I've been reading through a lot of the different threads (new and old) about how much to charge for photographic work (either restoration or editting)-- and I really notice there's a wide gap between people who charge low fees and people who charge high fees. I also notice, there's about equal amount of skill and talent between the people who charge both low and high fees. There's also a few who seem to charge three or four times the amount of what seems to be an average of everyone else. With this in mind, I've been contemplating my own fee lately, and wondering if I'm charging too little.

Personally, I charge $8.50/hr (in Canadian funds). I run a home-based business, and where I live I don't need to register my business unless I'm making a luxurious amount of money, so I can claim it as personal income. Currently, I'm working only locally (I don't take anything outside of my region, almost every household in Newfoundland has dozens of photos from 1800s and 1900s), but still, I'm planning on launching online and expanding my territory across Canada (at least). That doesn't change any of my overhead, aside from a slight cost of yearly web hosting which is fairly inexpensive.

Skillwise, with no formal education to speak of, I've been the artist type my entire life, I've been using graphics software since I was 14 or 15 (now 29) and I'm quite proficient with 2D software and not a bad hand with 3D software. And strangely enough-- I don't have a portfolio. :P I tend to operate solely on word-of-mouth business, someone sees work I've done for someone else and they come runnin' with photographs.

So, my question is (finally, after the spew, heh)-- living in a place where I have literally no business overhead (since I own the computers and software anyway) aside from $120/year for website hosting and the occasional upgrade and purchase of new software-- how much really is a reasonable amount to charge? So, not factoring in costs of running your business, just on personal merit, how much would you charge?

Not an educated opinion here - but C$8.50 sounds like peanuts to me. Wouldn't you earn more than that working at McDonalds? Having said that, personally I charge by job rather than per hour. I like to take my time when it suits me, and not burden the client with any unforseen technical problems.

Nah, people who work at McDonald's only make $5.75CDN/hr here and its nasty shift work. :)

As for technical problems-- when I come across an issue with a photograph I can't seem to figure out or fix or there's technical difficulty, the client is instantly off the clock until I resolve the issue or learn the process, and then back on the clock while I finish the photograph. I never charge for time that doesn't directly involve the photograph.

.....but C$8.50 sounds like peanuts to me.What is peanuts to one could be gold to another....
BUT
I don't see that being the case in Canada. Working at C$8,50 (US$7,15) here in Brazil, for example, would put you pretty near the tip of the wage piramid, although even here US$10 would be more realistic for quality work.

As I understand it, our friend RooB either:
1) Doesn't need to pay rent, buy a car, support a wife, kids etc.... etc.....
2) Has a "day-time" job which takes care of 1) and is doing retouching as a healthy alternative to watching TV.
In which case anything above $0 is valid.

The other side of the equation is "How much will the customer pay?". This is going to depend on what you do in that 1 hour. If you a good, and fast, then probably you can charge a lot more than you are charging now. If you are slow, get stuck frequently and have trouble satisfying your customers then maybe you'd better stick where you are for a while. the answer to this only you, and your customers, know.

RooB, good luck and all the best,

Rô
PS. If anybody wants to pay me US$10 an hour, I'm a taker!!

You have opened up a real bag of worms with this one! :grin:

If you had a business, then you would know how much it takes for you to run that business on a per hour basis. The costs include such things as rent/lease, utility costs (phone, lights, water, internet, etc), wages for you and your workers, insurance, equipment costs (includes cost new, repair, replacement, software, etc), consumable supplies (ink, paper, etc), PROFIT, and on and on. Hope you get the idea.

Once you add all the above up and divide it by the number of hours your business is open, then you have an idea of how much to charge on a per hour basis in order to maintain all of that.

Now if I understand your post correctly, you already own the computers anyway. SO? The cost of that part of the computer time that you are using for some customers work should be paid for by the customer shouldn't it? If you are not doing that you are surely a nice person just giving the customer something for nothing..... I would hope that if you are making prints you charge the customer for the paper and ink you use, but do you add a little extra for the wear and tear on your printer? Why not?

