Finding My Way Out of Pricing Hell- by Lynn Clark

Off and on for the past decade, I've dreamed about being a full-time professional photographer. In my mind, I traveled to exotic locales to take exquisite photos of beautiful people in wedding regalia. I've crouched down with kiddos on vivid green grass, capturing looks of curiosity and joy in their eyes. I've put on a super-long lens to photograph wild animals in Tanzania. And most recently, I've hovered over women of all types, helping them to understand how beautiful they are by making sensual, gorgeous portraits. In other words, I've dreamed about the art, not the business.

I've been in business for myself before. I know that this is a business I'm starting, but it feels more like art with a business tacked on. I think I need to get over that pretty quickly.

Back in August 2000, I quit my career track job in public relations to become a freelance writer and give adequate time to my creative writing. I realized quickly that the first jobs I received--the OMG you're in business? How exciting we must hire you for a quickie kind of jobs--wouldn't sustain me for very long. I also realized quickly that I needed a real marketing plan, a list of "policies"--no, you can't pay my entire fee when I've turned over the work to you, so give me 50% down--and a good bookkeeper to keep me out of tax trouble.

I successfully ran my small business until October 2001, when the economy tanked and almost all of my clients pulled back their freelance dollars. The business quit me, not the other way around. I've always felt proud of myself for that. Over the years, I've done a dozen or so freelance projects [somehow my area of expertise has become bedwetting.] I thought, "I have this freelance thing down."

So, when in October of last year, I decided to put myself on a three-year plan to launch a full-time photography business, I knew there would be some business things to take care of. I'm on my way with my marketing plan, defining my niches, fine-tuning my brand. But then, I got stumped. Where? With pricing.

I have spent 20-plus hours building complicated Excel spreadsheets to figure out how much to charge for sessions, for packages, for individual items, for collections. And they still don't feel right. I have spent money on pricing guides that I've used to set rates I don't quite feel worthy of  ... yet. And I've given away a lot of my work, coming out of pocket [stupidly] in most cases because I overpromise by doing math in my head.

At least once a week, I go into my websites and tweak my prices. [I'm not getting much traffic yet.] I'm just not ... settled.

I know that pricing will make or break my business. When I do a writing or editing project, I know what the market will bear, how to charge, what costs to work in.

Pricing for photography is so much trickier. First, I have no idea how much it takes to actually run this business. I keep coming across things that I need to buy [I've now been through three $50 premium Wordpress templates and I'm still not happy] and things I want to buy [more accessories for my boudoir shoots, experts with the pros]. Second, while most corporate communications people understand the value of hiring a professional writer, most people don't understand the value of hiring a self-employed professional photographer. When I mentioned a $200 session fee plus $350 in minimum product purchase to my mother, she gasped and said, "No one is going to hire you at that rate!"

[OK, she said it out loud in my head, where she lives half the time, but that's another story.]

When I mentioned casually to someone that I'm building a photography business, he replied, "Oh, you're going to get rich. We paid our wedding photographer $1500. For four hours. I'd like to have that gig!" Which of course started me on a rant about $2400 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses and a minimum of three hours in editing, accounting, book building and meetings for every hour spent at a wedding. I don't think he finished his eggs.

I know I'm not alone in this conundrum. It seems like half of the posts I read in pro-photo forums are about pricing: who is undercutting the pro market with shoot-and-burn tactics; how women photogs, specifically, "need to demand what they are worth." Did I mention that I spent $150 on a pricing guide? I can't get myself to spend $50 on a new pair of shoes.

But here's what pricing ultimately comes down to: my self confidence and my target market.

My mother is not my target market [not even the one in my head]. Heck, I'm not even my target market. My target market is not going to blanch at a session fee and product minimum. And when members of my target market see the photos I make of them, they will buy more than my product minimum, because they value art, and photographic storytelling, and small businesses.

In terms of my self-confidence, well, there's a saying in the personal growth field: "Act as if." When you act as if you are already what you want to be, the universe will make it so. Even if I blanch at my own prices I will figure them out and post them until I know--through actually charging those prices instead of discounting them--that they are on target. Because people are asking me what I charge for photography, and that alone means they see my work as worthy of paying for.