How do I find clients and price my work?
I've been a graduate for 2 years now, Specialised in Portraiture and Editorial Photography.
With or without a degree however, I find it no less difficult finding work, I feel as though I'm always looking in the wrong places, or the people I need to see my work aren't doing so.
I've been studying and mastering photography for 15 years, Have two qualifications in the field, I think its about time I start earning something other than 'experience' or 'exposure'. I've received advice from several experts from my univeristy and other insititutes about my pricing and I am told constantly I can comfortably charge £300-£400 a day for the quality of my work.
However, when I've quoted such prices or even £150 -£200 im snubbed and left hanging by clients... This could be down to having the wrong clients but in my 15 years of freelancing I've found obtaining payment to be the most difficult aspect of the entire profession.
My work is presented on my personal website, Instagram, Behance and Linkedin. I have had no issue's in the past finding people to collaborate with, I have worked on over 300 collaborative projects however this was in the interest of fine tuning my skills, building my portfolio in the early days, both of which I no longer need to do.
If anyone has any advice or guidance on the matter I'm open to any and all suggestions, and anticipate hearing back from you!
Replies3
- Hi Bradley,I fully agree that after 300 projects and 15 years of experience you deserve even more than £500 a day.The issue is not in the cost to your clients.The issue is in seeing the return on such investment.You know when you tell someone invest £150 today and get clients for £1,000?They do not see the £1,000 happening for three reasons:1/ They couldn’t find a direct link between your work and the outcome.2/ They couldn’t understand how investing £150 today will get me £1,000 in the future.3/ They also couldn’t get a guarantee from your side on when exactly the £1,000 will be earned.I have struggled for almost 6 years now with this as a Digital Marketer.When a company invests £1,000 per month on a campaign I run for them, they are unable to believe that this £1,000 could turn into £10,000 tomorrow or after 6 months (depending on when the potential client decides to purchase).This uncertainty is what is causing the disappearance of your potential clients.How can you guarantee the return on investment and more importantly by when exactly?This is the million dollar question here.One of the solutions I found to this problem is the following:I guarantee a specific outcome by day x and by amount y.Here’s an example:I work in Digital Marketing, I create Google Ads for my clients to generate leads for them.When I charge them £500/month for running a campaign, I guarantee 1 lead for product X which is priced at £500 within exactly 1 week.This guarantees break-even (invested £500 and generated £500) within 1 week.This leaves them with 3 more weeks to generate more revenues.Is it bold to guarantee that? Very bold indeed.Do I always achieve this result? No.What happens if I couldn’t get the £500 back through a sale?I simply return the money invested but charge for my time. Plus, an ad can generate a client today or within 18 months even, because it depends on when the potential client decides to purchase as mentioned above.It happened many times before that a client decided to purchase 16 or 18 months later coming from a campaign which ran for 1 month 18 months ago!It could happen to you as well. Your photography project generated sales after 20 months maybe. So how do you get compensated for that? It’s hard to monitor when sales happen because you’re not the salesperson!Hope this helps.
- @Ian VincentHi Ian, Thank you so much for the feedback and advice, I appreciate it greatly. As you said money is a hard subject, Since finishing university I've had an internal struggle as to what kind of photographer I am. What work I get the most satisfaction and pleasure from and the kind of clients I'd like to work with/ dream job.Personally I've thrived from the engagement and environment surrounding collaborative work with other artists/creatives, the ability to bounce ideas of one another is unparred. However, My first love and lately more of a hobby are my Landscape pieces, creating a series of images surrounding a common theme with the idea for print in mind will forever continue to interest me as a career path.Friends and colleagues alike compare my work to High Street window advertisements, that seems to be the style ive naturally adopted through out my years. There is definitley some hire ability for brands like Urban Outfitters, River Island, Zara etc.My workflow is something I'm quite proud of, due to my equipment of choice I am able to Shoot, transfer, edit and post to social media within a 5 minute time frame. Using Lightroom and an assortment of plugins and cloud syncing.I am forever changing and evolving my website and Instagram, sometimes to fit particular jobs I'm applying for or just due to a recent change in my ovreall style. Over the years I've extended my work into Videography, Graphic Design and Video Game Capture work in the hopes to make myself more hire-able.I've always said Photography has never been about the money for me, but enough to feed myself each day, a roof over my head and a camera in my hand is all I really need.
- Hey Bradley, money is always a hard subject and finding clients is always tough too. What type of work are you wanting to get into? What is your target market that you want to be working towards? Maybe your work isn't reflecting the type of clients you want to get and it could be hindering your hire ability. Who are your dream clients to shoot for? maybe write down the top few options and look at their type of work and compare your work style-wise and adjust accordingly.Also I wanted to ask about your post-production workflow, how do you go about it? Are you using LR only or something similar? I really like your monochromatic work more so than your coloured works, mainly due to the oversaturated look of the coloured ones and the odd skin tones. I think your strongest images are the male portraits in mono the guy with the dreads, the guy with the shaved head and the shot of the guy in the mask I think is particularly strong, nice and crisp shots minimally edited and toned beautifully!! The rest of the portraits, in my opinion, I think arent in the same league and weaken your strong images. Either work on your post production of the colour ones or focus on your monochormatic workAlso I would trim down your selection to a strong set of 5-10 images rather than 71!I think it could be a good idea to put yourself in the potential client's shoes and view your website/images/style from the view of the type of clients you want to be hired by, and ask yourself "would I hire me" for that type of work with my current portfolio.Again my question starts and ends with who are you wanting to shoot and get paid by?Keep pushing Bradley :)
You must sign up or log in before you
add a comment.