If you’ve ever felt stuck with your pricing, unsure of how to align your value with your rates, or worried about scaling your photography business sustainably, this post is for you. Over the past decade, my pricing structure has gone through some significant shifts. In Part 1 of this conversation, I walked through the early years of my business and the decisions I made around pricing and workflow as a beginner. In Part II, we dive into things like:
- Why my pricing and created a bottleneck for growth and how I overcame confidence hurdles to change it
- How major life changes pushed me to refine my process.
- The systems and strategies I implemented to increase revenue while keeping my business lean and family-focused.
- My recent shift to an all-inclusive model that’s simplified my workflow and delighted my clients.
Learn about the evolution of my pricing as a family photographer, why and how I’ve made the changes that I have, and more.
Read more: MY STORY : the roots, experience, failures, and inspirations that shaped my photography business
The Session Fee + Collections Pricing Model
As I began to grow and switched to a virtual sales approach for delivery, I also adopted a session fee + collections model for booking. Clients paid a $250 session fee upfront and could then choose from options like $325 for all digital files or tiered print collections. While this worked well for a time, it required a lot of backend communication, making the process cumbersome despite being virtual.
Adding outdoor school photography to my offers helped stabilize my income during this phase, but I soon realized I had hit a ceiling with both my pricing and my confidence to change yet again.
Experimentation and Overcomplicating Everything (2019)
In an effort to increase sales per session, I tried to create bundled packages of print options to support clients purchasing quality art of their session images through me. My hope was to simplify decisions for my clients while increasing sales, but the collections ended up feeling too rigid and didn’t offer the customization clients wanted. Most reverted to a la carte purchases, leaving me back where I started.
At this point, I had hired my first employee – a studio manager – and had decided that instead of increasing my prices, I would pursue my serving my growing quantity at a lower price point.
The Crossroads of 2020
Like many photographers in 2020, I had to learn to adjust. With a newborn at home and the world in flux, I began offering petite sessions, school portrait days, and brand sessions to supplement income. Even with around 30% revenue dip, I felt proud to have maintained stability while paying a second part time salary alongside my own during such a tumultuous year.
But I knew I couldn’t stay at this level forever. My confidence in my work was growing, and so were my ambitions. I wanted to work with fewer clients, but do it better, so I knew that I would need to raise my rates and start getting even clearer about what I was bringing to the table.
The Price Jump (2021)
In 2021, I raised my session fee to $300 and introduced collections that included both digitals and print credits.
Also for the first time, clients chose their collection at the time of booking instead of after viewing their collections.
This shift guaranteed a minimum investment upfront, which boosted my average session revenue to $725. However, I quickly realized that the increase, while seemingly significant, didn’t actually tally up to that much of a raise after cost of goods and taxes.
Incremental changes weren’t cutting it—it was time to think bigger.
My first Mastermind and going all in (2022)
Joining a mastermind in 2022 was transformative. In our personal lives, my husband was about to leave his steady job to start a business and we needed my income to help fund that leap and support our family more heavily than ever before. I discovered I was pregnant for with our third baby and the gloves came off – it was time to stop messing around.
For the first time, I received constructive feedback on my work and brand, which gave me the confidence to make improvements and raise my prices significantly. My new collections included the session fee, digitals, and varying print credits:
- $750: 10 digital files + $100 print credit
- $1,200: 30 digital files + $200 print credit
- $1,800: All digital files + $300 print credit
This was the first year I made six figures in gross income for the first time, which was a huge milestone. More importantly, my confidence soared as I saw clients eagerly booking at these rates. For the first time, my pricing, image quality, and client experience felt fully aligned.
Read more: Planning maternity leave as a family photographer
Streamlining for Simplicity and Impact with Pricing (2023-2024)
In 2023, I simplified my workflow even further and began including all the final, edited digital images in the gallery as part of the session rate upfront. The new pricing structure was straightforward:
- 30-minute session: $700, 30 images, $50 print credit (specific location only)
- 1-hour session: $1,400, all images, $100 print credit
- 2-hour session: $2,000, all images, $200 print credit
This change resonated so well with clients, who appreciated the simplicity and value. By eliminating the need to select images, I emphasized the storytelling aspect of my work and ensured clients received a complete, high quality gallery.
Key Takeaways
- You can change at any time – with your family’s needs, the market demand, and as your why changes. Your personal interests or styles will change so remember that your workflow and pricing is not stuck. HOWEVER, changing a ton is also a ton of work and can introduce confusion and really whip your clients around. By being more consistent year over year or by changing small variables at a time 1. The better data you’ll have 2. The less explaining you have to do about your changes 3. the less rebuilding time you’ll experience with client turnaround every time. It’s worth it early on to really get clear about your goals, your needs, your values, and craft a process that you feel really excited about.
Read more: Check out The Big Picture Workbook to help with this!
- You have to make big changes to see big results. It feels risky but go back to episode 38 about adopting a ‘why not’ mindset – what do you have to lose vs. what do you have to gain? If you’re feeling like you’re hitting a personal or professional ceiling and you want to see what’s on the other side, you’re going to have to change something.
If you want to work together on a pricing model and execution workflow that feels exciting, aligned, profitable, and sustainable, reach out here to chat about 1:1 mentoring.
We’ll work through all the roadblocks together and pave a path specific to your business.
// LINKS MENTIONED //
Episode 38: History of Pricing Part 1
Big picture workbook : leahoconnell.com/bigpicture
Right track audits: leahoconnell.com/righttrack
1:1 mentoring : leahoconnell.com/mentoring
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