Jen Turner…”How much is that CD Worth”?

Ya know, I have used that phrase a lot in my teaching and I really have found I don’t like it, because I work FREAKIN hard! But I htink we need to look at the concept:

I just posted on the MCP Actions website about selling CDs and it got me thinking so I thought I would write something up here.

A lot of what I saw was people selling hundreds of images for around $160, some with an additional session fee, somewithout anything additional. So, right now, this isn’t about pricing as much as working “smarter”.
So heres my thought:

If you sell a CD of all images fully editted (which Im assuming sounds like it means retouched) for $160. Lets pretend everyone charges some sort of session fee so that time is covered.

So if you give them 125 retouched images, you are making $1.28 per image. Not taken into account is your time, so say you would pay yourself $15 an hour to retouch (fair going rate for contractor) and say you spend 90 seconds on each image (which is pretty fast) thats over 2 hours, so take about $40 off your profit (because you are a business and this is an expense) now you just made $.80 per image. BUT lets see what happens when you give fewer images

Ok so what if you give 100 images – it changes to $1.60 per images you just saved about 35 minutes worth of work and your profit went up to $1.23 per image – you made .63 per image more which adds up.

Now lets look at a very reasonable number, give them 50 images! you are now making $3.20 per image. Retouching is now only 75 minutes (basically an hour) so in the end youre making $2.90 per image that is $2.10 PER IMAGE more just be reducing the amount you show. And you saves almost an hour and a half in retouching time!

Now I know the argument, people want a lot of images. I can tell you, people dont need over 50 images. When you show this many you lose the impact of the really great images. Back in the film days we show 8-10 images from a session, I know people expect more, but that is still a lot to show them. Really, 30 images is a nice number. Now I am a MASSIVE overshooter, so I get it, believe me. But Im going to be taking my own advice and starting to limit.

Now, I want to make it clear, this is NOT profit. This i where you start backing out your real expenses: taxes, equipment, rent or mortgage, insurance, etc. There is a LOT to consider, not just the bottom line. People think many times that if they can finish a CD in 2 hours for $160, they just made $80 an hour. Youre right as far as a starting place, but then there are the expenses…thats another topic.

Now just think how much more you make if you raised the price of the CD?

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