The thought provoking idea of a disc is something that we have wondered about for a while.

You look around and see so many people asking for disks. The world evolves, things change and we have to move with it, with the development of social media maybe we should embrace this change and work with it?
Great topic!

I have removed the free disc offer from all of my packages, and replaced it with a slide show set to music, I will now wait for the client to bring up the subject of a disc with high res images, if they dont great, if they do I will make the offer to sell the disc at that time, believe me not all clients ask for a free disc, but if you offer one they wont say no will they, so in other words all you photographers out there who advertise “free disc with every package”, you are not even giving yourself the chance to make more income, think about it.

We spend about 90 seconds per image in post production and we only show a maximum of twice the pictures that the client will buy. So we would edit 250 or so images if we thought the client will want 150 or so in their album. For pictures on disc we edit the number thew clients have bought. If the package was for up to 30 shots from the pre wedding shoot we’d cut down to say 32 and edit those. The client still gets more than they expected etc.

I hope this helps, Damien.

I’m glad you enjoyed that one:) It’s a bit of a back of an envelope business plan but it is out there to make people think. Is this really posable? who is doing it and if not why not? The truth is the wedding business in this country is still very buoyant. There are just as many weddings happening and by cutting out a lot of the time and expenditure you can offer a sub £2k service and make a good income. So many photographers are being sucked in to providing £600+ albums and all the hassle that goes with them for little or no more reward.

Yes, there are many bitter and twisted photographers out there with all the skills and ability who are struggling. They will blame the economy, the start ups shooting for nothing, uncle Harry, in fact just about anything except themselves. Business doesn’t have to be complicated and you don’t have to be an amazing photographer to make good money. You absolutely do need to have a positive mental attitude and understand your weaknesses. There are so many great photographers out there who run poor businesses. They often don’t understand the need for a USP, their products look like everyone else’s, and because they have to compete on price they set their fees too low to make a good profit. If they do have a good unique product they often don’t market themselves effectively. There is always another way to trade and this article is out there to make people think.

It’s what Julie and I did. We created a unique product that was different from anyone else’s and put it in front of our prospects. Our product ran it’s course and remained virtually unchanged for 10 years. I see photographers out there struggling to peddle the same products today that were fresh and new way back in 2001.

I’m concentrating on working with a small group of motivated and focussed photographers to realise their true earning potential. Many of them lack shooting experience or business acumen but that can be taught and a high percentage of them will succeed to be happy people with photography funding their lifestyles. I believe wealth is about more than money, it’s about happiness.

Regards, Damien.

Cheers
Helen

Perhaps a new business model for wedding photography is needed along the lines of a commercial photography model. All expenses met plus a shoot day rate of lets say £2000, a post production day rate of £500 and hand over of all files and responsibility thereafter. Then a wedding would take 3 days to produce at an income of £3000 plus expenses. I think 40 of those weddings a year would generate a great lifestyle. A 3 day week, really long holidays and a good income. Hmm sounds too good to be true.

Damien.

We release the images the client has paid for on CD at high res. It saves them the hassle of photographing each print in their album. They always do photograph the album prints if they don’t get jpegs. Facebook is full of wedding pictures reshot from prints. Like you, we just ensure we charge enough for the image in the first place

Cheers, Damien.

Wise words indeed. We have always charged by the image irrespective of it’s mode of delivery wether on a bit of paper or on a CD. The price remains the same.

Thanks again for your contribution. Regards,

Damien.

an interesting and oft discussed topic this one.

I think the biggest problem with the ‘disc of images’ product, especially for those new to professional social photography, is that the direct cost is so low. So there is always this feeling that “it cost me peanuts, I can’t sell it for much”. It’s so easy to forget that we aren’t selling the disc we are selling the images on it and all the energy, skill and time it took to create them.

I used to actively discourage new wedding togs from selling digital versions of their work. I’m still not that happy about it if I’m honest. However, if we are going to sell images on disc to “meet the needs of our clients” then we should all take responsibility for ensuring that this format isn’t seen as a cheap option.

Hmm, I appear to have fallen off my soap-box so I’ll shut up now.

thanks for a great blog Damien, it is appreciated by many including me.

I would argue that the further you are away from the event/wedding/portrait session, the more unlikley it is you will get an additional sale. The disk, in the end, serves as the couples archive backup, because they had all the products they wanted from you in the first place

Really useful follow-up to your previous posts.

I’m just redoing my portrait prices at the moment for next year and am now thinking of offering a series of packages with, say, a top package where clients get all the images on CD, plus other bespoke products such as a coffee table book etc, priced accordingly (so £1,000+), and then a series of other packages that don’t include the CD option, but just framed products etc – so a combination of the two different offerings.

Would be interested to know if you think this sounds workable, as am finding the whole pricing thing a bit of a minefield for someone who’s only previously done corporate photography!

Thanks for the brilliant blog too.

Anna

Firstly, love the blog and the useful articles that you so kindly post for us fellow professional photographers.

Secondly, I currently sell my images to the client on disc, if that’s what they want. Otherwise the client may go elsewere. I do however make quite a healthy profit from doing this.

The flip side to this is that if I sell the images on disc, the client may go and print the images on their home desktop printer or at the supermarket lab and the quality could be quite poor. This could result in my work being presented at a substandard and could be detrimental to my professional reputation.

Therefore, when I sell my own reprints the client gets quality every time and my images are displayed as they were intended.

Dave