How I Negotiate w/ Photography Clients

[equiidiana]

This helped me a lot! It's similar with the mindset I wanted to start with 😊
I still have a question, what concerns me the most is how do I know how much I can ask for my work? I'm new at starting this as a business, Im used to always offer photos so I don't know too much about the value of my work

One advice I keep in mind is to see the price of the local photographers from my area that may so the same genre

[PreservedMemoriesPhoto]

I have a question for you Chris your stuff is really helpful and has gotten me on the right track, so before I continue thank you. Now Chris I saw a video you did where you admitted to being rejected even though you were not charging(I have a point sorry). I must say I know exactly how you feel about that anyway. I'm a volume sports and school photographer this is my first year trying my hand and I'm 42 I helped my wife get her preschool up and running and we're somewhat successful with it, I went from driving CDL trucks and being a instructor for a community college for 7 years before getting into this. Anyways I've helped her run it for the past ten years. Of course it means it's mine to, however it's not lol see it's not my dream. Even though it's pulling 9k a month which I'm so so grateful for, I'm in a royal area which is pretty decent however just not enough, see we're not able to profit much more at our current setup and location. We have raised rates and all that and I have used the daycare to test my volume photography software and see how the whole process goes and what parents will generally pay for, and because I have a good relationship with our parents I don't have any problems using them as a focus group so to speak. So I do have a advantage rather than if I was like a normal person with no daycare/preschool who was trying the same thing I am trying I would have had to struggle with figuring out a few things, my parents/focus group have been amazing literally you can't put a price on that part.
So let me get back to this story, when I hit 42 I had a huge wake up call basically if you're in your 30's and don't worry about how fast your life is going by and can't picture yourself getting older me either until a week ago lol it don't help looking younger man you see my profile picture that is my actual face right now at 42 so I never felt lile I was getting older or even noticed just how fast it was going by, (spoiler alert lol wait until your in your 40's you will be then. I lived so long not really being able to see myself being older, I also looked like I was in my 20's for ages so I couldn't picture it, meaning I was going through life like I had all the time I could shake a stick at.
So all at once it hits so very hard I really thought someone was messing with me I even asked Google, " if you're born on Dec 22 1981 what age does it make you? 🤫 Let's keep that between us lol) you already know what google said yeah I can do math I wasn't being logical I was having a severe mid life blow up and wasn't expecting that to hit me this way. By the way to actually panic isn't my style normally. So at this point Chris I'm scrambling realizing I helped my wife with her dream I do everyday, and I'm now an essential part of our business at this point, so I must do both in order to make my dreams happen. So on top of running this thing which is 80 hours a week I'm now seeing that my dreams not going to fall in my lap and time is ticking. Anyways that's when I realized it's making moves time. Now as for the working for free thing, I was talking on previously. See that comment got my attention because I actually don't charge anything to the person, business, nonprofit, or sports league that I'm trying to target, It's free because I send home a QR code with each student photographed and the parents are who ends up paying my company. So even though it's not costing the business I'm trying to convince to hire me, even though it's free and we have 3 day turnaround time and we even have options for extra fundraising opportunities, which was another way to say I'm now even offering you a bribe lol without saying that word it's exactly what I felt like. Now anyone who takes the time to read this story will say surely you still didn't get rejected. Well Chris it's exactly what got my attention because I know all too well what damage it does to you mentally when you are trying to stay positive and it's the hardest part for myself. So anything you may have as advice for how I should go about targeting these schools, preschools, and sport teams. Ok as for email campaign and using zappier and all that good stuff what should be done to possibly lower my number of rejections. I have a whole thing on why we're changing the game when it comes to school picture day. Like candid outdoor portraits, that is my bread and butter normally that and the fact that I'm going around saying it's free. It took months of rejections to get the right wording for everything I got it down mostly but I still would love to hear any advice and if not at least I'm sharing my story lol.