of the pitcher to 8x10 as it should be, the dad would still order a 4x6 and cut off the kid's foot. I'm not theorizing, that happened with other pictures I did crop.
-Jack
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
Wait, that's $5.67 per kid. That's terrible! Am I missing something? Does that 1100 include kids whose parents didn't buy anything?
Yes. That was the total number of participants.
I did about 300 orders but some of them were for multiple kids.
I was pre printing packages before this but when I started doing the decent gigs with 2000- 4500 kids, it just became impossible to get them all done in a weeks turnaround and shoot at the same time. 10 hours or so on the job and another 8 printing wasn't enough. I did manage to push and get just over an $11 average per kid ( total number of kids divided by gross sales) but still the amount of unsold prints was high.
On the last gigs I have been pushing the images on USB and that seems to have lifted the average quite nicely. It seems a shove to sell $35 packages where they get about 7 decnet size pics and a stack of wallets but getting $50 as we have bumped it to for a few images is a walk in the park.
I'm going to try selling usb's first and foremost with the prints as a side product and see how that flies.
Sure as hell would make things easier for me.
I do take a tiny bit of exception to the implication that a larger print size differentiates whether or not the photographer/photography is 'more professional' or that profitable businesses is the main indicator as who can be termed professional. ETC
I detect an amount of your concerns are related to what I have said so just let me clarify.
MY point with 5x7's looking more professional than 6x4's is not a statement about the professional status or ability of the photographer, it is about the PERCEPTION the larger print size gives the client.
I think if you put a wallet size in say a 6x4 size embossed, stylish looking folder with the photographers business name embossed on the front, that's going to look a whole load more professional ( and Stylish) than a 5x7 in a white paper bag or a plain white folder.
Size is irrelevant at the bottom line, it's what the customer PERCEIVES it's worth. I guarantee you, ask any amount of people you like in the street which pic out of a 6x4 and 5x7 would cost more or, which one they would pay more for and we know what the answer is going to be. Take it further and find out how much more they would be willing to pay and you will find the difference outstrips the higher cost every time as well.
For this reason ( and others) I stand by what I say that 5x7's ( or larger) LOOK and perceived as more professional than postage stamps.
AlliOOP, a focus group is a good idea. However my prices are low enough already that I could price my 4x6s and 5x7s at $5 or even $6 and still be cheaper than the other guy's 4x6. So I could just do it unilaterally. Also, I am going to offer an unlimited downloads and prints at cost option next year for exactly the reasons you state.
Who would your focus group be?
If you ask the parents you would have to ask them from outside the market you are in because otherwise they are likely to nominate the low prices you have educated them towards. By the same token, ask parents where the shooters they have been buying off have a higher price and you'll probably get an average around that.
Your prices are very low to me even though I understand you are not out for profit per se.
I think anything under $10 for a 5x7 is very cheap. I would also be putting the unlimited download thing at $50.
The perception I get from these couple of threads is that shooters over all have a misbelief in what people will pay.
I just looked on the site of a friend in the US who does solely action sport and he is charging $14.99 for a 5x7 and $19.99 for an 8x12. The guy sells about 1000 prints a week and is booked pretty much flat out with covering multiple events many weekends so he obviously isn't pricing himself out of the market.
He is also charging $35 for a single image on CD.
I don't think you should be concerning yourself with prices for anything you are remotely thinking of Charging Jack.
Hope your season finishes on a High today.
Hopefully next week you'll get a deluge of orders.
Your prices are very low to me even though I understand you are not out for profit per se.
I think anything under $10 for a 5x7 is very cheap. I would also be putting the unlimited download thing at $50.
Maine is not a very affluent part of the US. Although I am in an affluent part of it, people are accustomed to Maine prices. The market around here is basically $6-7 for a 4x6, $9 for a 5x7, $12 for an 8x10. Those numbers are from other pro's websites. But after 4 years of this, 8x10s just don't sell in any significant quantity.
I just looked on the site of a friend in the US who does solely action sport and he is charging $14.99 for a 5x7 and $19.99 for an 8x12. The guy sells about 1000 prints a week and is booked pretty much flat out with covering multiple events many weekends so he obviously isn't pricing himself out of the market.
He is also charging $35 for a single image on CD.
Where is that, Beverly Hills? Hilton Head? ;-) Hats off to him.
I don't think you should be concerning yourself with prices for anything you are remotely thinking of Charging Jack.
Hope your season finishes on a High today.
Hopefully next week you'll get a deluge of orders.
Thanks. That's the beauty of pre-pay, I already have the orders and the money. A lot of people will put it off and put it off and forget, or just enjoy them online.
-Jack
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
Your prices are very low to me even though I understand you are not out for profit per se.
I think anything under $10 for a 5x7 is very cheap. I would also be putting the unlimited download thing at $50.
The perception I get from these couple of threads is that shooters over all have a misbelief in what people will pay.
The U.S. is too large and with regional and cultural splits to make a statement on what one person or group of people will or won't pay. I sell my 4x6 handmade removable photo cards (cardstock + dye sub printed card) for $2.50 each or 4/$7.99 in multiple rural America locations. When I raised the price to $3.00 each and 4/$8.50 the sales almost completely stopped. Again to note this was in different regions across the rural U.S. I also quantify that they are not people based photography (I don't shoot people) which has yet another emotional connection layering to it. Then it a completely different scenario in urban America. And it gets even more complicated selling to specific groups when genre of the photography is taken into consideration. About the only thing consistent in selling photos in the U.S. is the U.S. consumer has a use and discard mentality. Unless it is bought for a very specific purpose (Ex. school photos, sports, family groups, wedding, etc.) a 4x6 or even 5x7 is considered a one time purchase that can be "forgotten" (given away, left in a drawer, put in a scrapbook, etc.) or disposed of without too much consequence. Anything larger and it becomes a "justified" purchase instead.
