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Pricing a 'season CD'
jswoolf01
Registered Users Posts: 31 Big grins
Looking for advice:
Last year I took the leap into professional photography, specifically action shooting at local horse shows. I got a lot of nice pictures, met a lot of nice people, and made some sales -- enough to do it again this year. I sold my pictures through Smugmug, offering primarily prints and a few merchandise products.
Now I have a request from someone for a "season CD" -- all photos of her granddaughter from shows that I shot last year. I went through my archives and found about 40 good pictures of this rider, from 5 different shows. I think that's enough to make the request worthwhile -- both mine and the customer's. However, now the questions begin: :scratch
* Do I give her the high-res versions that I uploaded to Smugmug, usable for prints up to 8x10 and perhaps larger? Or lower-res versions suitable for display on a computer, and perhaps small prints?
* What price do I put on the season CD? $10 per photo seems too high, but $3 or $4 seems too low. By way of comparison, I currently charge $15 apiece for 8x10 prints.
* What kind of rights release, if any, should I put on the CD? I don't want to give them unlimited rights, but I also don't want to get bogged down in minutiae.
Any suggestions?
-- Jon W.
Last year I took the leap into professional photography, specifically action shooting at local horse shows. I got a lot of nice pictures, met a lot of nice people, and made some sales -- enough to do it again this year. I sold my pictures through Smugmug, offering primarily prints and a few merchandise products.
Now I have a request from someone for a "season CD" -- all photos of her granddaughter from shows that I shot last year. I went through my archives and found about 40 good pictures of this rider, from 5 different shows. I think that's enough to make the request worthwhile -- both mine and the customer's. However, now the questions begin: :scratch
* Do I give her the high-res versions that I uploaded to Smugmug, usable for prints up to 8x10 and perhaps larger? Or lower-res versions suitable for display on a computer, and perhaps small prints?
* What price do I put on the season CD? $10 per photo seems too high, but $3 or $4 seems too low. By way of comparison, I currently charge $15 apiece for 8x10 prints.
* What kind of rights release, if any, should I put on the CD? I don't want to give them unlimited rights, but I also don't want to get bogged down in minutiae.
Any suggestions?
-- Jon W.
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Comments
Actually it doesn't matter.....just make sure that there is a copyright notice on that label and make it bold and so it stands out from the rest of the copy.....that way any reputable printer will not just make prints for the disk owner with a release form......Inormall include a release in paper form that is notorized and also a scanned copy goes into a file on the disk also and I keep the original.......
As to the pricing......a season disk.....mixed contestants on one disk or a season disk of only one contestant ??
How many photos per disk??
You do not want to price yourself out of sales here.
Do keep the resolution low....normally I resize in PS to a 4x6 (make sure contrain proportions is ticked) and then I save for the web and decide then how good of a file to give......I start out with the lowest resolution and come up to what I feel is acceptable and will not allow good 8x10 to be made........
here's my take on this.
Providing a CD with full res images means you will never sell another print out of those.
OTOH, she may never buy those prints at all and I doubt anybody else besides her will.
Here's what I'm quoting my customers who want pics of their kids from the show:
1mp image 72dpi resolution (perfect for web, OK for wallet size
prints): $2.99/ea
4mp image 150dpi resolution (printable up to 5x7): $6.99/ea
Full res (15mp or 21mp) image 240dpi (full-resolution original - printable up to 30x40): $29.99/ea (NOTE: this is also what I charge for 8x10:-)
CD + s/h: $9.99
As a side note, these are images that are totally worhless for me and for everybody else (except parents). Hence I have no regrets if I get paid even anything and have to give the jpeg (mind you, I never give up RAW files). I spent almost zero time on them, except shooting and mayby cropping. Essentially, these are snapshots taken with a very expensive camera and few extra lights.
My rates for the portrait session would be quite different....
As to the release: just grant them personal usage.
HTH
In this specific case, up to 40. In other cases, it might be anything from a dozen to a maximum of 50.
Hmmm. So (combining the two replies): price by the picture, include a rights release form on the disk, no bigger than 5x7-quality resolution, and label the CD with some kind of printed label -- LightScribe probably best since it etches directly into the disk surface. This helps a lot, thanks.