What Would You Charge For..o

[Jayser100]

Hi Chaps,

I've decided to start offering our fully-fitted out ecommerce photo studio for hire. The idea is that customers can come in and take the own pics using all of the kit available, with their own memory cards (they can bring their own camera if it can sync with lights, otherwise we have one).

The problem is, I've no idea what to charge. I want the cost to be fairly low because the whole idea is to appeal to small ecommerce sellers on a tight budget. The studio is only 10 x 10ft but it has a pair of flash units, backgrounds and white curtains etc.

I was thinking maybe £60 for a half day (three hours) and £100 for a day (six hours) - any suggestions? Too much, or too little? All comments appreciated

 

[TomJ83]

I think many small eCommerce sellers will come sporadically. They will take as many pictures at one occasion rather than coming regularly. So the prices you have are fair taking this into account. Also I like the DIY idea, where people can take their pictures themselves rather than outsourcing it. If people would outsource the photography to a studio, they would pay at a low end studio around £10 per picture and even more at a high end studio.

 

[WebshopMechanic]

Hi @Jayser100

I also think this is a good idea but you need to remember that you only have a limited number of hours in the day and you need to make money. £100 for a day is nothing when you have to pay for electricity and equipment that may need replacing or fixing.

Obviously it's ok if the studio is booked all day, every day but that's unlikely.

You also need to make sure that the people using the studio have some idea of what they are doing or some guidance otherwise they may blame you or your equipment for not delivering what they need.

Do you have any extra services you can bolt on to make extra cash?

Maybe you could offer tuition, downloadable photo guides, re-touching services (which could easily be outsourced) or video?

You need to remember that these people might have little money to spend so you need to be making money elsewhere as there is a limit to the hours your studio is open.

Good luck

Matt

 

[pelparc]

You might find that the people coming in will not know how to use the camera and lighting setup. Have you allowed time to show them how it all works and to take a couple of photos to get them going?

 

[arnydnxluk]

I don't know what the going rate would be but this sounds like good value to me personally. I've read about a similar service in the past but I can't find their business now (no idea what the name was). I believe their response to the issue of customers not knowing how to use the camera was that they were shown how to use it in fully auto mode, which was good enough for their clients and made it no different to using other 'point and shoot' cameras.

 

[Page]

I think your approach is wrong

I do not know where you live but assuming that you have a big enough volume of trade potential and some time then ...

I would buy some cheapish but good enough camera kit - £300 might do it

Then sell yourself and your studio with training on some sort of basis - that is probably worth more to many people and of interest

And then also offer your studio

And also keep the spend option low

So for example a half day in the studio £x - rather than a full day

I think £20 an hour for the space is cheap enough but not to cheap
But I would charge £40 for the first hour
Then £20 an hour
4 hours - £80
All day - maybe £120 / £140

With training then - you want to be able to offer something like an extra £60 (plus) for the first hour - then say £50 (plus) after that

With the idea that really you want to be able to give them just enough of your time to be able to get them to understand using flash and what it gives etc
And to give them some confidence in paying for a studio is worthwhile

 

[antropy]

I was thinking maybe £60 for a half day (three hours) and £100 for a day (six hours) - any suggestions? Too much, or too little? All comments appreciated

Sounds very cheap to me.

I like the idea above of offering training.

 

[bgnovuc]

yeah, 100/day seems OK

 

[Gecko001]

Just a point. An e-commerce trader might want to bring along a lot of stock. Is there enough room unpack this stock and prepare it for photographing?

 

[Jayser100]

Many thanks for all your comments, and your encouragement. To answer some of your points:

We do have a camera they can use, and I have a member of staff who will be made available at an additional cost of £100 for a half day and £200 for a day for helping them to set up and, if necessary, help them take their photos. We will also be offering photoshop services, including the addition of pure white backgrounds for those all-important Amazon main pics, if required. The member of staff concerned has a college diploma in media studies and knows what he is doing (and so do I!).

We do indeed have plenty of room for dealers to lump their stock in - we even have a loading / unloading bay with a roll up shutter, so that's no issue.

