Best Business Practices for Photographers, Third Edition, 3rd Edition

Chapter 15

Setting Your Photographer’s Fees

So much smoke and mirrors goes into establishing a fair and reasonable price for the work that we do that asking any of your colleagues, “What should I charge for this?” will almost always result in an answer of, “Well, that depends.”

So, what exactly does it depend on?

A wide variety of factors should go into determining the fees you should charge associated with your creativity, risk, time, and experience. All these factors come together to develop the fee you charge for your photographic services. It is imperative that you approach what you’re doing with the understanding that time is almost always the least important factor, with rare exceptions. (I’ll get to those in “The Time Factor” section.) ...