A business emails asking how much it would cost to photograph its products. There are forty of them, or possibly sixty, they are somewhere between small and large, and the images are for the website and probably some other things.
Nobody can price that. Four exchanges later the enquirer has gone quiet and a day has been spent on nothing.
Why these briefs fail
Because businesses commissioning photography for the first time do not know what a photographer needs, and because the things that determine the price are not the things they think about.
Ask for the shot count
Not the product count. Three angles of forty products is a hundred and twenty images and a different job from one shot each.
Ask what each shot involves
Plain background, styled, in use, with a model, with props. It is the largest variable and clients describe it as simply photographing the product.
Ask about the products themselves
Size, weight, whether they are fragile, whether they need assembly and whether anything is reflective. All of them change the day considerably.
Ask who supplies and returns them
Delivery, storage, insurance while held and return afterwards. It is a logistical cost nobody includes.
Ask about styling
Whether props, backgrounds and set building are required, who sources them and whether a stylist is needed.
Ask about usage
Where images will appear, for how long, whether in advertising and whether internationally. It is the single largest factor in commercial pricing and clients have never considered it, which is the ground in commercial photography briefs from businesses.
Explain usage plainly
That a licence for a website differs from one covering paid advertising, that this is normal across the industry and why. Clients think they are buying files.
Ask about the deadline
Because a launch date determines everything and clients mention it last.
Ask about post production
How much retouching, whether cut outs are needed, what file formats and what the platform requires. It is frequently half the work.
Publish a day rate and a per image rate
With what each includes, so a client can model an approach before enquiring.
Publish an example brief
A completed one, so a client can see what you need and send it complete. It converts enquiries that would otherwise take a week.
Explain the shot list process
That an agreed list before the day prevents overrun, and that a list is what makes a fixed price possible.
Explain the reshoot position
Products change, packaging is redesigned and a range gains six items three months later. Publishing what a returning client pays for additional shots, and whether the original setup can be matched, is what turns one commission into an annual relationship rather than a single invoice.
Capture the brief at any hour
Shot count, style, usage and deadline, which is the qualification in ai shopping assistant product fit applied to a brief, alongside the site detail in commercial fencing enquiries from sites and schools and the consumer side in newborn and baby session enquiries from nervous parents.
Getting started
Publish rates, an example brief and how usage affects price, then capture shot counts and usage at any hour. SpideyChat for photographers answers from your published pages, plans are on the pricing page, and the chatbot ROI calculator works through the numbers.