The idea of charging for equipment time and use of consumable supplies is rather easy to do in comparison to the idea of charging for your skills and training. Look around your community and see what other skilled trades charge for their labor. Just what does a plumber or electrician or mechanic charge for their time? Are your skills less or more than theirs?

And be careful about working part time and thinking that you can only charge low prices because of that. Just because you only work part time doesn't mean that you only use part of your skills.

And the last comment for this long post (I apoligize for that) is that if you start out with very low prices and then decide to try to really make a living at this, you will then need to raise the prices a bunch and that can be a hard thing to do.

Good luck

Mike

In which case anything above $0 is valid.


Never have I seen anything that I agree with more than that statement! :D

My hat is off to you sir! :bow: And please be aware that I am going to quote that far and wide :pleased: :pleased:

Mike

I do have to pay rent (for my apartment), and I do have a girlfriend who lives with me and isn't working right now-- yet the $8.50/hr I make from photograph (and basic computer tech work) pays my home bills and leaves a little extra to continuously upgrade systems and software. The cost of living here, of course, is exceptionally low. As for doing prints, no, I refer people to or use the local Kodak for that since they have far better printing equipment than I could ever invest into and even if I had the equipment, competing against them in price would be *insanely* impossible.

But the question still is-- if you *didn't* have to pay business expenses-- what would you or could you charge?

In my view, lacking some of the typical financial encumbrances would be an opportunity to refuse work at a pay rate below what you can be proud to accept. You need to be proud of what you do, which includes the pride that comes from earning at least the same as the other people doing the same thing that you do.

If you need to put bread on the table, do what you need to do and charge what you need to charge. But if you have that covered, do you really want to get work by being the low bidder?

It's not that I want to be the lowest bidder, far from it.

I just don't want to feel like I am charging someone for something just because I can, or because it's what everyone else is charging. I really do like being accessible to those who, normally, would never be able to afford someone to do this kind of work for them-- most people I have worked for locally would never be able to afford a $20/hr rate, not even in Canadian funds.

I do what I do because I love doing it-- money is just icing on a cake I already love, and it's not a motivator for me, as long as I am making enough to live contently, I'm happy.

However, at the same time, I will soon be expanding my territory outside of Newfoundland and I do realize I am quite off center on my rates compared to the average and I am looking to make some self-adjustments toward average, but not to the point where I exclude a local market. And different fees for two different markets would, I feel, be unfair.

So, I'm trying to work out a way to balance the factors; what I can afford to charge, what the local market can afford to pay, what people outside of the local market can afford to pay, and what people would consider the value of the skill itself.

Hence the question, if you could afford to charge based on personal merit alone, what would it be?

Never have I seen anything that I agree with more than that statement! :D
Oops, just realized that I didn't say if that was US$0 or C$0 - sorry about that!! :wink:

Rô

Hence the question, if you could afford to charge based on personal merit alone, what would it be?
RooB, I think you're not getting a straight answer because you're not actually asking a straight question.

The cost of living here, of course, is exceptionally low.
That is the key.....

I'll give you an example...A couple of months ago I did a semi-glamour retouch on some photos (mug shots, if you like) for a young american actress. I spent about an hour on each. She told me that if she had done the service in the States the cost would have been US$35 each, I charged US$15. Both of us ended up feeling a bit guilty, she thought she was taking advantage of me, and I felt like I was stealing!

Money does not have the same value everywhere. My "real" job is financial manger of one of Brazil's leading cell-phone equipment installers. Doing the math, the salary comes out at less than US$10/hour - but in Brazil that's good money. I refused a job in the States at US$20 because the end value was less.

(Yet) another example. There's a thread around here with someone wanting service done at (IIRC) US$4/photo. The US folks don't want to even go near it, I could have gone after it and there were some guys from India positively jumping up and down after the job.

The internet has really mixed things up. People in countries with a high cost of living can easily dispatch service to countries with a "low cost of living" and everybody wins - lower prices one end, and good earnings at the other!

