If you’re shooting as a professional photographer, you might be struggling to make a living. You may be working longer and harder, but are finding yourself unable to increase your income. Or you’ve been shooting for a long time, and you’re making less money than you used to.
Although the demand for imagery has never been higher, so many of us are not being paid what we’re worth. This isn’t because the photographic industry has become saturated. It’s because the industry has become saturated with photographers who are not charging enough. This is a problem that is rampant in almost every type of freelance industry.
When you start shooting professionally, you might not know what to charge. No one seems to want to tell you, so you have to guess. Chances are, you charge too low.
In my case, I hired a business coach when I was first starting out. He told me what to charge based on my skill set at that time, and what the market could bear–but I didn’t really listen because I was afraid of not getting the job.
Fear is the driving factor for where we are now.
What separates the photographers that are able to make a good living and those that don’t is not necessarily skill and talent, but the willingness and ability to charge appropriately for their work. When beginners are charging very low prices for what is very often good photography, everyone else feels they have to lower their prices in order to compete. With so many photographers undervaluing their work, photography is growing into a commodity. We have trained the world at large to think that $200 is an acceptable price for a photo shoot.
A photography business is an expensive business to run. When you charge low prices, your business will become unsustainable.
There is a race to the bottom happening, and it’s a race that no one can win.
So how can we fix this? The answer is simple but not easy. As a collective, we need to raise our prices.
In the first couple of years of my photography business I underquoted–sometimes by quite a lot. I’d get the job, but then felt pissed off and resentful when I ended up doing so much work for so little. I was burning through my savings and failing to make a decent living, even though I’d never worked longer or harder in my life. By the start of year three I realized that I’d have to go back to working 9-5 in an office if things didn’t change. I absolutely was not willing to do that.
So I did what was counter-intuitive: I started charging more. More than I felt comfortable with. More than the clients who were approaching me were willing to pay. I “lost” out on a lot of potential gigs, but I stuck to my pricing and terms. I started doing other things to make money. I explored every opportunity, but also had the guts to walk away. I decided I was only going to accept jobs that paid me well and I didn’t waver from that, although at the time I admit it was really hard to stick to my guns.
The result was that I got a lot less work, but when I did work, I made more money. By saying no, I was weeding out the clients that were not willing to pay the price that matched what I could provide for them.
Unfortunately, few photographers are adopting this business model. Most photographers are willing to drop their prices just because someone asks them to. They don’t think of themselves as having any choice as to who they shoot for, or that it’s up to them to set the terms and conditions of how they will work with others. These are the photographers that struggle.
When you price yourself too low, you’ll eventually go out of business. You think you’ll go out of business if you increase your prices when the opposite is true. You’ll go out of business after you’ve worked yourself into the ground, charging prices that are not sustainable. Wouldn’t you rather make $5000 working with one client than make $1000 with five clients? The goal is to work less but make more.
I get a lot of resistance when I teach this philosophy to the photographers I mentor. They have many arguments, all along the lines of people won’t pay that, everyone is so cheap, if I don’t do it for that price, someone else will etc.
Yes, they will. They’ll make less money, taking every job that comes along, while you focus on going after the 5% of clients that are actually willing to pay you fairly. The clients that like your style and want to hire you for what you can do for their brand vision.
So many photographers are not succeeding because they’re too afraid to ask for more. I know that it can be terrifying to turn down work when you don’t know how you’re going to pay the rent next month. This is not an easy path and it takes fortitude to take on only the projects that meet your price requirements. Most clients will not be a fit. But if you stick to your guns, you’ll find that eventually the tide will turn and you’ll attract a higher echelon of client, get better projects that will take your career to the next level.
