THERE’S NO CRYING
IN PRICING By Victoria West, CPA
HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH YOUR PRICING?
WINTER 2020 | GALLERIE MAGAZINE | 26
IF YOU LOOKED AROUND YOUR AREA (OR ONLINE) TO SEE WHAT OTHER PHOTOGRAPHERS WERE CHARGING, YOU DID IT WRONG. WHY? BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO IDEA IF THOSE PHOTOGRAPHERS ARE RUNNING PROFITABLE BUSINESSES, AND BECAUSE NOT ALL BUSINESSES ARE THE SAME, WITH THE SAME OVERHEAD, EXPENSES, ETC. If you sat down and thought about what prices you would feel comfortable charging, you did it wrong. Why? Because price lists aren’t places for our emotions. Price lists should be based on real numbers. That’s how you build a price list you are confident in, one that sets you up for success. So how do you do that? Figure out your cost of doing business. 8 years ago my sales average was $300. I had a 5-page long price list and offered every product a client could ever want, yet all I ever sold were digital files. I was struggling to get by and getting deeper into debt each year. Sound familiar? I knew something had to change so I finally sat down and figured out my cost of doing business (google how to do that if you aren’t sure). I realized that in order to be paid $25 an hour, at the time, I needed to sell $1200 to each client. uh oh. So I changed my business model entirely. I switched to in-person sales because hardly anyone is going to order $1200 worth of product from an online gallery. And then I built a price list that would encourage people to spend what I needed to make, $1200. And guess what? I made $1200 every. single. time.
