Pricing for cd of 200 images?

bikingbets

Good morning all:

I'm a very new newbie, just finished less than two months shooting my daughter's high school basketball season with a Canon 40D that Santa brought for me. I've never sold a photo, but I may be about to. At the end-of-season banquet, they ran a cd slideshow on a big screen of about 200 of my better (i.e. not tremendous--remember what the quality of your photos was like when you first got started) images...but you know how sports parents are when they see photos of their kids...
A parent approached me after the banquet saying that she liked the images and would like to buy the cd for scrapbooking purposes! The problem is that I have no idea what to charge. I want a friendly transaction because our daughters play on the same team, and this may lead to further business. Also, the image quality is definitely not professional.
Any help in pricing this cd would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Betsy

nipprdog

I want a friendly transaction because our daughters play on the same team

Also, the image quality is definitely not professional.

Simple. No charge.

You didn't start this with the intention of charging, so don't. (In this case)

A couple years ago, when I started shooting my nephew's girls B-ball team (he's the coach, and his daughter is on the team) for fun, I gave the parents CDs. (without stepping on anybody's toes)

Fast forward. Now, I'm shooting for profit. But when I shoot my nephew's team, I still give those parent's CDs. I didn't charge them initially, so I'm not going to charge them now.

Everyone else, though, pays.

rmcd

Hi Betsy,

Could you elaborate on the resolution of the photos on that CD? If they are only 72dpi and a few hundred pixels on the long side, I wouldn't charge much. I was talking to a photog at a swimming competition who was putting about that number of photos on a CD and selling them for $25 each. He was putting only one CD together that he would duplicate for the number of parents that wanted it. I thought it was really cheap, but if you think about it, if he sold 10 of them, he was making $250 for the same images. I believe the images were of a decent resolution so that they could print them no problem. Personally, I would not take this approach.

$250 for 200 images comes to about $1.25 per photo. And these are pretty darn close to being negatives, so the parents could print them as often as they like. Would a pro sell an image for $1.25? No. Not even close. But for low res images, worthy of small prints and myspace web sites, that might work.

The question you need to ask yourself is, when you get better, how are you going to justify your price increase? I've looked at many Smugmug sites around here and the pricing hovers around $4.00 - $5.00 for a 4x6, $6.00-$8.00 for a 5x7 and $10-12 for a 8x10.

My approach is to set my prices at these levels and to make sure the quality of my shots is worth these prices. I have not seen your photos, but I'm willing to bet that you are your own toughest critic. I think you have to figure your costs in gear and time when you do your pricing, but ultimately, you need to decide what is right for you. What are you worth?

Good luck!

Richard

jonh68

I would go with nipp and don't charge. However, state this is a thank you for being able to practice sports shots. Ask the parent not tell anyone you gave the CD for free as you have time and money involved and you don't want to give people the idea they can just come up to you and expect free service. You also need to decide if this is something you want to get paid for on the side. If so, come up with a gameplan of how much you want to get for the time involved. Baseball,softball, tennis and golf are upon us now.

Learn from your shots and learn from the shooters here so next year, your reputation will grow and you will feel more comfortable charging. That's the hardest part for me.

bikingbets

rmcd wrote:

Could you elaborate on the resolution of the photos on that CD?

Richard: Thanks for taking the time to respond. The images tend to be in the 350 pixels/inch range. IMHO they make nice 4x6 prints; I haven't ventured anything larger on my Canon Pixma printer.

I'm thinking that (after this incident is behind me) I don't want to sell cd's. I'd rather just sell the prints and gifts through smugmug, starting at $2.00 or so for a 4x6 print. Then I'll see if the sales demand warrants a price increase.

You're probably right about me being a tough critic. Rec league soccer is coming up. If things fall into place I'd like to get a site up and running within a couple of months. It's probably time to take the plunge.

Thanks again for the advice!

bikingbets

nipprdog and jonh68:

I like your lines of thought. I'm thinking of letting her have it for free (with a caveat not to let anyone know) and giving her a pile of business cards for her to give to friends that point to my smugmug site which should be up and running in the near future. AAU basketball, along with the sports jon mentioned, is just around the corner...I'll also let her know of the time and money involved in making the cd, and maybe she'll make a donation!

If things go the way I hope them to, I'll have much more experience by the time next hs basketball season rolls around, and everything will go through the site.

Thanks for your support!
Betsy

chuckinsocal

How 'bout telling her this:

"I'm not going to charge you anything, but I'm in the process of getting my business up and running and if you want to make a donation, I'd probably accept it. Either way is fine with me."

That way you're off the hook, and if che chooses to make a donation, she'll probably encourage other Moms to do the same and you might make enough for a new filter or something.

Chuck Cannova
http://chuckinsocal.SmugMug.com

bikingbets

Thanks, Chuck. Great idea...you make it sound so easy!

MJRPHOTO

rmcd wrote:

Hi Betsy,
The question you need to ask yourself is, when you get better, how are you going to justify your price increase? I've looked at many Smugmug sites around here and the pricing hovers around $4.00 - $5.00 for a 4x6, $6.00-$8.00 for a 5x7 and $10-12 for a 8x10.

