I’ve never been a fan of any idea that purports to be the one way to do things — the school of thought that says, “This is what worked for me, so it is the only thing that works,” or “This is what I was taught and it worked, so it must be the only way it works.” That type of teaching leads to other people failing.

The way I approach my business is from a business perspective. It’s not from an artist’s perspective. Neither one is wrong and neither one is more right than the other. In fact, when it comes to pricing, there is no “one right way” to price your photography, and no pricing model is better than another.

So, today, I’m going to look at 10 different pricing models and briefly talk about how you could apply them to your business, either at the level of the business as a whole or at the level of individual products and services.

Cost-Plus Pricing

Cost-plus pricing is something we hear about frequently in the personal photography market. This approach tells you to know your costs and apply a markup or multiplier, people will often tell you to know your COGS (Cost of Good Sold) and to apply a markup of 2.5-3x. This is a very simple pricing strategy for people to understand and to teach, that can work for most photographers most of the time, which is why it’s taught so often. However, it’s not always the right strategy for people to use. If this is the strategy you’ve used. It’s a good place to start, but don’t apply it as a be-all-end-all approach to pricing your work.

Value-Based Pricing

The next most common pricing strategy we see in photography is value-based pricing. Even if you could charge more, photographers will sell their services based on what they think the customer is willing to pay for their products and services. You are providing your clients with service at a value. Done well, this could help fill your sales pipeline with shoots but done poorly, it could lead to the degradation of value that people place on your services.

Competition-Based Pricing

Also known as competitive pricing or competitor pricing, this is the most common way photographers tend to price themselves. They will look at what other photographers in their market are charging and price themselves similarly. What is their day rate for corporate headshots? What are their wedding collections? How much are they charging for albums? For pumpkin patch mini-sessions? This method is all about pricing yourself relative to your competitors in your market.

Premium Pricing

Premium pricing, also known as luxury pricing or prestige pricing, is used to establish your position in the market as one of premium or luxury quality. It focuses on the perceived value of your services and products rather than the production costs of your services or products, to which you might simply apply a mark-up or multiplier. Premium pricing is directly tied to your branding and market position. This is something I talked about in episode #4. If you position your brand as a luxury brand, you have to price your services to match.

Project-Based Pricing

Project-based pricing is the dominant approach used in commercial photography, where you get a brief and bid for that job based on the scope of the project. The pricing variables here that the photographer can set include creative fees and licensing fees. Since licensing fees tend to be pretty standard based on media, geographic markets, and total ad spend, where you have the most flexibility as a photographer is with your creative fee. You can then apply another pricing strategy to your creative fee — such as value, competitive, or premium pricing — to establish your value and market position.

Bundle Pricing

Bundle pricing is most common in wedding photography where a studio might sell collections as bundles including wedding-day coverage, engagement sessions, custom albums, and wall art. You can choose to only sell as a bundle, or you can also offer items a la carte. Bundling adds value to your client experience up-front and helps guide your clients in their purchase decisions.

Hourly Pricing

Another way commercial photographers tend to price themselves is with an hourly pricing strategy, also known as rate-based pricing. If you are a corporate photographer or wedding photographer, you might apply this approach to pricing your work. Hourly pricing is a simple time-for-money exchange. It focuses on your labour instead of your value. Because it focuses on labour and doesn’t account for efficiency, this is a strategy I would only advise applying to events of set lengths where you have to be physically present for the whole event, such as conferences, weddings, or other life events and ceremonies.

Penetration Pricing

A pricing strategy that is very effective for new photographers who need to fill their pipeline and build their business is penetration pricing. The idea is that you are pricing your services to penetrate the market and gain market share. With penetration pricing, you are pricing your services well below your competitors to attract attention and gain market share. 

This strategy is not sustainable in the long-term, which is why most educators don’t recommend it, but if you’re just starting out, it can be the best way to price your services. But again, it is not sustainable long-term.

Dynamic Pricing

Dynamic pricing is commonly associated with ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, where it is the essence of their pricing strategy. Prices fluctuate according to market demand, or time. Offering family mini-sessions is a form of dynamic pricing. You are offering people a set price for a set period of time. People might take you up on this as a way to get their portrait taken at a rate that is affordable to them when they might not otherwise be able to afford your regular, competitive or premium prices.

Freemium Pricing

The last pricing method I want to address, and it’s not by far the last of what’s out there, is freemium pricing. Freemium is a portmanteau of the words “free” and “premium.” It is often associated with online software services that have very limited free plans, and then offer upgraded, premium plans for you when you want them. 

You might be wondering how people could apply this to photography, but people do this all the time. Portrait photographers commonly offer the session for free but the clients pay to order images at an In-Person Ordering session. Wedding photographers might offer complimentary engagement sessions and then their clients can later upgrade to a full wedding collection.

Summary

Over the coming weeks and months, I’ll do deeper dives into some of the pricing strategies I’ve outlined here, but for now, I want you to think about how your services and products are priced. It doesn’t matter what those prices are, just think about how you went about setting your prices. I want you to assess your prices and consider them. Consider your market. Consider your positioning. Consider your current client volume. Assess and evaluate. 

I’m not going to tell you to raise or lower your prices, only you can figure that out. I just want you to really understand, your prices, some different pricing strategies, the psychology of pricing, and how pricing works as a volume dial to increase or decrease the number of clients you have.

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