Ok. So I started shooting professional a little over 2 years ago and so far I've shot about 11 weddings with 7 more in the pipe.

I feel like my work is good, clients tell me they like my website and customers say they love their photos... yet something must be missing because I'm just not booking like I feel I should be.

Is it my work. If so, what needs work? Is it the site?

I hesitate to ask if it's pricing since wedding & portrait pricing seems to cover the whole spectrum. I charge $1,500 for a full day without an album and $2,000 with one. I even give the digital negatives. I think I'm inexpensive by most comparisons.

Any advice or critique would be much appreciated.

www.alansmiliephoto.com

--Alan

I'd do a GF and go up

Actually I just did:-) Right after I read about GF's raise:-) I was full day for $1,000 no album. Felt like I had to pay my dues to build a portfolio. Question is... what will the market justify here in Orlando?

Thanks for your comments though.

--Alan

Hi Alan!

Here's a few humble suggestions. Just a few of my thoughts after looking at your site...

1. Prices
I don't know the market in the Orlando area and what is high and low (obviously, the market in SB is gonna be different from that of North Dakota.) It seems like maybe your prices might be a little low (again, not knowing your market though, just a guess). You may get more weddings if you raise your prices. People will question your business if they think you price doesn't match your product. For instance, if I offered you a BRAND new Toyota Camry, for only $500 you probably wouldn't buy it right? (or if you did you would have a lot of questions about why the price was so low) I'm not saying your prices are THAT out of proportion, but maybe a little bit. Try going to 2,000-2,500. See how that goes...

2. Gallery
In my opinion you have too many images in your gallery. You have about 72 shots in there. I would cut that in half. If people aren't sold by image number 30, image number 67 won't convince them. Also, don't make them click on every single shot. I ran out of patience clicking through 15 of them. Either have them go through on a slideshow (which in my opinion is a bit more professional looking anyways) or have them be able to roll over the thumbnails to see a larger version. Also, they don't all seem to be wedding shots. I would make seperate galleries for the different catagories. A bride has no interest in looking at cool surfing pictures, no matter how good they are.

3. Pricing
I would have some sort of basic price on your website. It's frustrating to a bride who just wants to see if you're in her price range if you don't tell her anything about the packages or the how much it would cost. It's like in a catalogue when you see "CALL FOR PRICE!" The odds are you won't! I'm not going to waste another possibly couple mins of my time figuring out if this is a good deal or not. Same for your business. On the other hand, I wouldn't spell out EVERY little detail in your pacakges, but give them just a little bit of information to know if they should proceed further.

Your shots look good, the opening page of your website is very professional, I would just maybe look at those three things.

Hope it helps!

Chris,

Thank you for the feedback. Until recently I didn't have enough wedding shots to seperate them. Now I do. So I have been planning on seperating the galleries anyway thanks for confirming that.


I also like the idea of saying what pricing starts at. Your right. I never contact companies in catalogs that say "Call for Pricing" :-)

As far as pricing... I need to research a little more to see where I should be in the market.

Hopefully Brian will comment since he's in my area. Hint:-)

Thanks again Chris.

--Alan

Alan,

I caught your hint . . . finally!

Here is my feeling about pricing in any market:


As a professional wedding photographer, you need to be confident in your work and confident in the level of quality and service that you provide to your clients.

This includes your professionalism, your ethics, your workflow, your equipment, your choice of vendors and materials, and your personality.

Once you have this down, where should you set your pricing, especially if you are new to a market?

Once you start to build a name for yourself, it doesn't matter what you charge for your services. Hopefully this will happen and $20,000 per wedding will soon sound cheap to you.

Until then, I would suggest charging NO LESS (and possibly a little bit more) than what you are worth. How many hours are you putting in to preparation, shooting, post-processing, album design, etc.? You certainly need to consider your hard costs as well . . . how much wear and tear are you putting on your equipment? how much storage space do you need to buy? how much is your general overhead?? You need to make sure you are making money to live on, to put away for retirement, to pay for school, to buy new equipment, etc. AND that you're getting paid adequately for your time and your skills.

There are wedding photographers in Central Florida who charge $500 and there are wedding photographers in Central Florida who charge $25,000. I'd say your prices are average for the area, although this market can bear almost any price level.

