Help with pricing a commission

I've sold a couple of 4x5 cyanotypes through a local shop. Today I had a message that someone had come in and asked if I could do one of her house. Any suggestion on what to charge?

$500 - based on time and materials.

two thoughts...If one is starting out, think about what it will cost you, how much time it will take and how much you want repeat business - you could charge as low as $300 (half day shoot) for your time plus materials and processing (give approx guess) . The other thought is through a story: at a photo group meeting years ago, a woman photographer asked me how much my full day rate was, I said $550 (just starting out) and she looked at me angrily and walked away disgusted with me because I was selling my soul to the devil! Not sure if any of that helps.....! Today, I'm still at 550 and 300 plus materials.

It depends if you want to make a sale of not and if you want to get repeat business. If you charge to high without having a name for yourself, I can guarantee you that you are going to kill any sales that can come from this person word of mouth.

Ask yourself how long it will take you to do this job and be honest with yourself. Then take your hourly rate that you make at your normal day job and multiple it by the total time it will take you to do the image. Total hours. Then add material. If it is 12 hours then take 12 * your hourly rate + materials.

When starting out, you want to make sales so you can get the word of mouth out there and start to make a name for yourself so maybe you can earn a living doing this fulltime, who knows maybe even teach workshops.

You can either have great images sit in your draw with a price tag of $500-$1000 a piece and no one buys, or sell them for $50-100 and get them into the public and increase your price as you get more known.

Personally I would not charge $550 for the first time job but again you have to decide what is right for you and how bad you want the job if you want it at all.

There is really no right or wrong answer to your question. You just have to think about what your intentions are and how you want to pursue what you are trying to achieve. Maybe this is only a one-time deal or maybe you would like to do this for a living. I think that is what you need to ask yourself first before you come up with a pricing structure.

Just an opinion and nothing more…

No, I have no clue, but the person may be expecting to pay what you were selling for. How do people handle going from the I do this for love and sell to make enough to continue doing what I love to being a business stuation? I for one would expect to pay more that what the artist was selling, but maybe I am generous.

I agree with Kevin. Remember that you can always increase your prices as you become more well known but you can't really decrease your prices.

This book by Cay Lang you may find useful http://tinyurl.com/et4yj

J

Do a little creative research and see if you can tease out of the client and/or the shop what their budget might be. It is a fair question - find out if their expectation is far from your reality. They might be of the opinion that you could do it for them for $50... which, at least in my mind, and for the DC area, is a no-way, no-how price. If they're thinking of spending $500 or more, you're home free. Somewhere between those prices is where you have a lot of careful consideration to do.

One way to think about this is you have a built customer for this image. I presume they know how much your prints sell for. So why not charge two or three prints worth and have that price include one to two prints? and charge extra for more prints if they want them.

When in the past and even now when people ask what something out of the ordinary costs.

I always ask. "What's your budget for this?" "How much were you thinking of spending."?


From that point on you know whether you are wasting your time, have a real shot at it or what the lay of the land is.

If they say, well I've paid $800 in the past, for example, you'd feel pretty stupid quoting $300 and leaving $500 on the table.

Get immediate feedback. Ask questions. If possible check out their place, and describe what you'd do and get them excited. Then start quoting prices.

Often when you ask questions, you buy yourself time also to get back to them with a quote. You can say stuff like, let me get check what my costs are going to run on this and I'll get back to you.


Michael