What I’ve learned over the years is that cheap clients usually come as a result of cheap marketing. If I’m running around town shouting from the rooftops that I’m doing free shoots with only $10 prints, I’m begging to end up with a bunch of clients that just want to spend $10 or $20.

As in all things, there is a balance to be achieved.

My goal is always to stay booked to my personal desired capacity. Whether for you that’s five shoots a week or one, you know about how often you like to or want to shoot.

In the early stages of your business, any client is a good client. Every single one lets you grow as an artist and business owner. They allow you to experiment, fail, and grow using live guinea pigs for fodder. They let you poke at this price, prod at that policy, and begin to really define and refine your work. All the while, improving your artistic talents.

That said, if you’re booked solid with cheapie clients, don’t be afraid to raise your prices, or likely better, stop marketing yourself on price and start marketing yourself solely on art and the experience you create for your clients. This was a big step I took once my art was good enough to keep me booked solid for a month or two in advance – and when you stop advertising price, you start getting clients whose primary concern is your great art, not your great prices. When they find out how low risk your pricing schedule is, they don’t hesitate to book.

Early on, it takes very little stress or worry to offer no session fee, no minimum order, and prints/files starting at just $xx. When your art and experience mature, it takes a lot of confidence to sell on the same platform – the onus truly is on you to create art so excellent and varied that your clients can’t keep from buying it.

There’s certainly an argument that digital files are premium products (maximum size, unlimited number of reproductions, kills potential for follow-up sales). There’s also an argument that digital files are virtually free (can be reproduced infinitely without cost, a CD full to the brim costs a fraction of even the smallest print). When you’re setting prices for any product, have a reason – a real, arguable, logical reason for why you charge what you charge, for any product.

I love selling digital files – I love the ease, I love the simplicity, I love educating my clients on what cool things they can do with those images, I love seeing my images all over Facebook, I love empowering clients, I love just handing over a CD and not having to stress about what the lab will or will not have done to my image upon its printer, I love that what I hand my client is a pure and perfect copy of what I showed them when they made their purchase.

There are many, many photographers who love prints and wall art for a completely different set of reasons, and for those photogs, it makes sense that they price digital much more expensively, or don’t sell digital at all – it’s not what they or their clients love. Every photographer, and every market, has its own personality.

To directly answer your questions:

- When I hand over digital files to a client, I always educate them as to where to get the best prints, what will happen if they print at a one-hour shop or drugstore, what cool stuff they can do with the files, how they may look different on different computers because of monitor calibration, etc. A little education goes a long way to ensure the client knows how to get the most out of their images.

- I have never feared what my clients might do to my art. I’m too busy photographing more clients. If one out of a hundred load up my images into Paint Shop Pro and make them look like a dog threw up a cat, and then post their artistic interpretation to Facebook or their wall or wherever, it’s still just one client out of a hundred. The breadth and depth of my portfolio, online and in print, the art I show in my marketing pieces and advertising, on social media, and what my other 99 clients share in pure form with their friends and family, creates a tidal wave of good impressions that reduce any lesser examples to impotence.

- If you worry about your clients buying digital files and printing them too low of quality, educate your client as to where they can get best quality work done. Hand them the keys to the kingdom. The professional lab I use has a consumer division that produces prints and products of near-indistinguishable quality from what I sell for much, much more. And I tell my clients as much. I give them the web address, and tell them how easy it is to just upload and order “for just a few dollars more than what you’ll pay for fuzzy, off-color prints from Walmart.”

- If you do offer files at a higher price, you just shift your place in the market more toward prints. You’ll market to and earn more clients who want prints, desktop framed images, wallets, and hopefully, nice wall art to enjoy for generations. I only recommend photographers push a more digital-friendly offering because it’s what the majority of the market wants, it’s very low-risk and low-cost to the photographer, it breaks the mold of what most other professional photographers do, and most importantly and true of anything I recommend here on PTP, it works very well for me. When a client buys a full CD of images from me, even at a highly discounted price, I look at my per-hour earnings (in pocket, after all expenses), and grin like a Cheshire cat.

