While being a Portrait Photographer mostly on the weekends, last week I also did a Birthday Party for my son. My little boy turned 15 , I have been looking for ideas to how entertain him and his friends and since he is not into sports , the only other thing I could come up with was paintball. I won’t mentioned the company name, kids did have fun, even it got pretty cold and started raining right about when they started playing. They played for about two hours and enjoyed it. I am very grateful to them about running everything smooth for the kids, until.
Today looking through my statements , I noticed that they overcharged me for the event. I called them up to ask about this situation because my math just wasn’t adding up. Their answer to my problem was that they charged me extra for every child which came up to $100 extra because they made it ” private”. When I spoke to the owner two times, he never said anything to me or explained it enough for me to understand . The $40 per person never came up in our conversations, it was $20 per person plus $10 for overalls. I got upset today and right away started thinking about my own business. Any true business person never stops thinking about their own business and how they can give a better service to their clients.
I admit , I might get a little slow with my clients, but it’s only because I am one person and I can have up to 10 clients at a time questioning and requesting things from me. Prices is always something that uncomfortable to talk about with clients. You just not sure how much they are judging or misjudging you based on the price. They might think that you charging a lot but they don’t think that for this price I include make up artist or that I am a good poser for the group shot or individual and can create a great photos for them. Clients might not think that my editor does a great job and its not me who will work on their photos or I use the best companies for prints or albums that I found for their buck. By giving them a good quality products. I have many companies calling me and sending their products to test. I pick and sort for their quality and basing it on my taste. I will admit, not many products out there are good quality and have as equal and reasonable price. If a customer thinks everything is expensive then I can suggest to save a little more money instead of going to the cheaper photographer. Cheaper photographer has two things: lack of skills or cheap products. Cheap products are visible and you can’t hide their flaws, the same thing goes to a photographer who lacks experience and practice or worst a good eye.
I also hate the hidden fees that I would never charge my client and I hate when someone else charges me. I feel like I just got betrayed some way or lied about something. Your trust for this business or person just all of sudden disappears. Everything has to be upfront and explained correctly and taken time.
So I decided that I will show you my price list and you can see there is no fees. I heard from do you charge extra for black and white photos, do you charge extra for my husband to be in our photos or best one do you charge extra if its weekends then regular days. All I just want to say ” What!? Who does that?”. So please if you have any questions we can meet or do it over the phone and I will tell you everything you want to know and explain to you how things work.