The important thing is that you need to stand FIRMLY behind your prices. If you are a $2000 photographer, you need to be a $2000 photographer. If a $500 photographer raised his price to $2000 overnight, he will certainly lose his clientele and he will have to look in a completely new direction for clients (which would probably be a good thing). If a $25,000 photographer is only charging $2000 for his work, then he may have the wrong clients, and his clients may take advantage of him because he is offering bargain-basement prices for his amazing work. In every market, there are plenty of $500 clients and there are plenty of $25,000 clients. Fortunately, there are more photographers and more clients on the low end, and less photographers and less clients on the high end, so it all works out

We live in a global society. As photographers, our markets are no longer limited to our immediate area. As a Central Florida resident, I have been fortunate enough to have been flown to Miami, the Panhandle, Georgia, Connecticut, New York, and Alaska to photograph weddings and I just started doing the bulk of my weddings 2 years ago (although I have technically been in the business for 3 years)!


I hope this helps you. Only you can determine what you should charge. I feel strongly that price alone will not be a determining factor in gaining or losing your future clients. Take a lesson from DJ himself and win them over every time with your personality!

DJ is such an awesome and inspirational success story. He's been in the business only as long as I have and from what I understand, he charges what Gary Fong USED to charge (although DJ is worth a lot more than that) AND, he is only 25! Did I mention that he's only 25!?! How does he do it?? With his amazing personality (and his mad photo skills), I'd imagine. I've got a lot of catching up to do. Sheesh!

I think I'll go and revise my price list now . . .

wow...Brian, you're awesome. Just reading your post makes me wanna increase again. (justkidding) But you are truly inspirational. I knew I could count on you when DJ is on vacation somewhere!

Made my day..

KK

Brian,

Ditto on Katherine's comments. You responded exactly as I would have expected you to. Great feedback and good advice.

Photography I guess is like many other businesses... you are worth what you think your worth. Well... as long as you have the work to back it up:-)

Thanks again.

--Alan

QUOTE (katherine @ Apr 19 2005, 02:05 PM)

I knew I could count on you when DJ is on vacation somewhere!

Vacation!!! LOL...I love what I do but I'm definitely workin'

Great insights Brian!

You know, as I was reading your post, it occurred to me how helpful it would be if there were a book or a formula that could help folks like us compute what our time is actually worth, apart from what our risk tolerance and the market will bear.

Then, I remembered a really cool book I came across a couple of years ago called, "Your Money or Your Life". For those of you who are struggling to know what your base line ought to be, this could be a huge resource. It takes a little homework to figure things out (totally worth every moment you spend on it by the way), but the author does a really nice job of making the process user friendly.

In a nutshell, he asks you to gather some information (like how much revenue you generate, how much you travel, how much you spend on drycleaning, how much you are away from family, etc. etc.) and he gives you a process to figure out your actual HOURLY INCOME, taking into account EVERYTHING that it costs you to spend an hour on your life on ANYTHING.

So, if you worked at Enterprise Rent-a-Car and got paid $30,000 a year salary (i.e, $15 an hour, assuming a 40 hour work week ~ in your check), you may discover that after all the other non-accounted for expenses get included (e.g., hours of commuting, drycleaning, stress, 60 actual hours/week of work, etc.), you're actually making like $7 an hour (in reality). Then, you can decide whether or not that is worth your life to do that. It's very empowering and may shed some perspective on why we all need to be more vigilant in holding the line on our revenue while being shrewd with our expenses.

I think this kind of work is even more critical for photographers like us because many of us don't work for a "company". This system gives you power over your life by breaking down what you earn in real numbers. It can be exceptionally helpful and eye opening to go through this drill. I hope this helps. Let me know if it does.

The age old question... "What is your time worth"? Sounds like a good read. Thanks for the tip.

There's a spreadsheet in the book ASMP Professional Business Practices in Photography that does just what Dane described above. You plug in your expenses and the number of shooting days per week/month/year that you plan to have, and it tells you what your base creative fee should be to cover those expenses. I have it typed into my computer at home; I'll push it up to my website and post a link to it if I can remember to do so when I get home later.