So why sell at such low prices? In a nutshell, giving back is a debt that I have to repay.
Jack has a pretty good gig going to be asked to return each year, sells to a specific group that wants his services and provides excellent product at a more than fair price. Making his 5x7 and 4x6 the same price and upping the price slightly to compensate for the change is a good test scenario.
Jack -- please let us know how it works out for you.
I too was thinking Beverly Hills or perhaps The Hamptons? Maybe even the upper East Side of Manhattan perhaps -- I bow to his business success.
He travels all over the country and beyond.
Next month I'm shooting with him here in OZ and towards the end of the year we'll be going back to New Zealand.
Obviously his business is very successful and it's taken 10 years of hard work to get it to where it is.
He doesn't approach clients anymore, they approach him and he sets the terms of how he will cover the event and what he charges etc. His services have become seen as being a mark of a good event so he picks and chooses his clients as he wants.
Their are still some shows he wants that the organisers want to dictate what he can offer his work for but he's not desperate for the work especially to make no money from and slowly, about 1 a year, these people are seeing what he does at other places and agreeing to what he wants.
The U.S. is too large and with regional and cultural splits to make a statement on what one person or group of people will or won't pay. I sell my 4x6 handmade removable photo cards (cardstock + dye sub printed card) for $2.50 each or 4/$7.99 in multiple rural America locations. When I raised the price to $3.00 each and 4/$8.50 the sales almost completely stopped.
I'm not disputing what anyone says or putting them down but the thing is I have never heard anyone say that people in their area will pay decent prices, no matter where they live.
Shooters always think that the people in their are are poor. Obviously some are but equally as obvious is the fact that some areas must be prepared to spend good money and not be tight arses but you NEVER hear a shooter saying that.
Again, not pointing the finger at anyone here but as a very wide observation, I think shooters are far too focused on price and not enough on content and business. Whenever a discussion comes up, it's always " That's OK for someone else but everyone is poor in my area".
The whole world can't be broke like shooters make out.
I have learned a lot about marketing and I still learn with every gig I do. Every business wants the golden goose customers but so few actually cater or do anything to attract them. They are all too busy catering to the ones they thing are poor and won't spend any money. For a long time now, I have always made sure to cater to the people out there that will spend the big dollars as much or more really than the tight arses.
You don't sell the high end product to every one but not everyone buys the lowest priced offering as well. If I do 10% of my sales as the top end product, it probably influences my average by 20% because of the amount of the low end sales it compensates.
I have related this several times before but I learned a lot on a recent gigs I did about what people will and won't pay.
I was offering single images on cd for $35. I was getting a lot of flack over it with people thinking that was basically a ripoff. For reasons of expediency mainly, I bought some USB drives, bumped the cost of the images more than the cost of the drives to $40 and now $50 and beyond and have people telling me what great value that is. We are now charging more again and still the people seem to think they are getting a bargain. The only thing that changed was the packaging and the price which went UP.
If you are having trouble getting the money you want for the product, maybe it's time to look at that product and see if it's what the customers want or you want to offer? I know I have fallen into that trap. People will make excuses to justify what they want to own the same as they will make excuses not to buy what doesn't impress them.
Nearly every time out I try to test a different product, pricing structure or offer.
Last year the runaway success item was one that was come up with in the case of equipment trouble.
One of the package actions in PS got screwed up and my girls didn't know how to re-load it. Thinking on their feet they substituted another pre-made layout for one sheet of the package and found far better customer preference for that. In the end that layout accounted for 54% of our sales.
We offered it subsequently and now it's by far our biggest seller and we offer it at a higher price than the other layout so make more profit on it as well.
Certainly I have been to areas where the mindset is what we offer is overly expensive where as the last place we came from every 3rd clients was telling us what great value our work was. When we get to these areas we suggestive sell and just push harder and more than once we have come out above our average. I know a couple of places we did where the clients drove us nut with trying to bargain and whining about price turned out to be 2 of the best gigs we have done.
It is also fact that the worst one I have done was in the most affluent area and other places with money have also had disappointing results.
Research has shown time and time again that photos have a High sentimental value are are kept, treasured and in fact NOT thrown away. If your clients are treating pic as disposable, I would suggest that one needs to look at why that is with a view to building more value and attachment to that pic However it needs to be done. I also suspect that if the prices are low for the products, they will be seen as much more disposable than something I client regarded as a substantial price for what they bought.
I also don't worry about the few people a day that will tell me the pics are too exy and justify not buying by saying they just had school pics done or dance shots or have their own SLR camera or whatever. I used to worry about these walkoffs but then I came to realise that standing behind these people there was someone that wanted the top package for all their kids and thought the pics were great value. They are the ones to concentrate on!
I now make no joke of " The carpark test" when I go look at places.
If the carpark is full of Mercs and Audi's and Range rovers and BMW's I get REAL nervous. Experience shows these places just don't have the best averages for us.
If the car park is full of Holdens, Toyota's, Subaru's and Ford's, my expectations are much better.
Certainly this was borne out by the last gig I did that was in a very average area but our sales were great for the number of people we shot.
The irony is if the better areas are a tougher sell and the ones with a lower income are more profitable, then aren't the areas many shooters complain about the ones you actually want?
I think it's important to keep an open mind, to offer premium priced products for those that will buy them the same as shooters always worry about the low end of the market and to test new products, ideas and concepts constantly so you fine tune what you are doing as best as possible.
I now make no joke of " The carpark test" when I go look at places.
