Figuring out selling price for pix's

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monkey101

Senior Member
I did do a search but got hit with a lot to do with nothing so I am posting. My wife is looking at selling some of her prints online as she has had a lot of people asking for some of her pictures. Of course friends always think they should be free which doesn't buy you new equipment or really show they value your skills and time.

I was curious about how everyone comes up with their selling prices? I know things very depending on size and medium. What does everyone use as their mark up?

We have said prices in the past for things and some people are like no problem, some you never hear from again and some say it was alot cheapier than what they thought.

So any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
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Rick M

Senior Member
480sparky said:
Material + Overhead + Labor + Profit = $Price.

The trick is knowing how to calculate the first four.
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Exactly and what does your market area support? You can set an online price which you can discount for certain people. Anything is worth what someone is willing to pay for it; that's why some people think a price is high or low. When I do shows my prices generally range from 4 to 10 times my finished product cost which covers the other costs and my profit. Many times packaging and presentation costs more than the actual print, you need profit on those materials also. If I were in New York city, I'd at least triple those numbers. Start a bit higher than you think is good, you can always adjust down.
 
wev

wev

Senior Member
Contributor
I generally have to pay people to take my prints, so it's a matter of what I can afford and how much room my wife needs. . .
 
wev

wev

Senior Member
Contributor
That silliness aside, a lot has to do with the audience, as said. When I had my letterpress shop, we kept 5 price lists

Max load -- we did a lot of socially pretentious goods for Silicon Valley before the bust; everything was generally a factor+ of normal (never had a complaint)
Well healed load -- tony book collectors, dealers, minor social players, and work we didn't really want to do, but had to
Base load -- in the front door normal price, descent profit
Cool Load -- projects that intrigued us, people with passion and small means
No load -- institutions, societies, etc that we supported and thought deserved something nice; so a non-profit/break even venture for us.
 
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singlerosa_RIP

Senior Member
Check out Zenfolio.com. Great e-commerce site for photographers. It'll cost you a couple hundred bucks to get started, but they provide the tools to design your site, organize your photos, modify price lists for digital downloads, prints and framed photos, along with fulfillment with PayPal.
 
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RocketCowboy

Senior Member
singlerosa said:
Check out Zenfolio.com. Great e-commerce site for photographers. It'll cost you a couple hundred bucks to get started, but they provide the tools to design your site, organize your photos, modify price lists for digital downloads, prints and framed photos, along with fulfillment with PayPal.
Click to expand...

Zenfolio is good, just make sure you disable their album offering otherwise they take your clients and high margin product and leave you with a small finders fee. Seems like they are starting to try and reach through the photographer to get to the end clients, rather than just being a platform that photographers use. But that said, Zenfolio is the e-commerce platform I went with for the short term.

On pricing, there are a few online resources that help formulate what should be good pricing. I don't see a location listed for the OP, but in the US, organizations like PPA and ASMP have good business tools. Another site/blog I've used, lawtog, has some good starting business advise and posts. Ultimately, it comes down to how serious of a business your wife is wanting to start, and what kind of operating margin is needed in order to keep the lights on and growing.
 
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