Your questions are fully valid, indeed I should write an article on the “letting go” aspect of selling digital files, and I thank you for the inspiration. If you focus on ever-improving your value to clients, through better art and a better experience, you’ll quickly grow beyond pricing and soon be able to book yourself solid on the merits of your good work alone – which leads to an equally better quality of client, as well.

Please do keep me posted on your progress, how you decide to handle and price your files and prints, and what the results are for you this year! Don’t be afraid to experiment for a few months, then change things up and see how your business changes with it. Nothing is ever set in stone – never forget, you’re the boss, you’re in charge. Look at it as an adventure, a grand and profitable experiment, which only grows more profitable over time. It’s a wonderful profession to enjoy!

Please do keep me posted on your successes and adventures! I truly look forward to hearing how your engagement shoot (and hopefully sales!) turns out. Trust me when I say, it’s a lot like getting a flu shot – thinking about it hurts more than the moment itself.

The path you’re on is indeed a journey, and it will be as enjoyable, fun, and fulfilling a journey as you let it be. Again, we are always our harshest critic – while we need to continually recognize where we can make the most important improvements, we need to forgive and accept and encourage ourselves in equal measure. If you screw up – and we all do on a regular basis – recognize the mistake and use that powerful energy to plan and practice improvements.

Thank you again for your readership, and please keep in touch!

I switched to an almost completely digital sales model years ago, and I’ve not looked back since. I learned that for me in my market, my stress level was minimal and my clients were most happy (and profitable!) as I walked away from conventional practices and did what I thought was right, what made sense to me as both an artist and a consumer.

There are so many things one can worry about in life – about life, about business, about art. My best advice is to simply let go of the worry and focus on what’s actually important: your art, and marketing it to an interested clientele. You will get some bad clients, some may even do horrible things to your photos, but the vast majority will be great subjects, make for great art, buy well, and treat your work with respect, while being your biggest fans and cheerleaders in their social circles. It’s vastly easier to win over people in this way when you don’t treat them like criminals, but as respected, appreciated clients.

Education helps: when I hand over a CD to a client, I also make a recommendation of my favorite local and online labs to have prints made, and encourage them to pay the extra dollar or so to get much better quality than the one-hour shops.

In my experience, my photo shoots are both more profitable and my average sales are larger than they were when I primarily (or only) pushed prints. I used to do it all – frames, canvas, add-ons, upgrades, up-sells, packages, volume discounts, the whole kit and caboodle of “tricks” photographers (and many other industries) use to squeeze clients for more dollars. It was like trying to teach a pig to sing – it just frustrates you and annoys the pig.

Honestly, I think the whole “what will they do to my art!” argument is a paranoid one instilled by artists who like to call themselves such with a capital A – focus on the art and experience you’re creating for your client, and don’t worry about those things which are wholly beyond your control (if you don’t sell digital, they’ll just scan the print, etc.) – improve your art, improve the experience you create for clients, adjust your prices and policies as you go along and adapt your business to best serve your market. If you do this, you will be so busy with the fruits of your success that you will have neither time nor interest in worrying about what a few squirrely clients do with your digital files after they’ve bought them.

I hope this helps! Thank you again for your readership! Let me know which path you choose, and how it serves you this year.

Truly, there is no one pricing style that works for everyone – every photographer and market is different. That said, I am a big fan of simplicity, and a big fan of customer-friendly practices. I’ve experimented with all manner of pricing styles over the past 13 years – session fees of $0 to $300, packages and a la carte, turn-key style setups of a session fee that includes a full CD of hi-res files, charging for touch-ups and sepia tones and black and whites, and so on.