If the carpark is full of Mercs and Audi's and Range rovers and BMW's I get REAL nervous. Experience shows these places just don't have the best averages for us.
If the car park is full of Holdens, Toyota's, Subaru's and Ford's, my expectations are much better.
Certainly this was borne out by the last gig I did that was in a very average area but our sales were great for the number of people we shot.
I wonder if the folks driving the more expensive cars can afford expensive camera equipment, so they think they can do it themselves.
I wonder if the folks driving the more expensive cars can afford expensive camera equipment, so they think they can do it themselves.
Interesting discussion.
Its more than just that. In fact I think that has little to do with it. People with money seem to be very leary of parting with it, except in very particular circumstances. (One can say that one never accumulated money by spending it, and there is a lot of truth to that).
You opened a can of worms Glort. Should I leave the lid open or slam it shut? WTH, let me add to the squiggles .
First though, let me apologize to Jack for the upcoming hijack. Then let me state most all my personal observations as to be considered the majority are based off the typical bell curve. Not the exceptions that will always exist.
Its more than just that. In fact I think that has little to do with it. People with money seem to be very leary of parting with it, except in very particular circumstances. (One can say that one never accumulated money by spending it, and there is a lot of truth to that).
This is a home run statement. Now to make it a grand slam: People with money will part with said money when they are using it to get a different and more intense emotional motivator to replace their primary emotional motivator: money! The hard part is finding the other motivator and it rarely is a photo. Photos lack emotional or logical pull for the rich. The motivator usually has to be adrenaline related – like fear, euphoria, risk, etc.. Hence they have little problem dropping a million dollars plus to travel to space but won’t open their wallet to pay for a poster for their kids.
He travels all over the country and beyond.
Next month I'm shooting with him here in OZ and towards the end of the year we'll be going back to New Zealand.
Obviously his business is very successful and it's taken 10 years of hard work to get it to where it is.
He doesn't approach clients anymore, they approach him and he sets the terms of how he will cover the event and what he charges etc. His services have become seen as being a mark of a good event so he picks and chooses his clients as he wants.
Their are still some shows he wants that the organisers want to dictate what he can offer his work for but he's not desperate for the work especially to make no money from and slowly, about 1 a year, these people are seeing what he does at other places and agreeing to what he wants.
Based on your descriptions, like you, he is an event photography vendor. That isn’t to say that you both aren’t also photographers, but it does show that your main motivation isn’t the taking of the photos per se but to actually vend the photos to customers. That is a very small slice of the photography industry; very lucrative too as long as one follows the path of already prearranged events – as in the examples you have previously posted -- sports, horse events, antique shows, car shows, weddings, so on and so forth. Event photography is a prearranged genre. You already know that the people attending are there for the event and are one step closer to knowing the motivation that will lead them to give up their money.
I'm not disputing what anyone says or putting them down but the thing is I have never heard anyone say that people in their area will pay decent prices, no matter where they live.
Shooters always think that the people in their area are poor. Obviously some are but equally as obvious is the fact that some areas must be prepared to spend good money and not be tight arses but you NEVER hear a shooter saying that.
Again, not pointing the finger at anyone here but as a very wide observation, I think shooters are far too focused on price and not enough on content and business. Whenever a discussion comes up, it's always " That's OK for someone else but everyone is poor in my area".
The whole world can't be broke like shooters make out.
That may well be true. Whether or not that particular decision is intentional or by accident is what should make the difference. It comes back to the individual’s desire of why they are shooting. As already stated earlier, Jack must find his motivation and then determine for himself why he is shooting and them make his decisions using that criteria. Without that motivational information, it is hard to give proper advice on any level.
I’ve known several (not an all blanket statement) that are perfectly happy with what people are willing to pay in their area for their GENRE of photography but only when it divided by genre, not across genre lines. More on genres later...
I have related this several times before but I learned a lot on a recent gigs I did about what people will and won't pay.
I was offering single images on cd for $35. I was getting a lot of flack over it with people thinking that was basically a ripoff. For reasons of expediency mainly, I bought some USB drives, bumped the cost of the images more than the cost of the drives to $40 and now $50 and beyond and have people telling me what great value that is. We are now charging more again and still the people seem to think they are getting a bargain. The only thing that changed was the packaging and the price which went UP.
The method of distribution no longer matters…really…it no longer matters in digital. The emotional value isn’t in the means of distribution but meeting the other primary emotional need of the individual customer in a given genre. More often than not, in the case of digital, the emotional need is ease of use and convenience. Hence those paying to get less on USB drives or even paying for email delivery. It is perceived as a better value because it is more convenient. Those that are willing to give up the most money are those making an emotional decision and not a logical one. Hence those rich money types are also usually the more logical types.
If you are having trouble getting the money you want for the product, maybe it's time to look at that product and see if it's what the customers want or you want to offer? I know I have fallen into that trap. People will make excuses to justify what they want to own the same as they will make excuses not to buy what doesn't impress them.
It isn’t the product; it is the subjects (genre) I choose to sell. Just as a matter of record, I’m perfectly happy with getting $2.50 for a card. The real life example was only to show what could happen in a real life raise of prices. I intentionally do not photograph or target items to sell to a specific group. Therefore my products are sound but the subjects are admittedly boring or should I say “finding the right person at the right time” subjects. I stay away from many photography genres. For example, if I made the same custom product from wedding photos and targeted the bride to use them as her thank you cards, I could sell a great deal of the cards at a premium price and though I’ve been asked many times to do so, I choose/have chosen not to.
Research has shown time and time again that photos have a High sentimental value are are kept, treasured and in fact NOT thrown away. If your clients are treating pic as disposable, I would suggest that one needs to look at why that is with a view to building more value and attachment to that pic However it needs to be done. I also suspect that if the prices are low for the products, they will be seen as much more disposable than something I client regarded as a substantial price for what they bought.
