The Eyes of Portland Monk :: Official Blog of Award-Winning Commercial Advertising Photographer Benjamin Reed

It’s a great feeling. You’ve been busting your ass with new concepts and putting book together to showcase a new style. Your marketing efforts have paid off and an advertising client calls you to bid for a regional client. It’s a great feeling…and maybe the most important thing to remember as you go through this process is…it’s an art. Just like that judge who swayed the others that a picture is actually really good in one of those photography contests last year when you were saying to yourself, "You’re kidding me right?"  Just remember it doesn’t have to make sense, there doesn’t have to be a rhyme or reason, and it can drive you nuts. The good thing is the more practice you have the better you will be.

I’ll try to be as basic and general as possible so you can focus on the concepts. You’ll all learn your own tricks of the trade when the time comes but the concepts will last your career.

Bid or Estimate?

An Estimate and Bid are different beasts. Estimates are the expenses, including your shooting fee, to produce a shoot. They are accompanied with the invoices and receipts you collected to produce the campaign and the client pays these expenses at the end of the production. This price changes depending on the costs incurred on the production.

On the other hand, a Bid is your final price up front. The expenses and shooting fees you give the art buyer and final’s final. If you spend over your bid amount, you eat the cost. As a businessperson, bids are much better for you to execute. They provide more room for you to make a profit and usually don’t require you to provide receipts as back-up. If you negotiate with stylists, for example, $50 per day and you bid $150 for stylists, you made $100.

Bottom line: Make sure you clarify what your client needs before you begin.

Fees + Licensing + Expenses = Execution Cost (FLEE)

Your next step is to ask a plethora of questions of your client and of yourself. Ask everything you can. The more you ask the better prepared you will be. The goal here is to fill in the FLEE equation. FLEE is the structure of your bid as you will present it to the client.

Fees – What do you as a photographer want to make for the shoot? What is your creative value for the time you’re needed? The right questions to ask here are: How many days is the shoot for? Where is it located? What is your competition charging? What is the current state of the economy?

Licensing – You are to be compensated for where your pictures are to be used. Think of eye volume here. The more eyes see your image, the more valuable it is to the client. You need to be compensated for that. How long does the client want to use the image? 1 year is much cheaper than 5 years. In what mediums? Print, web, brochure, point of purchase? In what locations? Local, state, regional, national global? Do they want exclusive rights? Meaning, do they want to be the only entity that can use them? That’s worth more to you. You can’t sell your pictures to stock or another company if your client has exclusive rights. They need to compensate you for that as well.

Expenses – What will it cost you to produce the shoot? How much will your crew cost for the number of days…assistants, stylists, wardrobe specialists props, rentals, models, insurance, studio time, meals, etc. Break everything out, I mean EVERYTHING. Don’t skimp out on costs. You’re a businessperson. Unless you want to eat the costs, bid them out.

Execution Costs – The other side of the equation. What all of the above equals. Don’t forget to add sales tax depending on your state of operation.

You have your skeleton after completing the FLEE equation. Now you have to organize it in a professional way with your logo with everything broken down. You also need to include contract terms. When does the client need to pay you? How much advance do they need to pay you? What happens if they don’t pay you on time? What happens if weather prohibits the shoot? All of these things need to be spelled out in your contractual invoice.

To ease your pain throwing all of this together I recommend two software packages that are well worth the investment.  fotoQuote by Cradoc fotoSoftware and Blinkbid. fotoQuote will help you determine licensing fees for usage. Blinkbid will help you prepare your bids and invoices to send to clients. Both are great tools and will help you understand the process in a more professional manner. Cradoc also offers fotoBiz which is similar to Blinkbid and can be purchases in tandem with fotoQuote. I prefer Blinkbid but it’s your call. I don’t have any connection to these companies but love their products.

Some things to note:

Don’t try to mess with Art Buyers. They will most likely know more than you ever will about market values and trends. They deal with numbers on a regular basis and if you try to sneak something by it could harm you in the future. You want to foster the best relationships possible so avoid any headaches.

The Cost Specialist. A relatively new trend with agencies is negotiating with a "cost specialist". It used to be all price negotiations were done with the Art Buyer. You might go back and forth on the cost of an extra stylist for example and settle on something. More and more agencies are adding in another layer of cost scrutiny. After the Art Buyer, a cost specialist might step in and scrutinize something the Art Buyer left out. This can be over something as little as $50 and you might spend hours trying to stand your ground for that money. It’s just something else to be aware of. If you’ve done your research on market prices you’ll be better prepared to argue your case.

Part II will have more about the behind the scenes nature of bidding from a photographer’s perspective and provide an example or two on real world bidding situations.

The Monk

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