Photography marketing is important - of course - but even if your marketing is excellent, your photography business success is not guaranteed. If your selling skills are not where they should be, or if your prices are too low, you still will not achieve the level of success you hope for.
Regarding photography pricing, based on my over 40 years of experience with my own photography business, plus from my consulting & coaching professional photographers around the world, it's clear that most photographers are charging way less for their images than they could be, or should be.
Here are 2 key, little known, important secrets regarding photography pricing:
1. The honest fact is: It's not the price you charge that matters, it's how you present the price. I learned this the hard way - and I want to save you a lot of pain and suffering. If you will put more time and effort into discovering the most effective ways to present and sell your images, you will be able to charge higher fees than you ever thought you would be able to charge.
For example: When you are presenting your fees to your clients in your photography business, do not mention the actual dimensions of the photographs. That's totally "left brain" and analytical - and we know people invest in photography for emotional, "right brain" reasons. Instead, simply point to a portrait on the wall and say, "That size is $xx."
2. Never hand out your prices - or mail them out, or put them on your website. You need to talk to your prospects, and build trust and rapport with them. By not sending your prices out, or handing them out, or putting them up on your website - it encourages people to TALK with you. And that allows you to build that relationship and trust you need to build with your prospects, in order to actually book them as a client of yours.
Think about this - what is the number one question you and I get asked the most, in emails or on the telephone --- "How much do you charge…?" So if you put your fees on your website, then there is really no reason for someone to actually email or call you. They already know the prices - so they can just keep "shopping" around. This results in your losing a LOT of business that could have, and should have, been yours.
By not putting the prices on your website, you are INCREASING the number of emails & calls you will get - and this allows you to work on building the relationship, trust, and rapport with the prospect - which you would never have had the chance to do, if your fees had just been posted on your website.
In every photographer I coach, we do NOT sell on price. Not at all. We sell quality, value, service and unique factors & benefits. And I recommend you discover how to do the same.
I have found that keeping your prices low actually can hurt you, and the number of people who end up hiring you. With low prices, you can actually end up photographing fewer clients than you would at higher prices.
Why? Because those folks who are really looking for something that is well done and meaningful, and they could actually NOT choose you, because of the thought that "How good can that photographer be with those low prices?"
As I consistently raised my fees, my volume actually continued to go up - not down! It only finally started to go down a little when my fees reached levels which were much higher than I ever had thought possible.
The lesson for you to take away from this is that chances are really good that you are charging way less for your photography services than you should be charging.
My warning: don't let the economy or all the cheap competition, keep you from consistently raising your fees several times a year - between 10% and 20% each time, as your skills become better and better - at both the photography areas of the photography business, and the business areas.
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