I'm getting ready to restructure my wedding pricing/packages. I currently offer the ablums as a separate add-on to the wedding package. I've been thinking about adding an album to each of my packages to help promote my album business. So...place your vote...add your comments. Let me know your thoughts!

Another question on the side...If you do offer an album in each package, how do you handle (if you do at all) offering more than one kind of album that might have a different price tag?

Thanks in advance!
Matt

I offer a album credit that will get an album. Some pkgs inlcude enough to get a small album, some include enough to get 3 albums (theirs & 2 parent albums). Its working pretty well. They can always upgrade to a bigger/better one if they like.

EDIT: OOPS! Original message said "print credit" but I meant "ALBUM credit" I corrected it.

+1
Candy

We also include an album credit in all of our packages (we design a larger album, and then the client has the option to buy the extra pages or stick with the credit.) We think that albums are an amazing marketing tool for us-brides show it to their friends, and we are much more likely to be mentioned when the couple is recapping the day to their friends if they have an actual albums from us. We also think it just helps bring the whole process full circle and leaves them with a beautiful end result. So many brides end up with all their photos disorganized, stuck in boxes, and not put into something really beautiful. You asked about different albums with different price tags- I know that a lot of people do this, but we actually only offer Queensberry albums, so I am not totally sure how you would deal with different albums with different pricing. Either way though, I would highly recommend incorporating albums into your packages-some people don't know that they want one until they see one, so we like including it in the package upfront

We include an album credit (not a print credit) with all of our packages. We want them to have a great presentation for their images. We, too, design an album that fits the day -- and usually ends up bigger than their credit.

Hi, Matt

I think it's important to not complicate the process. If you want to handle a number of albums, make the pricing all-inclusive ... the price includes any options they want (covers, gilding, etc.). That way, it doesn't appear that you are nickel-and-diming them on small details, and it will make the sales process much smoother.

You have to know your cost for creating each album from start to finish. That will determine your price. Many photographers (including myself) price albums per page with a minimum number (usually 20) to start. For instance, an Asuka book might start at $45 per page, but a flushmount Queensberry $95. You have to know your cost plus time investment to arrive at the prices that work for you.

Hope that helps!

Thanks Bruce. I offer two completey different style albums. One is a traditional matted print album (Topflight) and the other is a coffe book style (New coffee book company to be determined...). I have not really compared the pricing between the two styles, but I'd be willing to bet that they are not that far off. So, if that IS the case, than that solves that part of the riddle.

I really like the album/print credit idea that most of you have posted so far. On a side note, do many of you have clients that just never come back for their ablums? I remember a thread about that problem from over on the fredmiranda forums a while ago.

Some of our customers are slow, but they have always come back and ordered. Since we started doing a predesign of the album it has really gotten people to order faster. Our slowest to be ordered from 2006 was 6 months. Most couples ordered within about a month or two. In the past, when we let them choose the photos and then we started the design, the longest was year. Also, before we did predesign, we never sold any additional pages in our albums. This past year, most of our couples added at least a couple of pages, others added many more, and only a couple didn't add anything.

We also offer two different styles of albums: matted and flush. We get them both from Zookbinders. This way the options they can choose are all the same, ie. album colors, cameo, etc. The matted cost us a little bit more, but take less time to design, the flush take longer to design but cost a little less. We charge the same for both.

I work my albums into all of my packages this way. I use an album design fee that is credited to the purchase of an album. If they don't want to purchase one great! BUT if they don't I get to keep the album desing fee. Basicly the fee is enough for a 20 pager but I am forever the artist and story teller and cannot design within a page number well. The last album I desiged was 30 but I had a feeling they were only going to buy 20 pages. They ended up cutting 6 pages out but they paid extra for those extra 4 pages they wanted. The upsell is so great! I will never do a "hope album" (give clients a proof album and hope they order) ever again.

Thanks! Can you explain what you mean by "predesign"? I have not checked out Zookbinders in quite a while. I'll have to give them another look.



I know what you mean...I don't think a wedding should fit in only 20 pages.

An album design fee is interesting...never heard of that before.

By predesign I mean that we make what we call a rough draft of the album shortly after the wedding. We show it to them online, then they can change it in any way they want. We give them up to three sets of changes without charging them extra.

