Simple Photography Pricing: An easy step by step guide to covering your butt and making a profit in portrait photography

ISBN-13: 9781495920721 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 28 str.

Donald Hood

Opis

When I began my photography business back in the 80's there was little resource available to learn the business side of photography. Most of the established studios guarded their secrets like they were gold, and there was no internet to jump on and research. I paid a lot of money going to a lot of photography specific business workshops, and lost a lot more money in trial and error. Now days it's just a matter of searching the web for any information you want to obtain. So when I was approached about doing a workbook on pricing, I thought it was pointless since anyone interested could just google and find more pricing guides than anyone could ever use anyway, but to my surprise, the things I found were either ridiculously priced, weren't relative to the portrait photography industry, or worse were written by someone who obviously has not been through the ups and downs of running a real business. If you haven't experienced all the waves an entrepreneur gets bombarded with, then there's no way you can plan on how to weather them. I have seen times in my business when I laughed all the way to the bank, as well as times when I stayed late at the studio frantically devising promotions to generate cash flow. The good thing of having a business of any kind survive the ebb and flow that multiple years brings, is you learn to separate the real from the maybe. A good sales person can have you smiling as you write your check to advertise on their new sky writing billboard venture. But then a few weeks or months later, as you realize you might have overstepped your advertising budget, a lot, and you're cutting money from another department, usually your own take home cash, you vow to never be taken by a big smile again. I've been there, and unfortunately still to this day I forget it sometimes. That is until I'm sitting at the studio late frantically devising a promotion to generate cash flow. My point is although I still stumble sometimes, I have figured out an awful lot along the way. One thing is how to price so I can weather the storms more easily. Through many different methods I've learned throughout the years from many different business models, I have come up with the formula that has served me well for many years. Once you complete this simple workbook, you can raise profit, add product, calculate sale items, and about anything else you need to do with pricing by simply modifying the numbers. If an expense goes up, change that expense and recalculate. If you're ready for more profit, change the old figure for the new one you want and recalculate. This workbook is laid out to be taken one step at a time. If you do that, you will naturally progress to the end. You can't skip around or the numbers won't make sense. I hope this enables you to see your business in a whole new light. Once you know what's going on it will become a lot less headache and a lot more fun.