Timely payments are important in any business. Your reputation and credit depends on being able to pay your assistants, employees, vendors, loan payments and any outstanding balances.

A clear contractual agreement on both sides in the beginning is important. Our terms require a 50% retainer in advance before assignment date. With the balance due, we allow net 10 days, past 30 days; a 1.5% late fee may be charged. One of the most important points in our terms that we adopted from ASMP includes:  “License for usage will be authorized when payment in full is received”.

When I started using that combination of terms, our payments arrived in a timely manner with the majority of our clients. Some clients will try to take advantage of extending their payments, requesting discounts if they pay sooner and there is no reason for it. Advertising agencies and some corporate direct clients seem to fall into that category.

After the assignment is delivered, I follow up with a call or an email to the art buyer confirming that we met their needs. This is a great opportunity to ask if they have forwarded the invoice reflecting the final balance on to accounting. That confirmation is important. Many times that invoice will sit on their desk and that reminder works well. The email can act as part of a paper trail.

After 30 days, if we have not received the final balance, we send a letter and a copy of the invoice as a “friendly“ reminder. We follow up on 45 days with a phone call to the art buyer or accounts payable reminding them again and we email or fax copies of the invoice/s to reinforce the balance due with those copies.

If the client still has not paid after 60 days, additional letters, emails and calls continue.  After 90 days, which is extremely rare we look at other options. One of which is advising the past due client that we might report them to a credit bureau as well as potentially taking further legal action. That is a last case scenario but so far we have been successful.

Getting paid is all about having a concise contract, signed by both parties with a clear understanding of those terms. It’s also about follow up, a paper trail and persistence.

Recently, I visited several web sites of photographers who are fairly new to the field of Architectural Photography. Several were members of the ASMP Architectural list serve and I noticed that they had listed their fee structures on their web sites.

In several cases, their fees reflected values that were available to clients from the 70′s and 80′s day rates. In some cases, they were including the ownership of the intellectual property. My concern is a downward spiral of pricing. By listing their prices and with their competition under pricing them on their own web sites just to stay competitive. Have they factored their personal and business expenses?

This action can cause unreasonable expectations on the part of potential clients
who are looking for breaks in a tough economy.  In addition, these actions can set an unreasonable precedent with new marketing or photography coordinators. For the photographers who are offering these low fees, are they setting themselves up for long-term failure and a very short career?

Questions:
#1:Can they cover their true cost of doing business, their living expenses and their cost of equipment replacement?

#2: Are they creating a profit basis, where they might create retirement reserve?

#3: Are they leaving prospective clients with a lasting impression of a low budget photographer getting stuck with low budget assignments in the future?

#4:  Can they escape that reputation, once they are established as low budget photographers?

#5.How long can a photographer sustain a business when they are losing money and draining their savings?

#6. Is the photographer loosing  the ability to negotiate stronger license?

It’s important to create a higher standard in our industry and profession. During tough economic times, the temptation to charge below your true profit margin just to get the assignment is there. Downward pressure is very real. Especially if the client keeps demanding more each time, pays less and the precedent is set for future expectations

It might seem practical to charge less for that one assignment just to generate enough income to pay immediate bills. By taking a loss and not charging for the true value of that assignment and the licensing potential, you are hurting yourself in the short and long term.

At the same time, when you are charging just enough to clear a profit without leaving room for that margin of error, or not covering your true expenses, eventually your ability to remain in business will fail.

Posting your fees on your site can be a positive approach if they are realistic but if not, you are potentially damaging your long term reputation and you may be setting an unrealistic value of the true value of your images and for future licensing.

Once in a while I will meet a marketing person who demands the right to allow property owners, contractors and other entities unrestricted use of our images without additional fees. Some have expressed their right to resell photographer’s images to recover their firm’s cost from an assignment or worse, make a profit from our intellectual property, the images we create.

They may have been influenced in the past by photographers who allow unlimited and unrestricted usage to any third party firms such as contractors, vendors or manufacturers who want them as part of a package and this is a dangerous trend.

There are some photographers who have been shooting for years and didn’t care about the long-term issues or the loss of potential revenue, not to mention the potential damage they are causing to our industry. These photographers are giving away potential income but worse, they have created a culture or a norm by allowing their clients to walk all over them.

If you have not already done so, it would be in your best interest to add the NON TRANSFERABLE clause to third party requestors into your contracts. That offers further protection to your intellectual property.  It also will give you a stronger potential for future income. You will need to monitor and enforce that issue but clients will pay attention and you have the potential for making a better profit from your work.

Invest some time exploring the www.asmp.org web site. Start with the link to commerce and publications on business practices. Browsing through the legal resources section can empower you to move your career forward with a better understanding of how to create stronger terms and conditions, licensing, copyright registration and beyond.

Your estimate, contract and your terms and conditions need to be firm and well defined. Illustrate what the client is receiving. You also need to illustrate the limits of their license, the terms or period of use again. The information that you can down load from that site will surprise you and is well worth the time invested.

The key to making a better living in our profession is controlling the licensing of our images and protecting our future as ASMP photographers.” Empower yourself.