Sunday, August 03, 2008

well since exactly 2 minutes I'm a so called professional photographer.

what is the meaning of this?

the definition of an amateur:

An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without formal training or pay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur



The definition on the other hand is much longer and can be found on the same wikipedia site, but basically it means that you get paid for what you do.

Now how do I get paid as photographer?

It's pretty simple, on average 80 people visit my zenfolio page each month and several print pictures of my work. Now there is nothing wrong with it in principle and I'm happy if people look at my work online, but if somebody hangs a picture of me in his living room...

Well I want a cut, for this reason I started a little experiment. I upgraded my zenfolio account to a professional level and pay for this service a certain fee every year. This gives me the possibility to automatically get amount X of each printed picture depending on size and price.

So lets see how long it takes till the membership is paid for. It also means that family members get a coupon from me and can get any picture for free.

My current pricing formula is:

price = baseprice (set by print provider) * 1.6

which should be pretty fair.

examples:

5x7 print cost 99 cents from mpix + 52 cent my cut + 7 cent zenfolio cut = 1.58 total price, which is more or less the same ritz camera charges for printouts togo in davis.

and hey you can even order mugs and T-Shirts with my pictures...