Every once in awhile I'll go into Craigslist just to see what photographers are posting: rather what they are saying in order to get the customers. It's pretty interesting. I don't know, you might be one of those. There isn't a thing wrong with that, it's free advertising. It's what you might be saying.
It seems like new photographers are always out to make their services more affordable. I talked about this briefly in another post, but this is just going to hit on it in a little different light. Everyone talks about how expensive "professional" photographers are, and they believe that their pictures are just as good, and I'm not saying that they are or aren't, but they are going to make things more affordable.
So here's just a couple of things that I found. All paraphrased, but you could probably find them yourself if you look. There are photographers out there that will say that they are going to charge, say $45, for 2 hours, unlimited clothing changes, and will give you xx number of images with your session. Ok, there's a start. Oh, they will also color correct and work the images as well. That's a good thing. Well then someone else will see that and think they have to beat that so they will maybe charge $45 for 1/2 a day, unlimited clothing changes, not mention how many images, and then on family sessions they might charge say $5 for every addition person after the 3rd or 4th person. The may or not say they are going to color correct and prepare the images.
So the next person might see that, or hear about a lot of photographer in their area doing this type of thing and maybe they will offer a $45 for all day, or they are going to drop to $35 with whatever they want to offer.
I saw one ad that basically said I am a professional photographer, I have a DSLR, send me an e-mail. That was paraphrased, but it didn't mention price or anything else.
So you need to remember that if you do have a DSLR, and you feel your work is good enough to shoot professionally, there are probably another 10 people in your general area that feel the same thing and are charging approximately the same thing. One of the reasons is that although you may have been the first, word gets out. Someone will have seen your work, and they may think they can do better, and give a better deal, or they know someone who has a DSLR that they think is the next best thing, and they will show them, and they will start, and maybe charge a better price. Then the next little area in town is going to have xx amount of people in town that are going to be charging the same thing.
So right when you think you have the best prices in town for someone working out of their house, even though you don't hear about them, I can promise you from the professional photographers view, they are out there. They are everywhere. You aren't the only one. So what do you do? You have to start bettering your skills through classes, seminars or whatever. Then you start spending money, which means to recoup your cost you need to raise your prices which leads you to one of the other post, which ultimately means welcome to the real world of Professional Photography.
So watch what you are charging, and what really sets you apart from everyone else charging the same thing.
