If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys

Without doubt the most enduring complaint in the photo community tends to be about money. Fees are said to be going through the floor, caused by the availability of cheap digital technology and the resulting competition this has generated from amateur photographers who are as happy getting published as they are getting paid.

Well, if hobbyists were taking my clients away from me, I’d suggest the problem was more about me than them.

Because what it means is my clientele is either not seeing a determinable difference between my work and theirs, or I’ve cultivated the sort of customer-base that cares more for the bottom-line than for good photography. Assuming I am producing good photography, the latter is likely the case. So the problem might be that I’m hanging with the wrong crowd.

If you work with the kind of client that prizes your low fees over everything else you’re setting yourself up for a fall, either now or as soon as someone cheaper comes along. Instead, if your clients see the quality of your work as the decisive factor, they’ll pay a fair fee for it and are likely to continue to do so.

Leaving behind an undesirable client-base to build a profitable and sustainable one is key. Given that most small businesses fail in the first two years, this is obviously easier said than done.

My commercial photographer friends tell me that when their clients have been tempted to stray by the lure of the ultra-cheap, they very often quickly realise their mistake. Whether they can get them back rests on making the client feel comfortable admitting the error and returning with no hard feelings.

What they learn through the experience is that when you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.