What I’ve found to be ultimately simple and attractive to clients, while still offering a great return on my investment of time, is the no session fee, no minimum order, flat base rate for prints and files setup. Having the elevator pitch of, “I charge no session fee, and have no minimum order – you just buy what you love. Prints and files start at just $10,” I can’t recall a potential client who turned me down because of price. It’s really just an imitation of the Walmart style of pricing – folks come in for the $8, 40-print special, and walk out having bought $200 or $300 worth of photos. Except with the system I follow, instead of using up-selling techniques to improve my sales, I rely on putting together the best art and experience I can for my clients.

Regarding having the impression of being a ‘cheap’ photographer, I try to let my art do the selling for me. My pricing is just a hook once the bait, my art, has done its job and piqued interest in a potential client. I don’t advertise my prices, they aren’t published anywhere – potential clients see my art, contact me to visit, and then learn my pricing style – which is almost always immediately followed by booking.

If you’re not scoring the number of shoots you would like, consider a few possibilities:

Exposure – Are enough people seeing your art, and seeing it in a way that inspires and enables them to contact you to book? How are you marketing your services? Are you including a Call to Action so your potential clients know what to do once they’ve seen your art? Is it obvious what you do, who you do it for, and how to contact you?

Impression – If exposure is the number of people seeing your marketing, impression is what people who see your marketing (in whatever form it may take) think when they walk away. You have obvious artistic talents, but does your marketing show off your personality as well? Does it show how fun, or sophisticated, or down to earth you may be? Does it leave people wanting to see or know more? Does it stop them in their tracks as they say, “Whoa, wait, what’s this?” Basically, if you’re getting eyeballs on your art, what are you doing with those eyeballs?

Targeting – Making a great impression through extensive exposure within a market that has no interest in what you have to sell is worth jack diddly. There’s always some crossover (baby photos turn into children’s photos which turn into family portraits which turn into senior photos, etc.), but if you’re primarily a children’s photographer, are you maximizing your exposure where children (and more importantly, their parents) are? Are you doing any co-op marketing with your local children’s resale shops? The maternity ward of your local hospital? Your pediatrician’s office? School PTO? Sunday School? Be Where Your Clients Are.

Niche – You always have to scratch a niche, especially early on. Looking at your blog tonight, all your art is just lovely (again, those eyes!), but I see pet portraits, landscape photos, children’s photos, baby photos, commercial/editorial style work, still life…in that order. It’s often hard for photographers early in their careers to ‘let go’ of everything but what they are best at or love shooting the most, but I feel it makes it vastly easier to break into a market when you focus your work and marketing on that specific niche. Be the best Baby Photographer, or Children’s Photographer, or Family Photographer, or whatever you love, in your market – but don’t try to be the best at everything. As they say, trying to be everything to everyone makes you nothing to anyone.

Going back to pricing, I honestly would say if you’ve never seen anything but package pricing in your area, then that tells you precisely why you need to use a different pricing style. Stay one step ahead of your competition, be innovative, so long as that innovation is in the benefit of your clientele. Make the competitive battle You versus Everyone Else, not you versus each individual competitor – change the game.

I’d wager it’s not your art or your pricing that is causing you to come up short on clients, but more likely your marketing. If you can improve your marketing message and get it in front of the right potential clients, I think you’ll see a serious uptick in the number and quality of your clients. Without knowing your market, competitors, personality, shooting style, etc., I can’t give very good specific advice, but the above ideas are transferable to just about any photographer’s situation. Please don’t hesitate to comment here or e-mail me at James@banderaoutlaw.com if you would like to discuss specific ideas at greater length!

And please do keep me posted on your successes and adventures! Thank you again for your readership!

I really enjoyed visiting your portfolio tonight, you have an amazing way with color in your photographs. You are more than capable of charging for your work, and in fact I look forward to hearing from you about your successes when you do start charging and marketing your talent.

Charging is a huge step – it’s really hanging your shingle and saying, “I am a professional.” Your art is there, though, John – truly. Put yourself out there and allow yourself to enjoy the rewards of your work, and allow your community to be blessed in having you to hire.

