Once upon a time I seriously considered making freelance photography my primary career. Then, reality set in. Whereas I didn’t mind hustling for jobs and honing my skills, the challenges involved with pricing photos did me in.
Figuring out a way to fairly price pictures is one of the most daunting tasks amateur photographers face when trying to turn their passions into profit. Prior to the explosion of digital photography pricing photos was much easier. Back in the “good ol’ days” freelancers could simply refer to a standard pricing chart in order to come up with a quote. After digital photography begat a virtual cornucopia of stock photo websites, simple price charts became obsolete. These days it is no longer acceptable practice to consult a standardized price chart, mainly because today’s clients often have requests that cannot be found on the chart.
When I was first testing out the waters of the freelance market I didn’t have a clue about photography pricing quotes, so I turned to fotoQuote. The popular software is considered the industry standard for pricing pictures. I was told that amateur and professional photographers alike use the program to help determine photo price quotes. In fact, the company touts its product as the stock photography pricing standard in North America. The literature that comes with the program details the extensive research it conducted on actual sales records from thousands of agencies and individual professional photographers. It then lists this information on a comprehensive price grid for budding freelancers to use as a guide for selling their very best shots.
FotoQuote is a user-friendly program, which allows you to select the usage time frame and photo size requested, along with several other factors that help insure that you get paid fairly for your work. In addition, you can use the program to set fair image license fees. However, the part of the program I found most helpful was the negotiation information. I stink at negotiating and fotoQuote provided helpful tips on closing deals before they slipped away.
Have you ever used fotoQuote?
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