Glort, you cater to a high sentimental value segment of photography. Those genres include vendor, wedding, car, sports, people, portrait, action, etc. Hats off to you to be able to stay in business as long as you have. That said, the overall majority of photos taken by both professionals and advanced amateur camera lovers are genres that are not high sentimental value. Whole genres are wrapped around the one time use of analog or digital images -- stock, nature, food, animal, advertising, etc., so on and so forth. I at one time had the link to digital data loss statistics (somewhere in or around 2010) but I can’t easily find it at the moment so I’m going to qualify this detail with the last time I investigated the numbers showed the disposable genres outweighed the sentimental ones. Again, I’ve made the conscious decision not to seek profit for personal reasons. I simply would advise others to discover for themselves what their personal motivations for being in any given photography genre and/or taking photos is.
The irony is if the better areas are a tougher sell and the ones with a lower income are more profitable, then aren't the areas many shooters complain about the ones you actually want?
I think it's important to keep an open mind, to offer premium priced products for those that will buy them the same as shooters always worry about the low end of the market and to test new products, ideas and concepts constantly so you fine tune what you are doing as best as possible.
And that makes you a darn fine businessman!
Just because I personally have made the choices I have, that is not to say others (even within my own family), haven’t made different ones that are better for their needs. I have a family member that owns a diverse art business (www.busybeearts.com) and sells more in a higher end pricing genre than any other items on the low end of the scale. To each their own…
Happy shooting!
PS - Oh Glort, I use your postings here on dgrin as a framework to help said family member know what has to be done to become an effective next generation business person :-). The art comes easy, the business end not so much.
Comments
What I said was:
"Look, you're not doing anything artistic here. People are paying for someone with good equipment and the right timing to push a button at the right time."
Which you didn't contradict, and I elaborated on later. I don't know if it is "important", and it's certainly "easier" than a commercial photoshoot of the new Lexus or an 8 hour wedding.
1) help kids feel like stars
or
2) increase profits
The fixation on 5x7 as the smallest print is irrelevant to #2. The OP could simply charge the same price for 4x6 as 5x7 or do a number of other things to drive up profit. Or shift the profit more to the booking end and away from print sales. Again, it becomes a question of whether or not this is a business or emotional decision. What some of us are trying to point out is that it is important to understand your clientele and what there wants/needs are. Then find a profitable way of meeting those needs. If you're going to cloud the business aspect by projecting your own values as a parent onto your clients ("I dont understand why every parent doesn't want large sports photos on the wall") that's a problem.
So, I submit it is time for the OP to decide what the goal is - to have parents display large images on the walls so kids feel like stars or to increase his profits.
In general, I can only surmise that the market in your country is vastly different than the market here. I don't know a single shooter in the United States that is shooting Little League and making $1000 a day. None. It's entirely possible not a single shooter in the US is as good a business man as you are. But the only people I know of that are bringing in that type of revenue are people shooting tournaments or gymnastics meets with multiple shooters. A completely different business than what the OP is doing. It's also possible that there are plenty of US based sports shooters making that type of profit on average for a day's work and they just don't come to Dgrin.
Quite honestly, my own business shifted my profit 90% to up-front fees. I don't rely on prints to make my profit. Now, I also admit I don't do a lot of the sports work anymore because the market isn't there in my area to make the profits I want for my time.
Now if the OP cares to look on other forums, one of the best baseball photogs in the US - Paul Aleese (he routinely photographs the Little League World Series) can be checked out. He's got some good information on what is profitable and what isn't here in the US. Bottom Line - if it's profitability that you're after - the notion of whether 4x6 is offered as a print size in your smugmug site is far from a determining factor.
And, most importantly - in NEITHER case was my profit based primarily upon what print sizes the client ordered. And in neither case was I paying Smugmug 15% for fulfillment.
Similarly I photographed the daughter of another client - in Lax and then, wait for it, senior photo. In Lax I captured the only goal the girl made (she wasn't a starter) - but Lax isn't the end-all-be-all of her existence - certainly not important enough to be on the wall. What is on the wall in their home? The senior photo and a "family" shot the husband commissioned for Mother's Day 2 years ago. Like most parents, the lax shots were "nice to look at" and "great photos" but they really didn't capture that important of a moment and the resulting image just doesn't compete with a staged photo for how it looks on the wall. To be sure, there are parents obsessed with their children's sports - a previous client insisted on collages and 8x10s for his "sports room" of his son. But those parents are few and far between in most league sports.
Ask a potential client to pay $300 for a photo shoot one child at a sports event and most here will laugh at you. Ask them to spend $300 for senior pictures and they're ready to go. Ask for $150 for 1/2 work to take a few photos at the park for "mother's day present" (where you're editing 8 photos not 100) and they're fine with it.
So - the moral of the story is - just because YOU as a photographer/parent have one set of values - don't assume those values are indicative of your clients as a whole. And if you really care about allowing parents to post precious moments on the wall, it is often useful to let them tell YOU what those precious moments are.
Like you, this year I decided to get my money up front, rather than wait for print sales that may not happen at all. I only shoot kids who's parents prepay a minimum of $20, which I then turn into a $25 print credit. This has solved a great number of issues, and profit is up.
