Pizza Logic: The $300 Shoot That Pays You $20 an Hour
Quick question: what did you actually earn per hour on your last shoot?
Not the number on the invoice. The number you’d get if you divided it by every hour the job really took. Most of us have never worked it out, and there’s a reason for that. It’s not a fun number.
Here’s how pricing usually starts. You look at what other photographers nearby charge, and you go a little under. It feels safe, and it seems sensible.
As a business plan, though, it’s a slow way to go broke.
Where a “two-hour” shoot really goes
Say you charge $300 for a two-hour portrait session. That’s $150 an hour, which sounds great.
Except you didn’t work two hours. Think of the fee as a pizza and count who gets a slice:
- Before the shoot: emails back and forth, planning, driving there. Call it 2 hours.
- The shoot itself: the 2 hours you were thinking of.
- Editing: culling, editing, exporting, delivering the gallery. Easily 3 hours.
- Admin: the invoice, backing up the files, posting a few shots to promote yourself. About 1 hour.
That’s 8 hours, not 2. Your $150 an hour is now $37.50.
Then the taxman takes his slice
Depending on where you live, tax and social fees can take something like 30 to 50 percent of what you bring in. After that you’re looking at roughly $20 an hour.
And we still haven’t paid for anything. The camera and lenses. The Adobe subscription. Website hosting. Insurance. Every one of those comes out of the same $300.
Do the math once, then price with confidence
I’m not telling you this to put you off. I’m telling you because the fix is simple: once you price from real numbers instead of a gut feeling, you stop losing money without noticing.
You don’t have to charge what everyone else charges. You have to charge what your business actually costs to run, plus what you want to take home.
That’s why we built the Rate Calculator. Put in your hours and your costs before you send the next quote. It takes about 30 seconds, and you’ll know exactly what each shoot needs to bring in.