So the answer to your question is....only you know what is right for you! Everybody else will give you a different, and personally correct answer.

BTW, my offer at US$10/hour :classic: :classic: is still open.

Rô

Aye, I was looking for different answers, not one definitive answer-- I figured if several people said several different things, maybe the average of them all would be closer to the answer I was looking for.

But, I am inclined to agree with you though, and $10 - $12/hr US is a fair starting point.

Consider that if a customer always looks for the lowest price, no matter where on the globe they can find it, and one can do that with images on the internet, then since you live in an economy that is some wheres in the middle of the pile, you had better find a line of work that cannot be done in some other country.

However if you can add some value to the job that cannot be transmitted over the internet, then you might be able to catch a job or two. Or become just a person who takes in the work, then out source it and pocket the differance.

Mike

In my view, lacking some of the typical financial encumbrances would be an opportunity to refuse work at a pay rate below what you can be proud to accept. You need to be proud of what you do, which includes the pride that comes from earning at least the same as the other people doing the same thing that you do.

If you need to put bread on the table, do what you need to do and charge what you need to charge. But if you have that covered, do you really want to get work by being the low bidder?


Nicely put, I agree.

I guess that one could also add that people doing the work way too cheap makes it hard for those of us trying to make a living doing this to do so.

Aye, I'm trying to be considerate of everybody (but I don't think that's realistic in this business)-- Most of all, I'm thinking of the people who can't afford high fees, yet at the same time of the people who make a living doing this, but I'm afraid in the end I'm going to have to choose between the two. And myself, I'd rather work with a poorer person's picture for $10 or $12/hr than a richer person's picture for $25 or $30/hr. Even at my current, local $8.50/hr rate, when I have thought someone was having a difficult time paying for the restoration, I've deducted my own time just to give them a break. I guess you can say I'm very ethical when it comes to business and I always put the person above the money.

As someone mentioned, I do have pride, and I'm very proud of what I do and proud of the work I do-- but my pride doesn't come from how much I make, my pride extends entirely from a job well done. Every client I work with is told before I take on a project, if they don't like the result of my work they don't have to buy it, even once the work has been done. I've yet to have an unsatisfied client (which makes for great advertising).

The thing I am most proud of though-- are the expressions I create when someone sees their old family photos in a new digital light. :)

Heh, if I knew this thread was going to get complicated I would have asked what people thought of PhotoFlair instead and wonder if its worth investing in. :P

The rich didn't get rich by paying more than other people. They'll cry poor faster than any legitimately poor person (especially via email). Selling on price is a losing gambit (unless you're Sam Walton).

I've always sold on service, price has never been an issue-- until now. :)

I don't understand what answers you were after RooB? Your original question was how much people thought it was reasonable to charge. Didn't you want an answer to that question? The thread doesn't seem complicated to me at all. Just a bunch of honest and frank answers. I feel no guilt in charging what I think my skills are worth. That doesn't make me a greedy capitalist I don't think... I have done many restorations for free as well.


It's an age old argument as well that those that undervalue their services make it harder for others to make a living. The cost of living is roughly the same in Australia as Canada, so I know that C$8.50 is not real market rate. (Though that is now very much complicated with the global market place as others have said)

Oh, no, I don't think anyone are greedy capitalists for their answers, not at all. If someone is making a living from $25-75/hr, that's fantastic-- it's just not right for me.

It just seems most of the answers seem based on "I have to pay for this and that" or "everyone else is charging this so I will too"-- and only one person has actually said what they could charge based on personal merit, without considering anything or anyone else.

So, mostly, it was a "dodge the question" kind of thread where people said why they wouldn't charge a lower rate, but aye, I agree-- it does seem to be an old, argument and maybe it's a topic best left laid to rest.

*takes the shovel and starts digging*
*buries the thread*
*plants a flower*

My condolences...
*inscribes tombstone "A short-lived but good question."*

Rô