Today's question comes to us from Alejandro and Alejandro writes,

Dear Ted, I am starting to get photography assignments and I'm having trouble

deciding what to charge. In fact, this has become a very difficult issue for me.

How do you recommend one proceeds?

Alejandro, thank you so much for your question. In fact, this is the second time this

week I have been asked this same question. The other question came from a gentleman

named Jonathan who was asking the same question but within regards to putting on an exhibition and what to charge for his prints.

So we have two different sides of photography charging for a service versus charging for a print.

And what I find interesting and why I've lumped these two

questions together is because I think that the way you determine

pricing structure is actually very similar in both cases.

And I want to talk about three concepts with you today which I hope

will make some sense and I hope they will help you with your pricing structure and

so these three concepts are one perception, two, and three, risk.

And I want to talk about how all of these work together.

And if this is your first time to do a lot of this,

it is hard.

And I want to start by saying that discussions about money can be very difficult and

they can be very uncomfortable. I remember when I was starting out and it was

really hard because what I wanted to do was go around and look at my competition

and my colleagues and other people who were working

doing similar things that I was doing and just ask them what their pricing structure was.

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