If all I cared about was profit I would forget action shots and just do boring T&I. Or I'd forget sports altogether and concentrate on my real money-maker, real estate. Next Sunday I'm shooting 2 houses. I'll make $800. And with the 5D3's in-cam HDR, it's so easy it's almost stealing.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
To you, but what about your customers? Most people I deal with still scrapbook or photo album 4x6's. They just do -- scrapbooks are standard 12x12 sizes. It leaves the proper ratio for a 4x6 to look good but a 5x7 not so much. Inertia also takes hold and the customer stays with what they have until they are forced into something else. As a scrapbooker, I personally have scrapbooks already "designed" for 4x6 prints and wouldn't switch over to 5x7's unless I absolutely had to.
Do you want profit, or good will or to give the customer what they ultimately want? Once you have answered that for yourself and your customers, then you should know whether to drop or keep 4x6 prints. Glort's advice can't be beat for pure profit and business sense. But -- to add a little mystery to this posting about the inner workings of US office politics -- Glort's advice would have cost me a full time non-photography job if I hadn't built up good will. When the seniority/layoff games hit, I called in my favors. Sometimes the benefit to our photography isn't money.
Only you know what you want your priorities to be when providing your services...
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
Pre-pay is the only way to fly. A lot of people simply view the pictures online, email the link around to friends and family, put a link or a screenshot on facebook, and then they're done with them, they don't need to buy. And watermarks do nothing to discourage this or encourage sales. Many of these people have every intention of buying prints, but then they never get around to it. Pre-pay solves this problem completely.
My minimum pre-pay is $20. I then give the customer a coupon code for a print credit worth 25% more if they do it before their team's picture day. (i.e., $25 coupon for a $20 pre-pay)
I would get out of the print business altogether and only sell pre-pays for digital files, but so far my tab at SmugMug is net positive - some people are spending more than their print credit when they finally order prints. We'll see how it shakes out after all the coupons are used. So far I am ahead by $300.
Interesting thing there - out of 223 pre-pays (a little less than half the league), only 44 have ordered prints so far, and the season ends this Saturday. The print credits all expire 12/31/2013.
Hmmmmmm... maybe next year I should offer a level of service that gets you unlimited prints at cost and free downloads... say for a $50 pre-pay... this would also circumvent SmugMug's 15% commission... hmmmmm...
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
If these were my kids I'd buy them posters to hang in their rooms.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
I wouldn't. A: Rooms are cluttered enough, and there's not really wall space in the house for temporary posters b: We frame things we put on the wall so they look nice, that would be an extra cost c: It's a nice picture, but just making it bigger doesn't make it better - there's nothing added to it, like the other person who added the team name and all that to make it "fun" . As a kid, I don't every remember wanting a 5 foot high picture of myself to hang in my room.
It's just a personal thing - it isn't a product I'm interested in (as a parent).
I also offer custom posters with graphics and multiple images.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
I think it's a great concept.
I totaly agree about people not buying online. I tried it and all it did was kill onsite sales. I would never do an event I could only sell online and I really wonder how the people that do it ( here anyway) make any worthwhile money out of it.
I think it would take a LOT of effort to get people to pre pay here. I couldn't even get them to book their kids ride for me to cover with no obligation to purchase images. I think people here are a bit slow on the uptake of these concepts.
When ever I have done any sort of pre-booking for any sort of work, I have always had a significant amount of unclaimed shoots no matter how many times we followed them up.
I have been to sales seminars where they promote the coupon/ voucher model because of the amount of people that buy but never redeem them.
I went to one seminar and they were working on a 50% redemption rate. Many people in the audience thought that was too high and their redemption rates had been significantly lower.
Here's an idea for a business model....
Sell $50 Photo credit vouchers.
Never attend a game or shoot a thing. stay home or go out and enjoy yourself.
Refund with apologies anyones kid you missed getting any shots of. IE refund everyone that complains before the voucher expires therefore meeting your legal obligations ( here anyway)
Pocket the substantial revenue from unclaimed and expired Vouchers.
I was going to suggest doing digital files but not being familiar with Smugmut and similar sites, I didn't know you could just do digital downloads.
Although I have more printers than I could pole Vault over, I'm trying to push towards digital files and putting them on USB sticks. They are just soooo much faster and easier than burning CD's, printing the disk, printing the slick, putting the slick in the cover, putting the cd in the cover and general mucking around. Select a bunch of files, drag and drop, 10 sec later hand the drive to the customer, Done.
I was getting flack trying to sell images on CD for $35 ea, I get enthusiasm when I offer an image on USB for $40! ( $35 for the image plus the $4 odd the usb's cost me)
When I was shooting horses we did Cd's. A few years back now but 1-5 images was $50, 5-12 was $75 and 10+ ( Kids must be from same family) were $100. Disks were 50% of our sales.
For what I'm doing now I'm offering a similar thing only on USB. Because I don't have the numbers of pics of each kid to sell, I lowered the numbers of images they get and as many people have more than one kid I shoot, I have a slightly higher price again for multiple kids.
Although I say "Up to 10 images" in the second price point, I'm charging enough where I play good guy and just copy all the pics of all their kids, hand them the drive, smile, say Merry Christmas (no matter what the time of year) and endear myself to the parents. THAT keeps them real happy price wise because they are getting something they didn't expect and value for nothing. Even if I "only" get $75 for 3 kids shot, it's putting me consistently above my $1000 a day target. Last gig I did was only 1100 Kids and I did $6240. I'm plenty happy with that for 5.5 days work.
I really think for what you are doing ,the download thing would be an awesome winner.
You could do something like $50 for unlimited downloads of one game, $150 for unlimited downloads for the season.
A guy I spoke to years ago used to do team prepaid for BB. He charged from memory, $300 to cover the entire team and provide 15 Disks with all the images he shot. It was up to the parents to work out who was in and who wasn't, He shot every kid on the team and provided the disks whether his fee was split between 2 players or the entire team. He was covering 3 day Tourneys mainly and said he rarely got less than 2 teams coming on board in a day and often Could get both teams in a game and pull that off 3 times in a day. Very respectable money.
