Every creative professional today is overwhelmed, and certainly dismayed, with the problems of pricing their work. Clients can "get it free" or pay less than industry standards because everyone is a photographer. Everyone is a designer. Everyone is an illustrator. What kind of backlash will this trend have? What is the "real" cost to clients and our industry of free work? True, new technology has opened up profit centers for many of us but that doesn’t mean we have to give the work away! CLIENTS HAVE THE MONEY. If we all do not consistently ask for what our work is worth, no one is going to pay it. What will buying cheaper work eventually cost us? Our clients? When we lose a job to a printer giving the photos away for free, we do get a little crazy. We have to stop now and think through this. Clients can’t stop to do it; they are pressed and stressed so it is up to us. It damages the entire graphic arts industry when a professional creative service becomes a "loss leader".

As an exercise to defend your work, your value and your pricing, ask any or all of the following questions. Do you know the answers? Do your clients know the answers? How will your clients respond to the questions? Please print this tip and keep it handy. Here are the questions:

1. How do you place a value on your expertise and experience when your clients get a price you know is not for a comparable work?
2. How much is the importance of the work’s value worth to the client? How do you put a price on your responsibility to create that value?
3. Besides price, what are other deciding criteria you can present to the client BEFORE they make their final decision? If you don’t know, always ask!
4. Is the client looking for the cheapest price or a good value? You don’t know; the client may not know. It’s a question that starts to separate the "vendors" from the true professionals.
5. Is the client looking for technical expertise or style? Style is unique in advertising and commerce. Do they want their promotions and communications to blend in and be overlooked or be unique and stand out in their market?
6. What value does the client place on their time and meeting project deadlines? How does this factor into price?
7. Let’s say the client needs to pay less but you still want to work with them. What can they get less of without damaging the project? What can you negotiate to get more of to make up part of the fee?
8. With which budget are they working? Often the "creative" budget is a pittance compared to the "production" budget. What if the client moved the money around? Help your clients spend more on the creative to spend less on the production. For example, you can shoot the job to minimize retouching. What are some other examples?
9. Who is really making the pricing decisions? If you are not talking to the decision-maker, how do you reach them?

Finally, make a list of the benefits of choosing you and your price over the free or cheapest work. For example, you have included retouching and the other work does not or you provide pre-production consultation and the cheaper price does not. You can counsel the client through the use (and reuse) of your work in their various print and electronic media and they can’t get that from anyone else. You’re worth it, now prove it!