Personal brand photography Pricing
As a photographer, there are few things as important as pricing while you try to grow your business. After all, the prices you charge determine *so* much about how you do business, you know? From the clients you’re attracting to the profit you’re taking home, prices are an essential thing to figure out and then optimize.
And, here’s the thing: you want to price yourself in your niche. See, if you’re a wedding photographer, you want to price yourself as a wedding photographer — and, if you’re a portrait photographer, you want to price yourself as a photographer.
Today, I want to talk about pricing yourself in my go-to niche — AKA, pricing yourself as a personal branding photographer.
The key personal branding photography pricing in this niche
While there is an insane amount of value in all kinds of photography (I mean, come on… it’s strategic art!), I think there’s a particularly insane amount of value in the personal branding photography niche. See, personal branding elevates everything from a business launch to an ongoing brand. It can help you refresh an existing brand, boost collateral inside of a project, and even scale a business.
What does that mean, you ask? That you can price accordingly — and that you should.
And, the key to pricing is simple: understanding the value you bring as a personal branding photographer. When you price yourself as the strong, strategic partner that you are, it’s much easier to attract high-level clients that value you, too.
Win, win.
My Tips for Pricing Yourself in the Personal Branding Photography Niche
As you start working towards pricing yourself as the personal branding rockstar you are (heeeeey!), there are a few tips that I’d recommend following. By using these, you can price yourself strategically AND valuably… and you can make the money and attract the clients you deserve:
First things first — what’s your CODB?
Before you even start thinking about value adds and strategy, you have to get really, really granular about one thing and one thing only: the numbers. So, you need to figure out your cost of doing business (your CODB). Go ahead and start writing down the answers to these questions:
- What’s the amount of money you need to bring in each month to live a freedom-filled, comfortable life?
- How many hours a week do you want to work/how many shoots a month do you want to photograph?
Now do the math (either weekly, monthly, or quarterly), and figure out the number that’s going to get you there. That number is your CODB — the number that you will not decrease — and it’ll determine your base rate.
Next up, do some market research.
Now, you can start digging around to see what personal branding photographers in your area might be charging (if they even exist)! While I’m not a big fan of basing your pricing off of someone else’s, it can still be a good primer on the basics of the numbers that people in your area are willing to pay.
Side note, though: a lot of people will use this market research to compete with their pricing — don’t do this! See, lowering your prices as a competitive advantage doesn’t work for two reasons: first, someone will always charge less. Second, many entrepreneurs see a lower price as a sign that a photographer is less experienced. Instead of lowering your pricing to match another photographer, use that research as what it is… research.
That’s it. I will say that most personal brand photographers charge between $1500 to $5000 for a single personal branding photography session as a general rule. I’m right in the middle at $2500, but some of the photography students are at the $4000 mark and still getting fully booked out. If you’re not there, yet, that’s ok, but don’t undermine the value in what you’re doing.
Then, remember what your pricing really says about your value.
Most importantly, I want you to keep coming back to the value you bring to the table as a personal branding photographer. I want you to think of what you can offer to your clients, I want you to focus on the opportunities your photography can give them, and I want you to remember how incredible you are at what you do.
Then, I want you to ask yourself a simple question: “Does my pricing align with that value?”
If not, go from there. You’ve got this.
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If you’ve gotten this far, I KNOW you have what it takes to be an incredible personal branding photographer. In fact, I can feel it in my soul. I hope you can, too.
As you grow your personal branding photography business, I’d love to show you some of the best resources to get started in personal branding photography with the Blast Off Bundle.