People seem to love digital files here. They tell ME how they can email them, print all the pics they want, put them on their phones and computers for screen savers, put them in slide shows etc.
A lot of the clients sell themselves better than I could.
So next year Jack, you offer prints starting from 5x7's AND Digital Downloads. :0)
Some will be interested in a poster, some won't.
Same as anything.
There is a culture and expectation in my town of having photos taken in Little League Baseball, which predates me since forever. Not so much in soccer or lacrosse. Must have something to do with the "National Pastime" and Rockwellian aspects of Baseball.
I'm sure. Furthermore, the years where I was offering expiring coupons for early orders, I was astonished by how few people took advantage of them.
Hahaha, good one.
Wait, that's $5.67 per kid. That's terrible! Am I missing something? Does that 1100 include kids whose parents didn't buy anything?
Well, there is only time to shoot each team for one game. There are 45 teams and the season is about 40 days long. Also I can count on one hand how many people are spending over $100.
This year I had 3 pre-pay options:
$25 credit for $20
$50 credit for $40
$75 credit for $60.
Out of the 223 prepays, 38 were above $20. Maybe the unlimited downloads and prints at cost should start at $40.
I have considered this model. Something about it doesn't sit right with me. Half the league isn't even interested in photos, so that means a lot of people will feel forced into it for the sake of the team, and the people who do pay won't be happy to subsidize photos for people who don't. People already have to open their wallets several times for Little League - for registration, equipment, at the snack shack, and for the fundraiser raffle (kids are supposed to sell tickets, but the parents usually end up just buying their kids tickets). I don't think I want to force anybody to have to reach into their wallet yet again if they don't want to.
I think I'll price 4x6 and 5x7 the same, and offer a $25 credit for $20, and an unlimited-downloads-and-prints-at-cost option at $40.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
What they buy after given the two sizes at the same price would give you better statistics of 1) what people want to buy and 2) what they are willing to pay for a given size. Or rather than rely on past purchases as your statistics, maybe you should just query the others direct on whether or not they would move up to 5x7 if the 4x6 option went away.
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I do take a tiny bit of exception to the implication that a larger print size differentiates whether or not the photographer/photography is 'more professional' or that profitable businesses is the main indicator as who can be termed professional. Since the advent of digital, many professionals have never sold a single print and are still amazing professional photographers. Many professional photographers only make some of their money from profitable private/small businesses or taking photos while deriving their main income from a different photography related source (i.e. camera shop owner, non-profit, etc.). There are too many individual scenarios on what constitutes professional photographer/photography to lump them together for the purposes of discussing how one individual can make their photos stand out against the masses. Jack, if that is your primary goal, then ask your customers what it will take to make them more interested in helping you reach that goal -- ask them why they don't buy 5x7 or posters or ....? Customer surveys can do wonders
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Glort, FYI according to the Craft and Hobby Association, in 2011 the United States scrapbooking and paper craft hobbies comprised +/- $4 billion of the $29 billion spent on crafts and hobbies. Scrapbookers take their hobby/craft very seriously!
So why did you post these in 4x6 format??
http://www.knippixels.com
nipprdog, because these are from my gallery where they are for sale. See my "Aggressive Cropping" thread, it didn't work. If I had cropped that photo of the pitcher to 8x10 as it should be, the dad would still order a 4x6 and cut off the kid's foot. I'm not theorizing, that happened with other pictures I did crop.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
Yes. That was the total number of participants.
I did about 300 orders but some of them were for multiple kids.
I was pre printing packages before this but when I started doing the decent gigs with 2000- 4500 kids, it just became impossible to get them all done in a weeks turnaround and shoot at the same time. 10 hours or so on the job and another 8 printing wasn't enough. I did manage to push and get just over an $11 average per kid ( total number of kids divided by gross sales) but still the amount of unsold prints was high.
On the last gigs I have been pushing the images on USB and that seems to have lifted the average quite nicely. It seems a shove to sell $35 packages where they get about 7 decnet size pics and a stack of wallets but getting $50 as we have bumped it to for a few images is a walk in the park.
I'm going to try selling usb's first and foremost with the prints as a side product and see how that flies.
Sure as hell would make things easier for me.
I detect an amount of your concerns are related to what I have said so just let me clarify.
MY point with 5x7's looking more professional than 6x4's is not a statement about the professional status or ability of the photographer, it is about the PERCEPTION the larger print size gives the client.
I think if you put a wallet size in say a 6x4 size embossed, stylish looking folder with the photographers business name embossed on the front, that's going to look a whole load more professional ( and Stylish) than a 5x7 in a white paper bag or a plain white folder.
Size is irrelevant at the bottom line, it's what the customer PERCEIVES it's worth. I guarantee you, ask any amount of people you like in the street which pic out of a 6x4 and 5x7 would cost more or, which one they would pay more for and we know what the answer is going to be. Take it further and find out how much more they would be willing to pay and you will find the difference outstrips the higher cost every time as well.
For this reason ( and others) I stand by what I say that 5x7's ( or larger) LOOK and perceived as more professional than postage stamps.
Who would your focus group be?
If you ask the parents you would have to ask them from outside the market you are in because otherwise they are likely to nominate the low prices you have educated them towards. By the same token, ask parents where the shooters they have been buying off have a higher price and you'll probably get an average around that.
Your prices are very low to me even though I understand you are not out for profit per se.
I think anything under $10 for a 5x7 is very cheap. I would also be putting the unlimited download thing at $50.
The perception I get from these couple of threads is that shooters over all have a misbelief in what people will pay.
