House Fees

I have the opportunity to shoot portraits at dance studio. I'll

charge a sitting fee, which is what they're used to, but the studio

wants a cut of the sitting fees. Is this common practice? What

percentage of the sitting fees would you expect to pay?

I shoot sports, and it's typical for the league to expect some "donation" in exchange for selling during their events. This sounds similar.

 

Negotiate. They're not counting on the money, so whatever they get is going straight to the bottom line. Also, if they're ad material is dated or poor quality try including a one year license for use of some shots as payment.

The Dance studio is providing you space to shoot, clients, and probabley other help.

Don't they deserve something? Prints of the groups, and maybe a small percentage of

the sale.

I agree that they deserve "something." Yes, they provide all the things you mentioned, including help. My question to you was how much is appropriate. Do you have a suggestion? 5% of total revenue? 10%? 20%? 50%?

I would suggest calculating how much you need to make, and how much they need to make in order for them to want to help you out again. If the sum of these is more than the total sitting fee, then you have to decide whether or not you will subsidize the studio, or alternatively hope they do not realize it is an uneconomic deal for them.

 

The assumption is that no one should be in a business deal that does not pay them enough. Such situations occur more than they should in photography.

 

I doubt there is a hard and fast rule for this type of payment as the situation is more or less unique.

 

Good luck with your project.

Charles-- This situation is in no way unique. What the dance studio is asking of Brian is pretty much industry standard. Just about every dance studio I have ever worked with gets a cut of the sales.

 

If you do it right, dance studio photography can be quite lucretive, but note that you will work very, very hard for your money. The typical dance studio around here has between 100-300 students. You charge a $5-$10 sitting fee. YOU ABSOLUTELY WILL--REPEAT ABSOLUTELY WILL, NO EXCEPTIONS--shoot on high-end digital and have one or two computers and printers set up in a corner with two assistants including a crackerjack sales person who gets a commission. After every two or three dancers, you hand the memory card to the person at the computer who immediately prints out a "contact" sheet and hands it to the sales person. The sales person then sits down with the parents and takes the orders for the prints.

 

Done properly this is a license to print money. Done improperly it is a way to get skinned alive. If you fall behind schedule you will get crucified and will deserve it. Ever try to take pictures of 20 fussy six-year-old girls in dance costumes during one 45-minute time segment? You'd better know what you're doing, good buddy, lemme tell you.One kid behind schedule for each class period will put you behind more than an hour at the end of the day, and moms will complain and start walking out. You will lose money and thus the dance studio will lose money and you could get sued. Seriously. Know your technique, know your equipment, and have back-ups for everything.

 

How much can you make? Assume a small studio at 100 dancers. You charge the minimum $5 sitting fee. Any decent sales person can sell an average of $35 of prints to each parent. With digital, materials costs will be about $3 per student, or about $300 (mainly printing paper and ink cartridges, and that includes for the ordered prints). So you'll gross about $4000. Toss the sales person $400 (not bad for six hours of work, but she may want more) and give the dance studio two or three bucks per student, and you've still cleared three grand for the day.

 

Bill C.

CONTINUED FROM LAST POST...

 

But the real reason that you pay the studio owner a percentage is this: it gets you a built-in, highly-motivated commissioned sales force! Think about it. The parents don't have to sign up for the pictures, they can opt out. But if the studio owner is there every Saturday saying, "Have you signed up for the pictures yet?" how many more sign ups are you going to get? If she doesn't get anything, she's not going to bother. If she gets a percentage, she's going to be thinking, "I'm going to get three hundred extra dollars to pay the rent on the studio next month!" Or go out to dinner or whatever.

 

In fact, you might want to up the percentage based on how many students sign up, $2 for the first 50, and maybe $3 dollars for the next 50 and $3.50 after that.

 

You'd just better know how to shoot seven outstanding photographs of a cranky four-year-old girl in 139 seconds, my friend, and you'd better be able to do that all day long, every 139 seconds.

 

BTW, even though I'm a professional shooter and I even used to do these things, I still sign up for the dance class photographer to shoot my two little girls. Why? Simple. Suppose I try to do it myself. It takes 45 minutes (or longer) for them to get dressed, and at least that long for me to set my lights. Then it takes 20 minutes or more to shoot each one, fussing and arguing all the while. At the dance studio, the teacher is there wrangling the students and calmly getting them through the poses, and it takes all of five minutes. It's actually cheaper for me NOT to do it! -Bill C.