Per Image Pricing for Events
[by Rosh Sillars]
I’m a big fan of per-image pricing. I use it most for events in the retail environment. This is especially true for the rare one or two corporate client weddings I photograph each year.
I’ve discovered that people’s budgets are often bigger than what they reveal to me or even what they originally envisioned. Per-image pricing allows me to offer good clients a fair option without feeling like they’re taking advantage of me.
I begin by requesting a non-refundable down payment to save the date. The payment is credited toward the first images they purchase. For retail events, the per-image rate is much lower than commercial rates due to the volume and the personal-use license.
Once I’ve edited my images, I upload them to Photoshelter with the option to download each image at the agreed-upon rate. I still offer prints through the system, but the smallest size available is 4×6 at the same rate as the original file download.
Is there a risk? Absolutely. Fortunately, I have found when I work hard and present creative images to my clients, they’re happy and I receive a monetary reward.
Rosh Sillars is the co-author of “The Linked Photographer.” View his people photography at http://people.roshsillars.com
4 Responses to 'Per Image Pricing for Events'
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Can you give us an average price per image and an average amount of images sold per event..is this an extra retailed item added to the original assignment fee, say for a PR agency or is this a strictly retail item as in shooting a party for print sales?
Interesting idea. For me, though, the million dollar question is, what do you charge per image?
For Weddings my range is usually $10-25 per image.
Sometimes I have a graduating scale starting at $75 and work my way down with volume. Sales on average 150 – 250+ images per wedding. I’ve sold as many as 500. It depends on the client. Note, most weddings I do are friends and corporate clients.
Corporate events I still 90% shoot hourly.
I’ve used this system of charging for my commercial work for quite a few years now. I find the biggest advantage is that often going into a job clients don’t set aside a big enough budget. So I will give them a price for a set number images that they can live with, and then also give them a quote for any pictures beyond the original request.
Then when they see the finished images I often find that the budget goes out the window and they suddenly want a lot more pictures than they originally budgeted for.
By charging per image clients can budget in advance for what they think they need, and then go beyond that if they like the work. I’ve had clients with $1000 budgets suddenly spend 10 times that on images because they love them so much.
The other thing I also like about this system is it takes the emphasis on my time and places it back on the photos themselves. I don’t want clients to be constantly looking at their watches fretting about the extra time we’re spending on assignment. I’d much rather they be thinking about the value the individual pictures have.
Of course the flip side is that then the pressure is on me to produce more than the budgeted number of great images that the client will want to license. I’m happy to say that in nearly 5 years of doing this I can count the number of clients who didn’t order extra images on one hand.