The logic from the photographer’s point of view makes sense. One of the most time consuming parts of our jobs is enhancing and retouching photos. That time spent on imagery needs to be accounted for in our business costs. If we can account for that time, then we can price accordingly. Additionally, the time it takes to design an album is often more directly related to the number of images in an album than the number of pages. Creating a design for two images on a spread is much easier than creating a design for 8 images on a spread. So, from our perspective this makes sense.
Finao product shot.
But, the question we really have to ask ourselves, is does this make sense for our clients and for other aspects of our business. I did a little informal survey of friends and relatives – lay folk. None of these people were photographers, all of them have been married. I simply stated the photographers case and asked them which made more sense, pricing by the page or pricing by the image. And, was pricing by the image confusing. All of them preferred pricing by the page. When prodded as to why, it basically boiled down to the fact that they were buying a physical object and the physical pages inside were what mattered and made sense. Now, these are their words, not mine, so don’t get into a tizzy.
So, the question here is, how can we make our pricing both easy to understand to our clients and easy to account for our costs on the back end? The best answer I can come up with price per page and limit the average number of photos per page. For example, a 30 page album with a limit of two photos per page is $xxxx. Additional pages with a limit of two photos per page is $XXX. Simply by limiting the average number of photos per page, we’ve both covered our costs and made our pricing easy to understand for the client.
Fundy
Fundy is the creator of the Fundy Album Builder, Fundy Album Proofer and the soon to be released Fundy Price Builder. Free trials are available at Fundy SOS.
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7 Comments at "Album Pricing per Image Confusing?"
Maybe by limiting the average # of images per page it is more viable. The problem that I see if you don’t do that is that wedding albums can end up looking like school yearbooks with 15 images/page in order to minimize their financial outlay (sometimes 15 images can look good – if done for artistic reasons and not financial ones…)
I’m then faced with the question, how much should I charge for a photo book if say I use Shutterfly or Kodak for a simple book where my cost starts at $30 + shipping. What margin should I add?
Thanks
Catherine
Catherine,
I would seriously consider avoiding Shutterfly and Kodak as book vendors for you. Besides the issue of low-quality products, your customers know your costs so it is a more difficult task to explain the markup you charge. Try using one of the hundred or so album companies that only work with professional photographers and don’t divulge their pricing info to consumers.
Jesse
You really had me with your reasoning – until the solution was presented. Not a bad solution. But what if the couple wants a half dozen pages with more “images”?
That bring the discussion right back to images. Of course one could defer back to the nomenclature of (3 or 4 “image”) pages, but the customer and the photographer will recognize the difference between a 2 image page and any other page by the number of images.
Pricing per image, now why would that be confusing? If the client is so attached to the pages, why not sell a book of blank pages? This I say to point out that it’s the images, and the design that the client will appreciate most, not the physical pages of the book. Just guide the client toward an understanding and appreciation of what they admire about their album-the photos and the design! In this way, it shouldn’t be that much of a struggle to have the client understand the per image method of pricing.
Of course different biz models make sense for different photographers, and their specific clients. There are many photogs that spend very little or no time at all adjusting the images, and they have pre-made templates they fill quickly to complete their design. In this case it matters less in regard to the amount of time they put into each image, so a per page pricing model may make more sense.
Different strokes for different folks. For me personally, I price per image, and I’ve never had any clients who expressed confusion about that method.
We currently price per page AND per image. Page price includes one image; beyond that we have a per image fee to add additional photos to a page. Before that I priced strictly per image, and I decided how many pages to use based on the number of images chosen (I like to average 2-3 images per page). Albums aren’t just physical objects to be purchased wholesale and sold a retail — they represent the creative work of the photographer/designer. I think it’s not that hard to help a client understand that an album with more photos is more work to create than one with less, regardless of the pages.
Your casual sample of friends and family seem to put more value on paper and leather than on photography and design — shouldn’t that concern you if you are using them as a theoretical model for the average client of a professional wedding photographer?
Why not offer a shoot and burn album? It’s fairly inexpensive and its something Costco can’t touch. Photographic prints and up to 8 images a page.
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