My Album Pricing Needs Help!

[jon_krasner]

Hello Photographers,

 

I think I am severely undercharging for my albums, so I wanted to get some feedback. Currently, I offer

two different types of albums: Leather Craftsmen matted album (800 series) and The Cypress Medium

Album. I charge $1,000 for one of these albums which includes 60-70 photos, and my expenses come out

to about $700-$800 for the prints, album, and shipping. My time: I spend 1-2 hours meeting with the

client, 2-3 hours designing the album and sending them a pdf of the design, 1/2 hour making any

changes if they want, 1 hour ordering the prints, 1 hour trimming and packaging the prints. It's a lot of

work for little return. What am I doing wrong? I appreciate your advice. Thanks!

[tony_hoffer]

Jon,

You might want to re-evaluate your product choice and/or printer choice. If your costs are

$700-$800 per album, it sounds like you're getting taken for a ride. Charging more than

$1000 for 60-70 photos seems a bit steep to me, especially in the Shutterfly and Snapfish

era which makes things so cheap for consumers to do it themselves. I estimate my time

spent on an album, and use the rate I charge for working on them. Then, I simply add that to

the cost.. I offer a lot of album choices, but none of them are up in the $1000 region. Maybe

shop around a little. I use Asukabook and order albums through an online retailer.

[anner]

You aren't getting taken for a ride.. those are beautiful albums and the quality is well

worth the price and will be much more archival than most consumer options out there.

You simply need to charge appropriately. The easy way out is that your cost of goods sold

(cogs) should be 1/3 of your retail price in order to cover the labor to produce the item...

not including shipping, tax, etc. The other way of pricing is what Tony mentioned- pick

your target price, and find items that are a third of that cost in order to protect your time

investment. It all depends on what is more important to your clients: cost or quality?

 

Here's a post about pricing that I hope will help...

 

http://photolovecat.blogspot.com/2007/03/pricing.html

[tony_hoffer]

I wasn't claiming that I use consumer grade albums. I was simply saying that it is so easy and

cheap for a normal consumer to make a nice looking album nowadays, that this sounds a bit

extreme in terms of price. We use professional albums and have beautiful results for a lot

less.

 

If you have very high end clients, then by all means go for it. And feel free to pass them my

way too :)

[tolik_p.]

why is your prices so high?? i design digital spreads, and order albums from various suppliers, and i never get so high in price.

 

Email me at tossik@gmail.com and i can help you out.

 

Thanks

[hankins]

Hi Jon. I use Cypress as well, and I totally feel for you. The albums are as incredibly beautiful as they are expensive. I also offer a more affordable option with the Sequoia. Instead of a flat-rate, however, I price by the page (e.g. $x/page with a minimum of 20 pages), which makes pricing larger books much easier and straightforward for the couple.

 

It's difficult to feel comfortable charging thousands of dollars for a wedding album in a time when anybody can log onto a wholesale site and create a custom paperback book for $29.99, but you're offering Cypress books for a reason, and it's probably because you know how much of a treasure they are. Increase your price so you don't feel like you're losing money, and take some time to explore how you can connect with your couples in a way that sufficiently communicates how amazing the books really are. You're not going to connect with everybody, but if you can get your couples to fall in love with the albums as deeply as you have, you might (hopefully) find the price points less of a challenge.