How to Know When it's Time to Raise Your Rates
Pricing yourself can be hard in the first place, and knowing when you’ve outgrown your rates is crucial to having longevity and success in your business.
As the busy season winds down for a lot of us, it’s time to start looking forward with bookings for next year, and reflecting on how things went for our business this year. Now is the time to evaluate if the rates you have set right now will be sufficient for the jobs you are booking for next year.
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Is it time for you to raise your rates?
To answer this question, here are 5 questions to ask yourself:
1) Have I gained significant experience and improved the quality of my business and my work since I set my rates?
If you set your rates, and you booked at those rates, you’ve become much more experienced than you were when you initially started booking. Your rates should reflect your self-improvements. Especially if you have invested in education, higher quality gear, spent time fine-tuning your craft, or taken steps to improve the professionalism and client experience associated with your business. If your service and business quality has increased, your rates should also increase.
2) Am I meeting my financial goals?
This question has a bit of a trick answer.
If you answer “No"“, then the course of action may be to raise your rates to meet your goals, if you are booking easily at your current rate.
However, if you are not booking easily at your current rate, you may consider leaving your rates or even lowering them slightly and improving your marketing, and other things to help you increase the work you get to meet your goals.
If you answer “Yes” to this question, you also need to look at your workload. Is your workload more than what you want to have? Then raise your rates. If it’s less than what you want to have, consider leaving your rates as they are and working to increase your bookings.
3) Am I taking on more work than I can handle?
If you have more work than you can reasonably do or want to do, RAISE. YOUR. RATES. If you feel like you can’t say no to shoots because you need the money, raise your rates so you can make more money at less of a sacrifice. Don’t be afraid of losing clients because that is the purpose behind raising your rates. If you double your rates and cut your work in half, you are making the same amount of money with HALF the work. Or even cut back by 25 percent and increase your income by 50%. Making more money in less time opens up your schedule for you to have a healthy personal life, find other avenues to improve your current business or unrelated avenues that bring you income too.
4) Do I fall within the industry standard?
You don’t necessarily have to base your prices around what everyone else is doing, but it is good to be aware of what everyone else is doing. — are you cheaper than other industry professionals with a similar level of work to yours? Are you booking clients based on you being “cheap”? Is that what you want? Or Are you significantly more expensive than your colleagues? Do you feel confident that your work is worth that rate?
** An example of a benefit to being comparable price-wise with your colleagues is that your clients will book you because they appreciate what you specifically have to offer. When the money is close to the same, it leaves room for your other qualities to shine an attract clients.
*** Here is an example of pricing outside of the industry standard, because you know your worth and you don’t care what other’s are charging:
With boutiques here in Utah, I know the industry standard for photographers is $150 per hour. I charge significantly more than that. Multiple boutiques have reached out to me and literally scoffed at my rates—-It doesn’t bother me at all. I scoff at their “standard” to be honest! (more on this coming soon). For me I know what I bring to the table and I know what it’s worth and I don’t care what the “standard” is. If they want to hire someone willing to work for the “standard” they absolutely can. And they will probably get “standard” work. If they are getting above average work, for the average rate, that’s the photographer selling themselves short and its the photographer who gets gypped. Boutiques and commercial clients who want their content to be a cut above their competitors will be willing to invest in their content creation more than their competitors. If you are someone who produces above-standard work, but you feel trapped by an industry standard pay scale, take the power back. Believe in yourself and your work enough to get paid what you’re worth and not get taken advantage of. Set a new standard.
5) Is the money I’m making worth it?
Regardless of any other factors, whether you are booking tons of work or not, the most important thing is value to you. You know what a job takes from you personally, time-wise, skill-wise, energy-wise, etc. So If you are putting in X amount of time, skill, energy, etc. is that X equal to the X amount of dollars you get in exchange. Is it a trade you are happy with at your current rates? Do you leave jobs feeling like it wasn’t worth it? Or do you leave feeling like the money matches the value of the sacrifice you make to do the job? Does the monetary value your client donates equal the value you feel you bring to your client?
Of course there is due time in the trenches, working to the bone with little monetary reward because in the early days of your career, the experience is of more value to you than the money and is vital to building your skills, you can’t walk on as a rookie and make the highest salary, but you should also be constantly evaluating what you have to offer vs. what you are asking for in return. Think about how you feel. Think about what a job is worth to you, and structure your rates around that.
PRO TIP: Gain experience by styling your own shoots, second shooting with another photographer you admire, mentor sessions, workshops, etc. Don’t let people get photo work for free or less than it’s worth. If you are “building your portfolio” Do it without taking the job away from someone who has worked hard to earn the job. All that does is de-value the industry you are striving so hard to be a part of. You will be sad when you get to the top if you contributed to ruining it for yourself (and everyone else) when you are at the bottom. Don’t undercut and giveaway work for free to gain experience.That work will not benefit you, it will give you a portfolio full of cheap clients, so you will continue to book cheap clients. Do collaborations that equally benefit all parties involved, practice on your friends, or hire a model! Create content on your own and get your portfolio to grow by working for yourself for free, instead of working for someone else for free. That gives you the power to design the portfolio you want and therefore craft the career and attract the clients that you want.
I hope this makes you feel empowered.