With predesign, we select the photos that we include in it and we tell the story of their day. We find out from them before the wedding which style of album they like and we do the predesign for that style of album. By telling them that it is a rough draft, they realize that they are still in control of what goes in the album. Most couples do a few minor changes and like what we did. Every once in a while someone will want to do a bunch of changes, but that is pretty rare. Most of the time the album we design is larger than what is covered by their print credit. They have the option to take out some pages or to pay extra for them. Most of the time they leave in some or all of the pages and pay extra.

I lay out the matted albums using Labprints album builder. I put in what album manufacturer I am going to use and the style and size of the album and it gives me all the mat choices available to me. It is a drag and drop program that makes matted album design really easy. Often, with matted albums, after the initial design is done the couple will come in and go over it with me. I am able to do any changes they want on the spot and get a final draft done really quickly. Then with a click of a button, Labprints orders the appropriate prints for the album from my lab. Really simple. Flush albums are a bit more complicated and we use a combination of labprints and Photoshop to design those.

Thanks for the clarification. That is a good idea. Do many clients want to change the images that you choose? I often find my favorite images don't tend to be the B&G favorite images.

Usually they like most of what we do and just change a few images or add some images. Often they make comments like, "I hadn't thought of putting those together, it looks great" or "I didn't think I would want that image but I really like the way it looks." It really does make things easier to do predesign.

Cool! Thanks Lynn for your help. I appreciate it!

For sure go with the album credit! Then, do the pre-design after the wedding. If it's a good design, they'll buy way beyond their initial credit without doubt. 2006 was the first year that I tried the pre-design thing, and I had some MASSIVE increases in my album sales department.

Also, once you've done the pre-design, place a small discount on the book (or offer something cool for free....something of great value to them, but little cost to you) and make it a LIMITED TIME OFFER.

The LIMITED TIME OFFER creates the sense of urgency that gets the ball rolling. I can't say that it works EVERY time, but it works at least 90% of the time.....all you'll be hearing is your cash register going "Cha-Ching" :-) .....plus, your brides will LOVE their books and will rave about you like crazy!!

Ciao,
T

Thanks T. How do you figure out what your album credit is? Did you figure out what you would charge for certain size album and make that the credit and then make the predesign album bigger to upsell?

Yes, you could do it that way....it'd work fine. I do it a bit differently. I've found that in my area, couples are most comfortable seeing photographers that are priced around $3000. Also, in our area, a popular price range for the "shoot fee" of a wedding floats between $1800 and $2000. So, I price a base package at $3000 to keep within the "expected" level of most couples, and include a $1100 credit.

With my setup, they can use that credit for anything that they want on my price list. To me, i don't give a rip if they spend it on 4x6 prints, or kick ass albums. Actually, the straight prints would be the easiest for me to take care of anyway :-)

Once the couples see my sample books, almost everyone wants an album of some sort....plus, almost everyone also wants a bunch of reprints to hand out to friends and family. So, I instruct them to list out the things that they want (the book style that they like, and the quantity/size of prints that they want). Once that's done, most EVERYONE needs to purchase way beyond what the $1100 credit will allow.

The other thing I tell my couples is that "anything that you put in your package OVER AND BEYOND the $1100 at the time of signing the contract will be discounted by 10%. After the wedding, they're more than welcome to purchase more if they want....but there are no discounts after the wedding.

With this setup, my bookings rarely are anything less than $5000....and in many cases they exceed $10,000. I've also found that it doesn't matter how much they pre-book in their package, but they ALWAYS buy way more stuff after the wedding at the regular price (ie. rarely does anyone buy less than 40 pages in their book, even though they pre-purchased a 20pg book).

Doing it this way has enabled me to make sure that everyone gets a some great reprints and/or an album with their package. Before I set it up this way, there were too many people just getting a shoot fee and not purchasing albums. I'm not interested in having someone book me unless they want to do something with the images I shoot. There's only so many weekends in the year, so I need to make sure that I can sell each weekend at as high of a price as I can.

Does this setup make sense to you? It's working for me here really well. My next step is to jump up to a $4000 minimum package.


T

Thanks again Trevor...good info! I think I am going to go with the album/print credit.