I just looked on the site of a friend in the US who does solely action sport and he is charging $14.99 for a 5x7 and $19.99 for an 8x12. The guy sells about 1000 prints a week and is booked pretty much flat out with covering multiple events many weekends so he obviously isn't pricing himself out of the market.
He is also charging $35 for a single image on CD.
I don't think you should be concerning yourself with prices for anything you are remotely thinking of Charging Jack.
Hope your season finishes on a High today.
Hopefully next week you'll get a deluge of orders.
ehh, I'm not going to bother.
Maine is not a very affluent part of the US. Although I am in an affluent part of it, people are accustomed to Maine prices. The market around here is basically $6-7 for a 4x6, $9 for a 5x7, $12 for an 8x10. Those numbers are from other pro's websites. But after 4 years of this, 8x10s just don't sell in any significant quantity.
Where is that, Beverly Hills? Hilton Head? ;-) Hats off to him.
Thanks. That's the beauty of pre-pay, I already have the orders and the money. A lot of people will put it off and put it off and forget, or just enjoy them online.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
I too was thinking Beverly Hills or perhaps The Hamptons? Maybe even the upper East Side of Manhattan perhaps -- I bow to his business success.
The U.S. is too large and with regional and cultural splits to make a statement on what one person or group of people will or won't pay. I sell my 4x6 handmade removable photo cards (cardstock + dye sub printed card) for $2.50 each or 4/$7.99 in multiple rural America locations. When I raised the price to $3.00 each and 4/$8.50 the sales almost completely stopped. Again to note this was in different regions across the rural U.S. I also quantify that they are not people based photography (I don't shoot people) which has yet another emotional connection layering to it. Then it a completely different scenario in urban America. And it gets even more complicated selling to specific groups when genre of the photography is taken into consideration. About the only thing consistent in selling photos in the U.S. is the U.S. consumer has a use and discard mentality. Unless it is bought for a very specific purpose (Ex. school photos, sports, family groups, wedding, etc.) a 4x6 or even 5x7 is considered a one time purchase that can be "forgotten" (given away, left in a drawer, put in a scrapbook, etc.) or disposed of without too much consequence. Anything larger and it becomes a "justified" purchase instead.
So why sell at such low prices? In a nutshell, giving back is a debt that I have to repay.
Jack has a pretty good gig going to be asked to return each year, sells to a specific group that wants his services and provides excellent product at a more than fair price. Making his 5x7 and 4x6 the same price and upping the price slightly to compensate for the change is a good test scenario.
Jack -- please let us know how it works out for you.
He travels all over the country and beyond.
Next month I'm shooting with him here in OZ and towards the end of the year we'll be going back to New Zealand.
Obviously his business is very successful and it's taken 10 years of hard work to get it to where it is.
He doesn't approach clients anymore, they approach him and he sets the terms of how he will cover the event and what he charges etc. His services have become seen as being a mark of a good event so he picks and chooses his clients as he wants.
Their are still some shows he wants that the organisers want to dictate what he can offer his work for but he's not desperate for the work especially to make no money from and slowly, about 1 a year, these people are seeing what he does at other places and agreeing to what he wants.
I'm not disputing what anyone says or putting them down but the thing is I have never heard anyone say that people in their area will pay decent prices, no matter where they live.
Shooters always think that the people in their are are poor. Obviously some are but equally as obvious is the fact that some areas must be prepared to spend good money and not be tight arses but you NEVER hear a shooter saying that.
Again, not pointing the finger at anyone here but as a very wide observation, I think shooters are far too focused on price and not enough on content and business. Whenever a discussion comes up, it's always " That's OK for someone else but everyone is poor in my area".
The whole world can't be broke like shooters make out.
I have learned a lot about marketing and I still learn with every gig I do. Every business wants the golden goose customers but so few actually cater or do anything to attract them. They are all too busy catering to the ones they thing are poor and won't spend any money. For a long time now, I have always made sure to cater to the people out there that will spend the big dollars as much or more really than the tight arses.
You don't sell the high end product to every one but not everyone buys the lowest priced offering as well. If I do 10% of my sales as the top end product, it probably influences my average by 20% because of the amount of the low end sales it compensates.
I have related this several times before but I learned a lot on a recent gigs I did about what people will and won't pay.
I was offering single images on cd for $35. I was getting a lot of flack over it with people thinking that was basically a ripoff. For reasons of expediency mainly, I bought some USB drives, bumped the cost of the images more than the cost of the drives to $40 and now $50 and beyond and have people telling me what great value that is. We are now charging more again and still the people seem to think they are getting a bargain. The only thing that changed was the packaging and the price which went UP.
If you are having trouble getting the money you want for the product, maybe it's time to look at that product and see if it's what the customers want or you want to offer? I know I have fallen into that trap. People will make excuses to justify what they want to own the same as they will make excuses not to buy what doesn't impress them.
Nearly every time out I try to test a different product, pricing structure or offer.
Last year the runaway success item was one that was come up with in the case of equipment trouble.
One of the package actions in PS got screwed up and my girls didn't know how to re-load it. Thinking on their feet they substituted another pre-made layout for one sheet of the package and found far better customer preference for that. In the end that layout accounted for 54% of our sales.
We offered it subsequently and now it's by far our biggest seller and we offer it at a higher price than the other layout so make more profit on it as well.
Certainly I have been to areas where the mindset is what we offer is overly expensive where as the last place we came from every 3rd clients was telling us what great value our work was. When we get to these areas we suggestive sell and just push harder and more than once we have come out above our average. I know a couple of places we did where the clients drove us nut with trying to bargain and whining about price turned out to be 2 of the best gigs we have done.
