Pricing for Profit
Photo and story by: Annalise Kaylor
One of the questions we get most often from photographers trying to break into the business is, “How do you know what to charge for your work?”
Time and time again I meet photographers who make the same mistakes:
They googled what other photographers in their area charge and did the same
They decided to just multiply their costs by 4 and call it a day
They didn’t account for the work they do away from the camera
They accept jobs that have them operating at a loss without realizing it
They didn’t think through all of the “hidden” costs of photography
Knowing your Cost of Doing Business (CODB) is important whether you’re a hobbyist looking to make a little extra cash or someone who is hoping to make a full-time living from your photos. It’s not really a “side hustle” if it only loses money, right?
I’ve been profitable every year I’ve owned my photography business. It isn’t that I’m the world’s best photographer or because I have bylines in world-renowned publications. Rather, it’s largely because I took my business seriously right from the start and determined my Cost of Doing Business upfront. After all, how can I tell someone what I charge for my work if I don’t know what it costs me to produce it?
In a nutshell, your CODB is the money you spend on your photography whether or not you earn any money with your photography. If you’re working toward making wildlife photography your full-time career, this will also include your personal living expenses, as well as the expenses of your business.
If you’re looking to make part-time or supplemental income from your photography, then you’ll focus on recovering the expenses associated with your work, plus the amount you’d like to make each year above and beyond those costs.
Because photography is such a customized and specialized occupation, the CODB for each photographer is going to be different. Also, each one of us has different income needs and goals which also impact how we price our work.
In short, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to how your photography should be priced. By working through your Cost of Doing Business, though, you will know exactly what you need to earn to achieve those income goals whether you’re looking to make a little extra cash or go full-time and make your living behind the lens.
Identify Your Expenses
Within wildlife photography alone, there are many ways to generate income from your work. Some photographers focus on just one income stream, like selling prints of their photos. Others, like Jared and I, have multiple income streams that factor into our final pricing structure.
Some income streams have a Cost of Goods (prints, mats, canvas, frames, etc.) associated with them. Stock photography, however, does not. Unlike some other industries, we do not need to factor in the Cost of Goods just yet. That becomes more important down the road when you’re looking at how you’re going to generate income to meet the numbers you determine with your CODB.
The best place to start is by writing down all of the expenses you incur in your work as a photographer. These will range from the obvious expenses, like the cost of your cameras, lenses, and other gear, to the not-so-obvious like equipment insurance or the fees you pay to license your business in your state.
Maybe you haven’t upgraded your camera body yet, but you plan on it - include this in your expenses. Maybe you haven’t decided on a website platform yet - put together an estimate and include that, too. Maybe you haven’t booked your next photography trip, but you know how much you’d like to spend when you do - add that up and put it on the list.
ACTION STEP: Write down all of your yearly expenses, including the salary you’d like to make. Divide this total by 12 to determine how much you need to bring in each month to break even with your financial goals.
While not exhaustive, the list below should provide a solid start and get you thinking about all of the costs associated with your photography. Grab a notebook and write down every expense you can think of, along with its annual cost:
Camera bodies or future camera upgrades
Lenses
Equipment insurance
Gear maintenance and repair costs
Photography accessories (e.g., flash, modifiers, tripods, gimbal head)
Hard drives and a RAID system
Software subscriptions
Cloud storage and backup service
Internet
Cell phone plan and mobile hotspot
Website and hosting fees
Business license and annual corporation registration fees
Accounting software
Laptop and accessories
Travel expenses, including lodging, meals, guide fees, transportation, and photo permits
Health insurance and retirement account, if going pro full-time
Vehicle expenses
Marketing and advertising fees
Office supplies
Accounting and legal fees
Professional memberships dues
Continuing education & workshops
It’s important to use numbers that are as accurate as possible, even if they seem a bit high. Most photographers are surprised when they see just how expensive it is to run their businesses, so don’t be alarmed if that’s the case for you, too. You can always take a look at the list later and remove items that may not be a significant consideration for your individual circumstances.
Like wildlife in general, the business of photography can be a bit unpredictable and it’s also important to factor in the cost of mistakes or challenges that come with the business.
Earlier this year, Jared and I planned a trip to Minnesota in between two of the winter workshops in Yellowstone. Did we see the Great Grey Owls we had set out to photograph? Yes. Did we see the Snowy Owls we had been hoping for, too? We sure did. But neither of them were close enough to photograph, nor were they in photogenic places to make the kind of photographs we know will sell.
Thousands of dollars were spent on gas, lodging, meals, and other travel expenses, and we each lost more than 100 hours of our time trying to create those photos. This type of experience, the ones where things don’t work out as planned, come with a considerable cost that should also be considered as you look at your estimated expenses. I highly recommend padding your numbers just a little bit to help ensure that when this type of experience happens to you, you’re prepared for that in your numbers.
Once you have all of those expenses written down, think about the salary you’d like to pay yourself this year. For some people, this may be just a few thousand dollars to cover a workshop or trip. For others, it might be much higher, maybe enough to cover the cost of adding a 400mm f/2.8 lens to your kit.
If your plan for going pro with your wildlife photography work is generating a full-time income, then you’ll need to consider what you need to make in order to take care of all of your personal expenses, from rent and car payments to health care coverage and retirement accounts.
Consider Your Time
Another less-than-obvious step to determining your Cost of Doing Business is looking at how much time you devote to aspects of your business that aren’t always directly related to photography itself. Time is a valuable commodity. The more time you spend behind the scenes running your business, the less time you’re out behind your camera making beautiful photos.
It’s easy to think about the time we spend in the field, but also consider the time you spend:
Monthly accounting
Updating your website
Keywording photos and writing captions (especially for those selling stock or editorial photos)
Marketing
Traveling to/from a location (it’s a time expense as much as a mileage expense!)
Writing pitches
Responding to editors
Uploading and organizing stock photos
Planning out social media posts
Researching and scouting new locations
Responding to emails from clients or potential clients
Editing and organizing your photos
Working with photo labs for printing and shipping your photos
So many of the day-to-day tasks that come with operating a business are easy to sweep under the rug, without thinking about the time spent doing them. I estimate that I spend (as a full-time working photographer) about 4-5 hours in the office for every 1 hour I work in the field, not including travel time.
Some genres of photography, like portraiture or weddings, benefit from calculating the CODB down to the hour. Wildlife photography doesn’t need to be that granular, because there isn’t really a need to know what to charge on an hourly basis.
ACTION STEP: Look at the monthly CODB you arrived at from the previous step. Now factor in the hidden cost of your time as you see fit. If you’d like an hourly breakdown, write down the time it takes for you to get through your workflow or work on your business. Then, divide your total CODB by the number of hours to arrive at your per-hour rate.
Now that you know what goes into the cost of running your business, you can start looking more closely at your pricing strategy and at the avenues that will help you achieve your goals. Your Cost of Doing Business isn’t the only factor you need to consider, but it is the starting point for all of your financial decisions going forward.
We’ll dive into other topics, like how to price prints, succeed in stock photography sales, negotiate day rates with editors and magazines and the other nuances of pricing wildlife photography in other articles. But you can’t make an informed decision about what works for you if you don’t have a baseline for what you need to make to get to your income goals.