It costs what!? | Breaking Digital Image Pricing Down & Putting it all on the table

Digital Pricing Breakdown

We have recently increased our digital media pricing for several reasons, and I am here to break it all down for you. Where is your hard earned money going? Let's find out.

1 Digital Image $35
First thing is first, Equipment expenses, repairs, rent, office supplies, gas, advertising costs, permits, licenses, insurance, state business taxes, and varied self-employment costs reduce gross income by approximately 50% every year. That leaves a gross (pre-tax) income from this digital image sale at $17.50.

We are not going to factor in timing here, except to say that the product (image itself) took about an hour of my time to get, process, finalize, and upload. 

However, by giving you this digital image, you will be *assuming* to print the image yourself instead of purchase from my lab. In basic terms--i am loosing money.

• Let's say that you take this one digital image and make 1 8x10, 1 5x7, and 1 4x6 print on your own for  a very minimal cost to you (let's not tell tales here, i know how much it costs at Walgreens to print an 8x10, 5x7, and 4x6). If you would have rather purchased the prints from me, I would have earned roughly $25 in profit give or take a few bucks.

$17.50 minus $25 profit of a very tiny print sale instead (bare, bare minimum) already puts me at a negative loss. And the profit made on that print sale is minimum. You are able to print UNLIMITED amounts of images...imagine my negative loss now. Could be up to $1000's of dollars. 

I am in business to provide for my family, so negative loss on a digital image sale is scary in terms of my business. I could raise the price--yes, I could. But I *want* to be affordable too. So where do I draw the line? It's hard. It's a very tough business decision. No one is perfect, and no one can make the *right* decision all the time. I hope you will take this information to heart and remember this next time you purchase your digital files--more than likely I have lost money. 

My goal here is to be real. I want to be real with you. I want you to know where your money is going after it's invested here. I want you to know hat you are paying a modest living wage (sometimes less, as in this case) for professional services, and in doing so, your business allows a working-class small-business owner to put food on the table and keep a roof over their family’s head!

My last plug: purchase prints from our lab! Not only will you get a MUCH BETTER quality print than Walgreens or Walmart (like x 100), but you will be helping me stay afloat and you will be proud to hang that print!