[00:00:00] In today's podcast episode, we're going to walk through how I can go from charging hundreds to thousands for my photography or videography services without learning any new skills. I'll walk through my own experience and teach you how I went from charging hundreds to thousands. We're learning how to package our services in an offer.
They can charge. That much money for now, that's a pretty big promise. How do you go from charging hundreds to thousands for seemingly the same service without needing to learn a new skillset? Welcome to the creative biz launch podcast, where we talk about how to grow your creative business and scale to six figures, whether you're a photographer, filmmaker, or designer, you'll find something of value here.
Well, let's walk through the different ways we can actually charge for our services. There's three main ways. Number one by the hour number two by the deliverable or number three with big packages that pack in a lot of value inside of them. So let's break down these three different ways. Number one, charging by the hour.
If you charge by the hour, the amount of money you can make [00:01:00] is limited by how many hours you work. If you're going to hire someone out to help you. How are you going to distinguish between what you charge your client versus what you pay your new team member? How do you calculate the profit here? It may get messy, and it's not a sustainable way to scale.
When the amount of money you can make isn't directly tied to your time, then you have an unlimited upside to the amount that you can make. That brings me to number two, charging per deliverable. This is what I did for a very, very long time. I had a set price per photo and the client could pick however many photos they want to buy.
Oftentimes, this led to picking a really small amount of photos. And yes, I did have a minimum, but I noticed that a lot of the time the clients would pick close to that minimum. And the other trend I noticed when they weren't picking close to the minimum is I would send these proposals out to clients and I would prefill the number of photos that I think they would want in the proposal.
And a lot of the time they just stuck with that number. They didn't change that number. So this led me to the third [00:02:00] option, selling photography packages. These are high ticket items that combine a lot of value for the client. Now, inside of these, we're not just talking about photo and video assets. These packages have bonuses that the clients get when they work with me.
These bonuses were lost on them in the per deliverable pricing because I didn't really call them out, but they still were getting those bonuses in the per deliverable pricing. So what I did is I switched to per package pricing and then listed out those sweet, sweet bonuses they get to visually build up the value of the package.
A lot of what I'm talking about today here, I learned from the book, a hundred million dollar offers by Alex Ramosi, I'm pretty much translating a lot of what he's saying in the general business world, specifically to creative businesses for us photographers and videographers to use. I know the business side.
Can get a bit overwhelming. So I'm translating it to terms that we creatives can easily understand. Okay. So number one, how do we create an incredible offer? [00:03:00] This is the core of our package. Let's take a step back and look at what our clients actually want. This is called the dream outcome. Are clients coming to us because they just want photos or is there something else that they want?
Is there something more? There's thousands of photographers on Upwork working for dirt cheap. What makes you different? What's the clients dream outcome and how can you solve it? We're going to be looking at this through the lens of a product photographer here because that's who I am. The principles I'm teaching apply to all areas of photography though and videography and other creative fields.
So... You don't have to be a profitographer to understand these principles. Don't worry about the small details here. Always think in terms of principles. That's how we can grow as business owners. As people, the dream outcome of my clients is to get product photos that will increase their brand and drive sales.
My offer should be presented in a way. That makes them believe that by working with me, they will achieve that goal because they will. Now, we're not trying to trick them [00:04:00] into thinking that we can do this. As a product photographer, you need to have a deep belief that your photos will actually help your clients in this way.
That's the first step. If you don't believe in the dream outcome you're presenting, Stop listening to this and go watch some videos on how to get better at your craft and then practice and come back here and actually get the business part down for the rest of you that believe in the dream outcome that you're presenting.
Let's build up some real value in that. So in the book, Alex talks about the value equation. The more value you have, the more you can charge.
The value equation has four main components, the dream outcome times, the perceived likelihood of achievement divided by the time delay times, the effort and sacrifice equals value. Now, this might be a little bit hard to get on a podcast episode, but on top of the value equation, we have the dream outcome and the perceived likelihood of achievement.
And then on the bottom, we have the time delay and the effort and sacrifice. So we want to maximize the [00:05:00] top. And minimize the bottom. This is the secret sauce to offer creation. Let me help break this down. So everything on the top of the equation, we're increasing, right? We want to increase the dream outcome.
We want to increase the perceived likelihood of achievement. And then everything on the bottom we want to decrease. So decrease time delay. Decrease effort and sacrifice. And the more you can increase the top and decrease the bottom, the more value you have and the more value you have, the more you can charge.
So let's look at Netflix as an example here. You want to stream a movie. So back in the day, you had to go to Blockbuster to get that movie on top. Your perceived likelihood of achievement. Wasn't always 100 percent here, right? The movie could be out of stock at blockbuster on the bottom. Your time delay, you probably, it took you probably like an hour to get this movie.