Please do keep me posted on your successes and adventures!

What’s worked for me and has grown to be my philosophy, is that no client should have to put a dime on the table until they see the art created from their photo shoot. And when they do spend their money, it should be in the purchasing of that art. I feel like session fees and minimum orders only exist to place the onus of risk on the client instead of the photographer.

Not to say there’s any sin in it – especially once you’re established and have a solid client base, charging a session fee does give you a level of protection for your time. But in the early stages when you’re trying to build that base of repeat and referral clients, I think it’s vastly easier to just accept the risk yourself and give the client an unbeatable offer to get them in the door. “I charge no session fee, have no minimum order – you just buy what you love. Prints and files start at just $10.”

Will some clients make a minimal purchase and leave you with little pay for your time? Yes. Will most clients beat your desired minimum and more than make up for the cheap folk? Yes – in my experience, you win far more than you lose for your time. And again, early on, you’re also enjoying the invaluable benefits of growing experience, developing your artistic talents, practicing your skills, refining your business acumen, building your portfolio and base of clients, earning great referrals, etc.

Eventually the time does come to raise prices, maybe set up a session fee or minimum order, to maximize your profits while protecting your time. But early on, and/or in a competitive market, having no session fee breaks the system – instead of it being You against John Doe Photography and Jane Doe Photography and Kiddie Kandids and JC Penney Portrait Studio and Portrait People, it becomes You versus Everyone Else. It evens the playing field in one move.

Thank you again for your comment! Please do keep me posted on your choices, and how they play out in your market. I’d love to hear of your successes and adventures!

I took in a workshop with Doug Box many years ago, and he was very much of the “buy more, get more” mindset – the most expensive print you could buy was the first one. Everything got cheaper the more you spent.

I felt his pricing schedules were wildly complicated and leaned too far into the not-customer-friendly realm, which is why I like a la carte and flat-rate options. As I’ve written here, I like to keep the onus on myself to produce enough variety and quality of art to earn the client’s dollars. If I do better work, they’ll spend more money.

Certainly, I’m partial to a tight cull – I’d rather show a client 10 great photos than 10 great and 20 mediocre ones. One benefit of practicing new setups with each shoot is you can grow out your repertoire until you’re nailing 10, 20, 30 different interesting, unique and salable sets of images per shoot. I do my best to get as much variety in with each shoot, and from a typical hour-long shoot I’ll show a client 30-50 proofs. The better your variety, and of course overall quality, the easier it is to sell more – including that full CD of images at a tidy profit.

I always offer CDs of all (keeper) photos from a photo shoot. I try to go with a price around 20 to 25 times my base print / file price. If I know that I average a sale of $300 per client, I’ll offer an all-photos-on-CD package for $400 for example. Anything that beats my average per-client sale provides a boost to my bottom line. If I sell “too many” CDs this way, it shifts my per-client averages, so I raise my price for the CD anyway. Pricing is very much a learn-as-you-go sort of thing.

Try adding up all of your typical client sales (ignore the really high or low ones), get an average, and charge $100 or so more than that for a CD of all photos. See if it sells. I’d say about one in four clients will buy the full CD option. It does add quite a bit to my total processing time (I do complete processing and touch-ups on all purchased images), but I always make sure that my desired per-hour income is met. If it’s not, I raise prices, of course.

Like infomercial king Ron Popeil would say, “Set it and forget it!” Pick a price you like the looks of that makes sense in some way, throw it out there, and adjust as you go as you see the need. Trust your gut.

Let me know what you decide on, and how it turns out for you!

Awesome series, really informative and helpful.

What’s your take on offering CDs of entire shoots? Many clients these days pretty much expect a CD with the all of the images. If I’m charging $10 per file and quoting a client $400 for a disc containing 40 keepers they will surely go running for the door.

Thanks!