5 tips to help you start pricing yourself as a family photographer 

5 Quick Tips To Get Started In Learning How To Price Yourself As A Family Photographer

If you are struggling with pricing yourself as a family photographer, I have 5 quick tips to help you get started in understanding how to best price yourself so you’re not always in hustle mode (and comparison mode- because ain’t no one got time for that!)  Read below my top 5 suggestions, and please let me know if any of these help you out!

1. As a family photographer, you should know your finances and overhead costs ahead of time

Questions to ask yourself starting now: -What does it take to run your business? -What are your monthly/yearly costs to run your business? -Do you have any subscriptions for your business?  I want you to either grab a pen & paper (or open up a Trello board) OR a Google Doc (whatever works best for you) and sit down and truly hash out ALL of your overhead costs for your small business. If you are a genius and can hold in all the information in your head, then I am jealous of you. But if you are anything like me (and the rest of the world), it would be super wise to write this all down so you won’t miss any important details.

2. Let’s chat about taxes

So, speaking of finances: -What are your local and state taxes? -What about excise/franchise taxes? -Do you have a CPA or accountant? Talk with them and figure out the logistics of your business’s numbers.  Remember, just because you may be running the show on your own and cannot afford a bookkeeper, do not assume you need to figure out the financial & tax aspects of your business alone. One of my first hires for my small business was a CPA, and it was the best hire ever because I did not want to screw up and do it myself through tax season. Also, keep in mind that a bookkeeper and a CPA are two different entities. Both are crucial for your business, but if I were to give advice, my advice would be this: hire a CPA first who is proficient in your local and state taxes, and once you start earning a consistent profit every month in your business, then hire out a bookkeeper to help you scale + grow your business. There are many ways to easily track your business numbers if you can only afford a CPA as your first hire. As a matter of fact, I have a bookkeeping template for creatives to help them get started with knowing the numbers (income + expenses) of their business if they do not have a bookkeeper. This is the exact template I use to help me track everything, AND I do have a bookkeeper, and this is a system SHE loves that I still use!

3. What does success look like for you? 

Again, speaking of finances, when I listed everything out, I quickly saw that I couldn’t just charge $50 per session for family sessions, and I HAD To raise my prices for photography sessions in order to make something out of that session.  I HAD to pay for overhead costs and for taxes, and then I had to account for my time away from my family. Only charging $50 per session wasn’t cutting it anymore, and to reach my goals, I knew I couldn’t physically photograph 600 sessions in person just to make $30,000. I had to do something (plus, there are not even 600 days in a year). I  could do something more realistic if I knew that I wanted to make $30,000 for the year, and I knew my  capacity was shooting up to 120 sessions for the full year, so that would mean my sessions would be $250 (Again, this doesn’t even factor in taxes and overhead costs!) Again, what does success look like for you? For me, success looks like providing for my son(s), and any future kids my husband and I may have. I want them to have a good education; I want them to have everything I did not have growing up. So, success in my mind looks like providing for my kids. That is what drives me every single week when I am working on my business. When you actually sit down and write out what success looks like for you, you may come to the realization that success isn’t a 6-figure or 7-figure business. It may mean making an extra $500 a month to provide a specific need for your life or family. Every situation is different and unique, that is why I want to encourage you to walk through these steps and apply them specifically through YOUR filter of life (not my filter, not so-and-so’s filter…YOUR filter!)

4. What is your capacity?

Can you actually shoot back-to-back-to-back sessions? If you are a young “whippersnapper” reading this and you are always on the go… well, maybe you can’t relate to this, but I know my limits. I used to always let clients book me whenever, and I would end up overcommitting and driving all over the place to accommodate clients. I would even shoot on my “days off” just to accommodate. Here is how I dealt with this over time: I created a schedule I was proud of and that worked for my family and me. How did I do this? Well, I started by tracking my hours for one whole week by using this scheduling tool (172 hours). Reading this book CHANGED my perspective on a lot of things, and having a kid changed my perspective on time as well. When I took control of scheduling my week to revolve around what matters most to me, I realized I could create a schedule that worked for me, not against me. I promise you that once you see your schedule and know it intimately, you will know your limit. 

5. Do you have a vision for your business? 

What do you envision for your business in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years? Do you have goals for yourself, or are you just blindly letting life happen to you? Yes, there are circumstances in life that we all cannot control (because hello, we are Human and we are NOT God), but I am a firm believer in the fact that God has given us insight and He wants us to have the wisdom to think ahead and to wisely plan ahead. Yes, things may not go our way and we need to be flexible in whatever happens in life, but we should still have some sort of vision for where we want to go. I  am not trying to get all “new age woo wooey” on you, but I am encouraging you to truly think about where YOU want your business to be in the future. When I started implementing strategies in having GOALS  for my own business, that is when things started picking up for me because I had PURPOSE and CLARITY in what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go with my business! 

Summary

So, these are 5 steps I strongly encourage newer photographers to take to ensure they are truly positioning themselves for success. And you will take note that if you truly dig into each point, you (the photographer) are going to have a different number than Photographer A or Photographer B because YOUR Life circumstances are different!   So stop playing the comparison game and stop assuming you need to be the SAME as so-and-so, and truly dive into the NUMBERS & Circumstances of your business to develop a better SYSTEM for yourself so that you know what you need to charge and why you need to charge that amount.  You don’t need to be making 6 figures, 7 figures, or 8 figures like all the business “gurus” are making in order to have a successful career! What does success look like for you?  

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