Pricing my Work

Cgilden58

I am very new @ this and starting my own business.
I want to know how to price my Art on Smugmug. I do not want to over or under charge my art.
Where can I get help on this?
Thanks

denisegoldberg

Cgilden58 wrote: »

I want to know how to price my Art on Smugmug. I do not want to over or under charge my art.

Pricing has nothing to do with SmugMug and everything to do about your business model. What type of photography do you do? Portraits? Weddings? Landscapes? Something else? Where are you located, and how does your competition price?

I'd recommend that you open the top level of the Mind Your Own Business forum and search for pricing there. Here are a few links that cropped up from a quick search there:
Pricing Threads
Pricing Suggestion
Pricing Conundrum in the Digital Age

There are many more...

--- Denise

johng

Let me take the above advice one step further. I don't care what type of photography you do. If your business model relies upon people buying prints off of Smugmug, you need a new business model. Don't fall for the false promise of "if you build it, they will come". A web presence is a great marketing tool and ordering products is a great secondary source of revenue for existing, paid clients. But don't expect a web site to be your primary revenue stream. You'll be lucky to make back the money you spend yearly on a professional account.

Now, the one exception I am aware of is for people with studio presence. Customers view work in the studio and can then place orders on-line (or from the studio directly). It is entirely possible that there are fine art business that rely on un-contracted clients buying solely site-unseen from web sites. But, I am not aware of anyone still maintaining a successful business via that method. Hopefully, if other members are successfully doing that they can chime in.

mercphoto

John brings up the number one point. If you plan to use Smugmug only for order fulfillment, and have a way of marketing yourself to clients and getting them to buy in some other way, then this might work for you. But if your plan is to upload, set a price, and wait for people to find you and order prints, it ain't gonna happen.

CoryWho

I'll take the above advice one more step.

It really comes down to asking yourself how much do you want to make a day? a week? a month? a year? Are you doing this as a hobby to get some side cash or are you going all in?

Just some things to consider while figuring out prices. Don't low ball yourself.

mgdoc

Cost calculator
https://nppa.org/calculator

Until you know what your business costs, you wont even really know how much to charge, or if you are making money

Sam

mgdoc wrote: »

https://nppa.org/calculator

Until you know what your business costs, you wont even really know how much to charge, or if you are making money

OK!! I have run the numbers..........................

I need to charge $97,327.62 per image. Now what do I do?

Sam

puzzledpaul

In a world that's overflowing / totally saturated with all manner of imagery, what makes yours sufficiently special that people will want to buy your pics, rather than other people's?

All the marketing in the world will be wasted if, when people arrive on your doorstep, there's nowt they want to buy ...

pp

jonh68

Old post from 2014 and OP has long left the building.

Sam

jonh68 wrote: »

Old post from 2014 and OP has long left the building.

2014 is gone?

jonh68

Sam wrote: »

2014 is gone?

Lets see, OP has one post and didn't bother to respond anymore. Yes, I would say the OP is gone and it is an old post.