How many times have you been asked to write an estimate for a job in which you end up undercharging out of fear of not getting the job? How many times have you written down, deleted and rewritten the figures on an estimate because you thought the client would not pay what you were asking for? How many times have you quoted so little for a job that you actually ended up regretting getting the job? If this sounds like you, welcome to the club. It happens to all of us. To this day, I'm yet to meet a creative who at some point in their careers hasn't gone down this spiral of fear when they get asked to quote for a job. It takes a change of mindset to combat this fear.
Not knowing how much to charge for a job is at the top of the list of problems that freelance creatives who don't have an agent face throughout their careers. I would like to say that it gets better with time, but as we progress in our careers the jobs keep getting more challenging which in turn worsens the issue of not knowing how much to charge.
I blame this on a lack of transparency in the industry. Very rarely we see other creatives advertising their rates on their websites or discussing them in public. Everyone is very secretive about how much they charge out of fear of other creatives charging less and stealing their clients. I have a group of photographer friends who support each other in every possible way and even with them the conversations about how much we charge seem uncomfortable.
In some industries, there is a suggested rate that everyone is familiar with. People who work in those industries use this suggested rate to know how much to charge according to their level of expertise and seniority, and clients understand these rates and know approximately how much they will have to pay. In other industries, unions set the rates.
But for most of the creative industries, and particularly for photographers, unless you are represented it is always a guessing game. There are a million websites that give guidance on how to calculate your cost of running your business and all sort of magical formulae that should help you come up with these figures. In my experience, these don't work for most creatives. Those calculations work if you can predict the number of jobs that you will have per month, but most photographers can tell you that this doesn't really apply to the type of work that we do.
Ironically, there is pressure within the creatives industries to charge fees that are fair for you but also fair for the rest of the people working in the industry. Undercharging for your work forces other creatives to lower their rates to be able to compete and this affects what clients expect to pay in the future. Charging too little affects you and the industry both in the short and the long term.
I know that we all have bills to pay, families to support and food to put on the table. If times are tough and you really need the money, I can't advise you not to take on underpaid jobs. I also might not be able to give you an idea of how much to charge for your work because I myself came up with my rates after years of experimentation, self-valuation and building up confidence in myself and my work.
What I can offer you is guidance on the things that you can tell yourself to gain the confidence that you need in order to be at ease with the figures that you are charging.
My first piece of advice is that you write down your rates. Create a rate card for your services. It could be on a notebook, on an email that you send to yourself or anywhere that is easy enough for you to access when you are asked how much you charge. Resist the urge to change them every time that you have to send an estimate. Stick to them for a while and see if you feel that you are being paid fairly. If you quickly realise that they are too low and do not equate to the amount of work that you are putting in, by all means, change them right away.
Don't charge too low thinking that it will attract more work. It might at first, but a photography business is not an economy of scale. You are not manufacturing goods. Your expenses won't become cheaper the more jobs you get. Quite the opposite. And you will end up overworked and probably losing money. Also, undercharging will devalue you as a photographer. As you progress in your career, you will want to have access to bigger clients and usually bigger clients do not work with cheap suppliers. Creatives who charge very little seem inexperienced.
Don't charge an amount that you are not happy with and that you don't feel is fair. Some clients ask for a discount with the promise of hiring you many more times again in the future. The sad truth is that, most likely, they will never hire you again. And if they do, you will have a difficult time trying to raise your rates in the future to a level that you feel is fair.
If your clients are other businesses, think that both of you are trying to make money with the photographs that you are taking. So, It is only fair that you both make a profit. If you are working for individuals, think that they probably don't know how much it costs to have their photos taken. If after defending your fee they still can't afford you, that only means that they are not the type of clients that you should be pursuing.
Most of the times, if we are uncomfortable pricing a job is not because our fees are not adequate but because we are not confident about the value of our work. Funny enough, your potential client can see the quality of your work because they want to work with you in the first place and they asked you for your fee. It's about time that you own the value of your work yourself.
Photo credit: behind the scenes by Andrzej Gruszka.
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