My approach is to set my prices at these levels and to make sure the quality of my shots is worth these prices.

I am not sure how many that have answered this post actually shoot sports for a living. If you do I am not sure how you can pay the bills selling a 4x6 for $5.00 and electronic files under $5 each. Most of the clients that I sell to that order 4x6's figure they are going to scan the photo to produce the electronic image so they can use it on there web site or to make a few more prints. Some know it is steeling but are just to cheap to pay for the electronic image at its full price others just do not realize that they are steeling the image.

First I am going to be a little of topic about selling e-files on disk so bear with me.

Now lets figure your going to shoot a HS basketball Game. There are 10 players that will be on the court. Depending on the game each team may play one or two players as subs. So that is a total of 14 players in the game. I average about 100 to 150 shots in a game now. It used to be 300 but I have learned what sells and what does not sell. Now if it is a season game I might be able to sell a photo to half of each team. so that is 7 photo's. Now I have spent at least 4 hours of time, sum times more on a game. So at $50 an hour (that is a cheap rate) I need to make $200 a game to make it worth my wild to show up. I really would like to make $400 a game and I actually might make some money at the end of the year. Now getting back to those 7 people. That would mean I would need to get just under $30 per order to make the $200. So at $5 each I would have to sell 6 photo's for each of the 7 orders. That is 42 money shots in one game. That hardly ever happens. If you get 10 money shots in a game you are doing well. Say You could sell half of the money shots in a 8x12 size for the $12 stated above. Well that has gotten you up to the $60 range. Well now you only have to sell 28-4x6's at $5 each. Well let me tell you that is not going to happen any time soon unless you are a really good salesmen/saleswomen.

Still with me???

So maybe you will sell 1-4x6 to each of the 7 players that bought an 8x12. That gets you up to $95. Now lets say you get the other 7 players to get 1-4x6 each. That would get you up to $120 for the game. That is just not going to pay the bills.

Now if this is a playoff game. Typically what I have found is that the losing team buys nothing. Half the time the parents will not even take a card from me if the team lost in the playoffs. Now the potential of selling to the winning team goes up, but are the 10 money shots all of the winning team?

Now using the same example above with the prices I charge,
7-4x6 at $10=70
7-8x12 at $25=170
total=240

Here is my price list
$10 4x6
$15 5x7
$25 8x12
$40 11x14
$50 12x18
$100 20x30

I give a 10% discount on all orders payed for within one week of posting.

Now about e-files.

Most of the money shots (I am not saying all) that I get are able to be printed in a 12x18 size minimum so If I were to sell the e-file I want to make $50 minimum each. I will not lower my price on them. I really do not want to sell them to begin with so if I can not get $50 each I will just sell them the prints. Now you might think that is high but you are mistaken. You just have to find the right people to buy them. What I have been doing lately is to give a free 8x12 to the person that purchases an e-file at my price. I do not advertise this. I just include it in the package when I give it to them. This is for two reasons. First is I know what the print looks like. Second they are always pleased that they got them and walk away with a good feeling about my company. Yes it cost me $1.50 for the print but it was worth every penny. Getting back to the finding the right people.

I shot surfing all this past saturday. I lucked out. I found one of those people that was willing to pay the $50 for the 19 images I got of him on one 30 second wave. Yes that is right he bought every photo of the sequence. In addition to that he ordered 19-8x12's of the same photo's knowing that they were $25 each. The total for that order was $1425. Now when I hand delivered them the next day I said just give me $855, which included the 10% discount, for the e-files and that that the 8x12's were free he was a happy customer. He ended up giving me more than I asked and I was happy to take it. He went away a happy surfer and I went away a happy photog. I Hope to see him and his buddies on the beach more often.

So after all this rambling, hope I shed some in site to how I look at what I need to make to continue to try to make a living at this thing we love to do.

Here is a gif file with the photo's of the surfer.

Tango

wow mjr, great write up...and that surfer sale was cool eh....

gchappel

I see you are shooting at the local HS. You should check, as you may need permission and a contract to sell images of their teams. Selling professional images, at least here in FL, is a whole different kettle of fish than being a team parent shooting some pictures. Does the school have a contract of any sort with a pro photographer at this point? Are your pictures up to pro quality- I know mine were not for the first couple of seasons. If there is a pro talk to him. If not, I would give small prints away. I do charge for 16x20's.
gary

bikingbets

Mjr and gchappel, you raise good issues.

As someone rather new to the digital world (having worked with film as a hobby for some years), I guess I'm looking to recoup some of the investment I've put into new equipment. At the same time I'm hoping to make sports parents happy by giving them the opportunity to have some nicer photos of their kids than they'd be able to produce.

I have no hopes of making a living at this right now, and I sure can't justify asking $10 for a 4x6 print. But I can see someone thinking one is worth a couple of dollars. I'm thinking I can build a business, make people happy, and increase my skill as a photographer all at the same time.

I'll check into the school's policy for shooting games.