Why It's Hard to Talk Pricing Publicly

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm happy to talk pricing and pricing strategy.  I love digging into profit strategies with small business owners during consultations.  It's like digging for hidden nuggets of gold within their business.  Unfortunately, it's not as easy to do this in public forums.  A strategy that works really well for one person may be a complete waste of time for another person based on who they are, what they sell, and what kind of people are valuing their work- which is why it's really difficult to talk pricing publicly.

Each individual has their own unique world-view of what ideal creative pricing looks like to them in the scope of their experience:

• One person may need to support a 5 person family on their creative income, and have a stay at home partner who can provide a lot of household or business support.
• One person may have a full time job for income and only be doing creative work on the side.
• One person may say that they only take projects for $10,000 or more, however they may also mean that every project they do requires a team of 10 people who are all working overtime to turn a project around in an amount of time that is usually unheard of to an individual doing it all on a solo basis.
• One person may say their rates are $150 a project, which might seem unfathomably low for your costs and overhead, but what they may not be saying is that they do 6 of those projects in one day and then do extended sales sessions or additional licensing from those projects that add an additional $1350 in profit after each project.
• One person may say they give away all files in a $3000 package, but they may not say that those files are only good for viewing on the web and not printing larger than 4x6 or putting in an album.
• One person may say they only include 20 album pages $3000 package and files are extra, but they may not say that they'll include the files if someone enough pages to their album.
• One person may say they include all the RAW files in a $3000 package, but they may not say that the editing of those files is extra or only included when they order an album.

All of these are examples of why discussing pricing is so difficult in open forums or even privately among other creative professionals.  

What works well for one person may be a terrible idea for another person's way of working.  Someone who hates sales would quickly fail by setting up their pricing in a way that requires them to do more sales and someone who hates working solo would total fail by setting up their pricing in a way that requires them to work solo.

We can never assume that the way someone else has set up their pricing is the same way we would or should set up our own pricing.  Which is also why you can never judge another professional based on their pricing alone- because you have no idea what goes into their pricing or what each term means in the way they define it.

This is also why the "what should I price this at" question is a terrible question to ask in forums.  You can get 10 different answers all based on how different people work and live, and none of those answers may even be applicable to you and your situation!  Super frustrating, and it doesn't lead to more clarity, only more confusion.

It is far better to figure out the numbers based on your business and understand how to price your service and products based on your actual costs, products, delivery, and costs of doing business so that you aren't jumping on a bandwagon that will send your business off a cliff!

Anne Ruthmann is a retired professional photographer in New York City. With over 13 years of success as a full-time photographer in weddings, portraits, editorial, architecture and interiors. She loves to travel the work and spend any extra time she has helping others find smart solutions to business problems. Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

Do I Need To Run Online Ads?

Do you have a product or service that requires you to show up in person?  If so, your best advertising focus may be an OFFLINE advertising strategy in a local area.

Do you have a product or service that can be purchased and delivered online, without any in-person interaction needed?  If so, than you definitely benefit from an ONLINE advertising strategy.

Too often people get stuck in the idea that they need to do everything and anything to promote their business, which is a great way to throw money down the drain and waste time on marketing or advertising strategies that are not going to be as effective.

If what you do requires you and a client to be in the same location when you provide your product or service, than you will miss an entire population of people who aren't checking the online market with any frequency to make a difference for your business, but who may be walking right by you every day in your cafe or local retail shops.

A local business needs to focus on local strategy to reach its ideal clients where they already are.
An online service or product based business needs to focus on online strategy to meet clients online.

Are you aware of all the ways you can market offline?  Check out this Annual Marketing Evaluation to see how many strategies are out there for marketing your business and which ones you may be missing out on if you're a local business!

Anne Ruthmann is a retired professional photographer in New York City. With over 13 years of success as a full-time photographer in weddings, portraits, editorial, architecture, and interiors. She now spends any extra time she has helping others find smart solutions to business problems. Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

How Many Clients Do You Need?

I used to think I needed as many clients as I could get, but that was a fast recipe for disaster until I had systems in place that allowed me to take on more work than I could personally handle.  Many people only learn what their limits are when they actually go beyond their limits.  This is a natural learning curve for new entrepreneurs and businesses, and hopefully you learn it early enough to benefit from finding your creative work boundaries early as well.

Once my client list got too big to personally handle, I started to outsource, insource, and run a team of more people to help behind the scenes.  The more distance I had from my own work and serving clients directly, the more I came to realize how much I missed being personally involved and having a part in each step of the process for clients so that I could assure great communication and quality imagery at every step.  I also realized how much more time and administrative function was needed to manage a team of people rather than operating as a boutique customized personal service business.

The grass is often greener, until you have to actually mow the lawn.

Some people get into business to grow profits and then sell-off or exit the business.  However, providing a creative product or service offers the opportunity to be more boutique, more custom, and more hands-on in a business, which is often what I love most about being in business at all - getting to help people directly.

Reaching the point of having too many clients to handle, and then experiencing what it was like to move from artist to manager in order to serve so many more clients, taught me exactly how many clients I could take on while still giving the boutique level of one-on-one service I preferred.  It also forced me to realize that in order to provide that boutique level of high touch and personal service, I also needed to have the appropriate price for that much intensive client care.

In order to deliver very personalized service to each wedding client, I maxed out at 30 clients and felt best at 20 clients.  In order to deliver very personalized service to each architecture & design client who had multiple projects over the course of a year, I maxed out at 25 clients and felt comfortable at 20 clients.  Some clients took 20% of my time and some clients only took 2% of my time, but together they all kept me busy as a full time photographer, and my pricing was designed to help me support this high-touch level of one-on-one service for each client.

When you think about how you want to grow or expand your business in the future - consider how growth may also change the type of work you do and how involved you want to be with clients versus your team of contractors or employees.  If you hate dealing with client issues and would rather deal with a team you've hand-selected, than expanding your team and training your staff is going to be your sweet slice of pie!  If you love working directly with your clients, you may want to focus on the boutique business model and use outsourcing & contractors supporting you behind the scenes.

When you look into the future of your business, what feels right for you?

Once you know what feels right for you- you can then decide if what you're focusing on going forward is to bring in fewer clients who value your work at a very high level, or focusing on more volume with value-minded clients who will help you support more staff that you can mentor and rely on to grow the business together.

Anne Ruthmann is a retired professional photographer in New York City. With over 13 years of success as a full-time photographer in weddings, portraits, editorial, architecture, and interiors.  She now spends any extra time she has helping others find smart solutions to business problems.  Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.