You have to get in the car, drive to the store, browse in the store, wait in line, check out, drive back. That's a lot of effort. So. So in came Netflix, Netflix's value equation, [00:06:00] their value proposition was huge. Perceived likelihood of finding a movie is pretty high. It's close to a hundred. Now let's not take into account other streaming services here.
Let's talk about Netflix early in the day when they were still competing against blockbuster. Finding a movie on there was pretty much close to 100%. This maximized the top of the equation on the bottom is the time delay. This becomes a few seconds. You sit down, you open the Netflix app. And you click on the movie you wanted.
This takes a very little effort. Now, Netflix can't control you browsing for 30 minutes, trying to find the perfect movie. Um, that's not part of their business model, but that's how I'm like a lot of the time I'll just sit there, browse for the perfect movie and take a long time. But Netflix's business. It essentially can take just a few seconds to actually start that movie.
Right? So back to the value equation, the top is huge. The bottom is tiny. This means the value is massive here. And it was so big that Blockbuster [00:07:00] couldn't even compete and they don't even exist. Now they have like one store, I think. So you can do this exercise with a lot of businesses these days as well.
Uber gets you right in 10 minutes. You can do the same thing with DoorDash, right? So how can we apply these principles into our own businesses? Let's see how we can actually do this in product photography. Again, these are principles. You can apply this to your own creative business. Take the principles for what they are.
Don't get lost in the details here. How can we make that yours? A still offer with tons of value. So number one, we need to know the dream outcome. The dream outcome is great photos that drive sales and build brand awareness. If we can increase the perceived likelihood of achievements as well. We will have a bigger value and we can increase this perceived likelihood of achievement by offering things like custom mood boards, prep calls with the client, a website full of past examples and case studies relevant to their brand.
We can include things like prop shopping, unlimited colored and textures backdrops. All these great things increase their [00:08:00] perceived likelihood that they're going to get great photos and achieve that dream outcome of higher brand awareness. And driving sales right
now, let's take a moment and look at the bottom part of the equation, right? So we want to decrease the time delay. Well, this really comes down to how efficiently you and your team can work. How fast of turnarounds can you promise the client if you have a three week turnaround time? What would it take to drop that to one week to increase your value and charge more?
What about three days? What about 24 hours? Now I'm not saying you go this low, but think of what you can implement into your business so that this time delay drops significantly and your value increases. Finally, the effort and sacrifice required. One huge reason why people don't hire photographers off work is because they don't want to micromanage them.
They know that if they hire someone for the cheap, they will have to be involved in the creative process. Maybe there's going to be reshoots. Maybe they're going to have to hold the hand of that chief photographer during the shoot. And as a photographer, you need to present yourself as the [00:09:00] expert, you're the professional, you know what looks good, what types of photos and ads convert, and you can become the expert here and you have to convey that to the client.
You want this to be as easy for the client to work with you as possible. So ideally they sign the contract, you present them with the, with everything you need for the shoot, you do the shoot and they just have to approve the final assets. That would be great. Another great way to reduce the effort and sacrifice is to offer mood boards.
The client will be able to see exactly what your vision is. They'll quickly hit approve. Then you'll do the shoot, deliver the assets, and you're good to go.
Now I know this part of the podcast episode was really dense. I still have some more stuff to talk about here. But if you have an extra 10, 30 seconds, if you're getting any value so far, please send this podcast to a friend, to a creative, to a freelancer in your life that you think would benefit from this.
The show only grows through word of mouth. So that would mean the world to me. Thank you. Okay. So let's talk about our new offer. [00:10:00] We went from charging hourly to charging per deliverable to building out a big package. We now know what a valuable offer should consist of. So let's build out that package, price it, and then learn how to negotiate.
We're going to have a core offer, which clients usually expect when they work with a product photographer. And then we're going to have a section of bonuses, which they don't expect when working with you. First off, when I was building my offer, I wrote down about a hundred different things I could actually offer.
That's a lot of different value propositions I had. That I thought would be great for the client. And I actually asked you to do the same thing, write down every single thing you think a client would benefit from having from you. Once you've got that list, you can trim it down to the things that you really think will add a lot of value to the client.
Another thing is you should be aware of how much work each of those things costs you. If it adds a lot of value to the client, but it takes you an extra 10 hours, it's not going to be worth it for you. If it adds a lot of value, but it takes you five minutes, then you should add that in. Make that long list, trim it down, and then build your offer from [00:11:00] there.
