How much should I charge for my prints?

How do you estimate what you charge for your time and prints?

• Someone once wrote a very detailed estimate of how they break down what they charge per hour etc. They also explained how they charged for prints. I'd like to see it again. I can't find it. Thank you.

• Answer:

  Very simplistically you take all your costs, that includes rent, rates, insurance, equipment, depreciation etc etc over a year. That gives you a cost of what you have to make to "break even", then take a figure that you need/want as "profit". Add all the figures up and then divide by month/week/day/hour to give you a figure you need to make to get to that figure. Obviously you have to have an idea of the amount of business you will get, you would have this when you did your business plan and worked everything out in the first place. So, say you figure it out that you need to gross 30,000 per year. You will work 5 days a week for 48 weeks (240 days) 30.000/240 = 125 that means you have to make 625 per week or 125 per day for every day you work or 15.625 per hour for an 8 hour day. If you are getting 2 customers a day every working day then each of them needs to be paying you 62.5. If you only get 4 customers a week then each has to be paying you 156.25 etc etc You can break down your charges however you want. you can offer packages, charge a sitting fee and cheaper prints, no sitting fee and expensive prints etc etc - anyway you can to ensure you reach your target income per week. So figure it from there. IF you are just doing this for pin money rather than a proper business then just take your costs and add a percentage for profit and to cover your time.