It is also fact that the worst one I have done was in the most affluent area and other places with money have also had disappointing results.
Research has shown time and time again that photos have a High sentimental value are are kept, treasured and in fact NOT thrown away. If your clients are treating pic as disposable, I would suggest that one needs to look at why that is with a view to building more value and attachment to that pic However it needs to be done. I also suspect that if the prices are low for the products, they will be seen as much more disposable than something I client regarded as a substantial price for what they bought.
I also don't worry about the few people a day that will tell me the pics are too exy and justify not buying by saying they just had school pics done or dance shots or have their own SLR camera or whatever. I used to worry about these walkoffs but then I came to realise that standing behind these people there was someone that wanted the top package for all their kids and thought the pics were great value. They are the ones to concentrate on!
I now make no joke of " The carpark test" when I go look at places.
If the carpark is full of Mercs and Audi's and Range rovers and BMW's I get REAL nervous. Experience shows these places just don't have the best averages for us.
If the car park is full of Holdens, Toyota's, Subaru's and Ford's, my expectations are much better.
Certainly this was borne out by the last gig I did that was in a very average area but our sales were great for the number of people we shot.
The irony is if the better areas are a tougher sell and the ones with a lower income are more profitable, then aren't the areas many shooters complain about the ones you actually want?
I think it's important to keep an open mind, to offer premium priced products for those that will buy them the same as shooters always worry about the low end of the market and to test new products, ideas and concepts constantly so you fine tune what you are doing as best as possible.
Anyway, off to go
I wonder if the folks driving the more expensive cars can afford expensive camera equipment, so they think they can do it themselves.
Interesting discussion.
Its more than just that. In fact I think that has little to do with it. People with money seem to be very leary of parting with it, except in very particular circumstances. (One can say that one never accumulated money by spending it, and there is a lot of truth to that).
A former sports shooter
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An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
First though, let me apologize to Jack for the upcoming hijack. Then let me state most all my personal observations as to be considered the majority are based off the typical bell curve. Not the exceptions that will always exist.
This is a home run statement. Now to make it a grand slam: People with money will part with said money when they are using it to get a different and more intense emotional motivator to replace their primary emotional motivator: money! The hard part is finding the other motivator and it rarely is a photo. Photos lack emotional or logical pull for the rich. The motivator usually has to be adrenaline related – like fear, euphoria, risk, etc.. Hence they have little problem dropping a million dollars plus to travel to space but won’t open their wallet to pay for a poster for their kids.
Based on your descriptions, like you, he is an event photography vendor. That isn’t to say that you both aren’t also photographers, but it does show that your main motivation isn’t the taking of the photos per se but to actually vend the photos to customers. That is a very small slice of the photography industry; very lucrative too as long as one follows the path of already prearranged events – as in the examples you have previously posted -- sports, horse events, antique shows, car shows, weddings, so on and so forth. Event photography is a prearranged genre. You already know that the people attending are there for the event and are one step closer to knowing the motivation that will lead them to give up their money.
That may well be true. Whether or not that particular decision is intentional or by accident is what should make the difference. It comes back to the individual’s desire of why they are shooting. As already stated earlier, Jack must find his motivation and then determine for himself why he is shooting and them make his decisions using that criteria. Without that motivational information, it is hard to give proper advice on any level.
I’ve known several (not an all blanket statement) that are perfectly happy with what people are willing to pay in their area for their GENRE of photography but only when it divided by genre, not across genre lines. More on genres later...
The method of distribution no longer matters…really…it no longer matters in digital. The emotional value isn’t in the means of distribution but meeting the other primary emotional need of the individual customer in a given genre. More often than not, in the case of digital, the emotional need is ease of use and convenience. Hence those paying to get less on USB drives or even paying for email delivery. It is perceived as a better value because it is more convenient. Those that are willing to give up the most money are those making an emotional decision and not a logical one. Hence those rich money types are also usually the more logical types.
It isn’t the product; it is the subjects (genre) I choose to sell. Just as a matter of record, I’m perfectly happy with getting $2.50 for a card. The real life example was only to show what could happen in a real life raise of prices. I intentionally do not photograph or target items to sell to a specific group. Therefore my products are sound but the subjects are admittedly boring or should I say “finding the right person at the right time” subjects. I stay away from many photography genres. For example, if I made the same custom product from wedding photos and targeted the bride to use them as her thank you cards, I could sell a great deal of the cards at a premium price and though I’ve been asked many times to do so, I choose/have chosen not to.
Glort, you cater to a high sentimental value segment of photography. Those genres include vendor, wedding, car, sports, people, portrait, action, etc. Hats off to you to be able to stay in business as long as you have. That said, the overall majority of photos taken by both professionals and advanced amateur camera lovers are genres that are not high sentimental value. Whole genres are wrapped around the one time use of analog or digital images -- stock, nature, food, animal, advertising, etc., so on and so forth. I at one time had the link to digital data loss statistics (somewhere in or around 2010) but I can’t easily find it at the moment so I’m going to qualify this detail with the last time I investigated the numbers showed the disposable genres outweighed the sentimental ones. Again, I’ve made the conscious decision not to seek profit for personal reasons. I simply would advise others to discover for themselves what their personal motivations for being in any given photography genre and/or taking photos is.
And that makes you a darn fine businessman!
Just because I personally have made the choices I have, that is not to say others (even within my own family), haven’t made different ones that are better for their needs. I have a family member that owns a diverse art business (www.busybeearts.com) and sells more in a higher end pricing genre than any other items on the low end of the scale. To each their own…
Happy shooting!
PS - Oh Glort, I use your postings here on dgrin as a framework to help said family member know what has to be done to become an effective next generation business person :-). The art comes easy, the business end not so much.