Okay. So let's pull the offer out back to the value equation first. What's the dream outcome going to be here? It's going to be product photos that build brand awareness and drive sales. So let's do a 20 product photos for this example. Next, what can we add that will boost the perceived likelihood of achievement?
Well, we can do that custom mood board we talked about and deliver that within 24 hours of them signing the contract. This will increase the perceived likelihood of achievement and it'll lower the time delay and effort and sacrifice required. Already you can see the value equation at work here. I'm guessing you already add in licenses with your photos.
So you can list that as part of your offer. If you charge for licensing, I would actually not charge an extra fee, but price that into your package and then pitch these as a free commercial license as a bonus, right? Okay. Next up. Profitography requires professional styling and professional retouching.
Again, we want to include this in our offer. We don't want this to be an extra add on. You probably already have a lot of props and surfaces and colored backdrops to shoot on, [00:12:00] but you're also willing to buy more as part of your offer. You can include unlimited backdrops and prop shopping here too. Now I would probably put a limit on this.
If the client wants like 30 different backdrops. Um, but yeah, I would include these as a free bonus with some exceptions, right? Okay, so we all know TikTok and Instagram reels are taking over now. So what if you included a free behind the scenes video of how you got a particular photo of the shoot? That could be something a client might want to post on their own social media.
And this is something most photographers don't offer. That could be something that might sway that potential client to working with you. Finally, I would include free resizing for different aspect ratios, like a square four by five, nine by 16. These are great options to start out with. So these are just a handful of bonuses that you can actually include.
And again, do this exercise I mentioned and see what you can come up with.
So we have our offer core offer of 20 product photos, and then we have bonuses like a custom mood board. unlimited commercial license, professional styling, [00:13:00] professional retouching, unlimited props and backdrops, TikTok behind the scenes video, resizing the photos to fit all social aspect ratios. That's a killer offer.
There's so much value packed in something like this versus just saying 20 product photos. Clients are going to love you for this. But how much is this going to cost? So pricing this and negotiating is the trickiest part of this entire process. And it's going to require a lot of trial and error. So once you have an offer, you're going to have to test it and pitch it to various companies in different niches, different size companies, and they're all going to have different budgets.
So you're going to get rejected a bunch, but from that, you're going to be able to learn what the right price for something like this is. If you're pitching hundreds of brands, you'll quickly narrow down what people are willing to pay. And the more you pitch the higher you can price it because you'll have a lower success rate, but you'll make more money, less work for you.
Great stuff there. So the offer I outlined just to give you a range here, I would sell this anywhere between 2000 and 10, 000 depending on how valuable the company [00:14:00] thinks it will be to them.
Now that's a big range, but again, you have to do some testing here. I can't tell you how much to charge, but I did give you that range. So pick a number in that range, start testing with it, and then see what feedback you're getting. Now, I actually walk you through how to create an offer and even more depth in my free workshop.
It's 60 minutes full of pure value. We have 20 minutes devoted to the offer creation and having a great offer is what takes you from charging hundreds to charging two to 10, 000 per client. That workshop is a free training and the link is in the show notes. I can't wait to see you in there.
Now, if you think it's unfair to charge more. depending on the size of the company, remember this. So if you charge a small company 2000, but then a large company 10, 000, and it's the same exact thing, that might seem unfair on the surface, but bigger companies are going to profit more off your photos. So if a small company takes your photos, And run runs ads with them.
They might only spend a grand a month on those [00:15:00] ads. A big company might be putting hundreds of thousands of dollars behind your photos as ads. So is it fair to charge the same price for different size companies? You tell me. I want to leave you with this one negotiation tactic at the very end here. And it's pretty simple.
Um, first the bonuses that we went through say, uh, that we're going to be throwing those in for free, right? Now, no one will really believe they're free, but it's a psychological trick that even if you know that it's free, it still helps. That's why infomercials sell one knife for 50 bucks and then say, you're going to get 14 knives for free, right?
Going off of this, this is how we negotiate. When we present our bonuses, you don't always have to present all of them at the same time. Maybe present just half of them to start, and then when the client says your package is over our budget, can you take 500 bucks off? Instead of dropping the price to meet them at that lower price, add in more bonuses.
Remember, a lot of these bonuses don't cost you much, but they're still tremendously valuable to the client. You can say something like I can't drop [00:16:00] 500, but I'll add in a free tick tock video and unlimited prop shopping, plus a few different aspect ratios optimized for social media for free. Chances are they'll find those bonuses, super valuable, and you'll walk away with the price that you wanted.
So there's a lot to learn here. If you need more help with your offer, grab my free workshop and the show notes, and I will catch you in the next episode.