 

[Alan]

Sounds too cheap. Don't know where you are, but to hire a meeting room around here is at least £20 an hour. A set up studio has to be worth more, my initial thoughts were £40 an hour.

 

[Page]

I think it is the add ons that might make it work best / be of interest to people - and then turn them into customers

Rather than the simple studio space on its own

Many smaller businesses wont want to pay a penny - without that extra stuff - for them that is probably where the value lies and then once they understand the studio idea and what it gives them you are away

Without it you need to work out which sort of firms might be interested and prepared to pay fair money for studio space for what it gives them extra over whatever they are doing now

 

[Jayser100]

Thanks again for your comments. We'll have to tweak the pricing as we go because it's not easy knowing what to charge.

The main thing I want to do is offer value for money for the small 'man' - the eBay or Amazon seller who tries to take decent photos without the right equipment on their kitchen table, and needs somewhere they can go to get better results. Hopefully we can do that.

If anyone has some good marketing ideas for the project, I'd be interested. We have put a website up to get the ball rolling: https://www.kent-ecommerce.co.uk

The reason it says ecommerce rather than photography is that I also now offer Amazon listing optimisation consultancy and that will be added to the website in a more formal way, very soon.

The website is new and needs some changes - we're going to add a rolling banner with some work samples to replace the handshake, and sample images should be on the 'What we Do' page as well instead of a line of rather boring pics of the photo studio which were just put there to get the thing up. I haven't emphasised the fact we can specialise in making Amazon Main Images for customers too as I suspect some people struggle with that due to their stringent rules.

 

[Alan]

The main thing I want to do is offer value for money for the small 'man' - the eBay or Amazon seller who tries to take decent photos without the right equipment on their kitchen table, and needs somewhere they can go to get better results.

I used to be that 'small man' a few years back. I bought myself a half decent camera and took photos on the kitchen table. The results were poor, but usable, especially as my skills at removing backgrounds is low.

BUT - here is the problem
1) I never, ever once thought that there would be a DIY studio, and if there were, I would not know how that could help me, as I saw my problems being 'artistic' skill in setting up the shot / lighting - technical skill in getting the best from my camera - practical skill in photo shopping out backgrounds without spending ages (or a fortune on Adobe professional products).
2) Money / margins were so tight I perceived that professional help was beyond budget.

So, if I were in that situation again, and some how ( through personal networking or whatever ) there was am inexpensive course ( 2-4 hours lets say £50 ) on how to do awesome product photography for online sellers and it covered
- use of camera / lenses
- lighting
- artistic 'framing' tricks of the trade
- enhancing / background removal ( especially using tools less expensive than PS )
and you did it in your studio, and then I found out I can later hire your studio .... then you might have 'got' me.

Fortunately, my online physical products selling days are over, and I just concentrate on creating virtual products.

 

[Alan]

We have put a website up to get the ball rolling: https://www.kent-ecommerce.co.uk

As you are a full member - go to site reviews and ask for a review, as there is plenty of things wrong with your first attempt, and you will get great feedback, so you next generation website is more effective.

 

[Jayser100]

Thanks Alan, I think I will do the review thing but I'll wait until we've changed a few things we know are not right as there seems little point in asking for a review until we feel we've worked on it some more.

My Rapid Eyewear website was professionally designed, whereas this one was done on one of those 'build a website' platforms so it's never going to look amazing and unique, however I thought that as we're offering a service rather than an ecommerce product range, the site is something we ought to be able to produce without spending loads of money on it.

Obviously we're not offering web design, otherwise I'd take a different view on it!

Ref. your other message, although we're not offering courses as such I think coming here and using our facilities would allow people to understand better what they need to do this for themselves - maybe some clients will leave here with better knowledge and not come back, which is fine if that's what they end up getting out of it.

 

[Sam Drury]

The simple solution is to charge more and then offer discounts to keep the place busy. Thus those with an urgent requirement pay slightly more, those who can be flexible pay slightly less.