on the average

fotophun · October 22, 2010

on the average how much do your brides spend on their albums?

or how much does is the separate cost if you include in you package

and after the fact it is not included in the package how much are your

brides spending for albums

PLUS
do you mainly see them purchasing the flush mount/book type albums, or do some still purchase the traditional prints album

thanks for you input

fotophun · October 22, 2010

one more thing to add to my last questions

who do you print your images with?

also with the book type style book, do charge for every last pic in the book

Qarik · October 22, 2010

I use finao "One" album which is flush mount magazine style. I think they charge around $400 for 20 page 12x12 (10 real pages). I don't do alacarte on the album..it is part of the package. If I did do alacarte, I would charge $1k or so.

Matthew Saville · October 22, 2010

fotophun wrote: »

on the average how much do your brides spend on their albums?

or how much does is the separate cost if you include in you package

and after the fact it is not included in the package how much are your

brides spending for albums

PLUS
do you mainly see them purchasing the flush mount/book type albums, or do some still purchase the traditional prints album

thanks for you input

This is totally skipping over the whole business model and REASONING behind how to price a product so it turns a profit and oh-so-many other factors, but....

As a rule of thumb, take the product you want to sell and triple the cost to you. Include the cost of having it designed too, if there's even the slightest chance that you won't have the time to design it yourself.

And triple is just a starting point, the rock-bottom amount for "turn a profit"... Many wedding photographers charge 5X+ for their albums. And for prints, the traditional studio business model won't really be profitable until you're charging 50-100X. Yes, I said 100X markup. But for weddings, usually you don't charge THAT much markup because you're providing the client with a disc, and more importantly an album, etc. etc. so you make the bulk of your profit on the front end.

Like I said, this barely scratches the surface, and really it'd be a good idea to sit down and truly study the business models behind portraiture, event photography, commercial photography, etc. It will really help create an understanding of WHY to charge $X, instead of just being given an arbitrary number...

One resource you can try is, google "stacy reeves pricing guide" ...and read that thing ten times a day. :-)

=Matt=

FotobyMoMo · October 25, 2010

I love flush mount albums! When I start doing serious wedding photography, I'll try to sell that to almost all of my customers. Check them out here. Price is really good compared to others imo

http://www.nationsphotolab.com/albums.htm?gclid=CL7N6L6o7qQCFRpO5QodiCZE1A

Jeremy Winterberg · October 25, 2010

Everything that Matt said.

I use Millers Pano Flushmounts. I know people that use finao and leather craftsman.

I'm not going to tell you what I charge. You should never charge the same as someone else because that "looks" like the right price. If I did that I would be charging $21.98 for a 30 minute portrait session because the studio down the street is always busy and they charge that much.

Also, just because something is cheaper, doesn't mean its better. We choose these high end labs because they produce consistent, professional results and have extremely good turnaround times and customer service.

Welcome to dgrin, I'm sorry if my post sounds negative.. that's just how I am. I tell it how it is.

Jeremy

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

Moogle Pepper · October 25, 2010

Qarik wrote: »

I use finao "One" album which is flush mount magazine style. I think they charge around $400 for 20 page 12x12 (10 real pages). I don't do alacarte on the album..it is part of the package. If I did do alacarte, I would charge $1k or so.

ditto. Except that I use Black River Imaging.

shming · October 26, 2010

We use Graphi-Studio for all our albums. We include them in the packages. Yes we do alacarte' - but we price that 20% above our packages. I'm not gonna share my prices but I'll tell you that Mathew Saville is on the mark for what we charge. Our non-wedding photo products and photo shoots are priced not quite as high as our weddings because that is not our forte.

Here is some great advice: DON'T LET PRICE BE THE ONLY THING THAT DEFINES WHO YOU ARE!! PRICE ACCORDINGLY. Photos are priceless right? Well how much are your clients willing to pay for priceless?

FedererPhoto · October 26, 2010

750.

Charge 750. Done.

No, seriously -- it's not really a question that applies. It'd be like asking, "what is the average focal length"?. (without any consideration as to whom you asked or what they do)... and then making purchasing decisions on that.
like Matt says, you have to understand your target market, yourclients, yourproduct, yourown costs, what yourmarket will bear, yourbusiness model, how much you need to earn to be able to feed your family, etc... I know people that shoot weddings for near-free and then profit on insanely expensive after-shoot deliverables. I also know people (and I'm kind of one of them) that makes almost 100% of my profits on a relatively high upfront cost and then low cost (many things are less than 2x wholesale costs) on most deliverables.

But to attempt to be directly helpful without saying too much on a public forum -- most of my clients end up spending roughly 50% of their coverage fee on an album afterwards. (that is to say - if the coverage fee was ~5k, they spend ~2.5k on an album) They are always bought after-the-fact as an alacarte item. Flushmount is all I sell. Queensbery and Finao are some good places to start looking for well-made albums.

on the average

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