# Special pricing for Senior Pictures?



## sarahp (Aug 4, 2009)

Do you offer a seperate pricing structure/seperate collections for your high school seniors?  I'm new to the senior market and am considering putting together a set of collections, but am unsure of how many prints to offer, what sizes, etc. - and how to determine how much of a discount I should be giving off of the a la carte pricing, to make it worth their while.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.


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## KmH (Aug 4, 2009)

Here's a resource and there are others from the same place dedicated to shooting Seniors.


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## Imaginis (Aug 6, 2009)

sarahp said:


> Do you offer a seperate pricing structure/seperate collections for your high school seniors?  I'm new to the senior market and am considering putting together a set of collections, but am unsure of how many prints to offer, what sizes, etc. - and how to determine how much of a discount I should be giving off of the a la carte pricing, to make it worth their while.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.



Considering that seniors have more disposable income than many adults (i.e. they don't have to pay rent, mortgage, car loan, utilities, etc.), what would be the reasoning to make them a special deal?

Regarding sizes though, seniors really buy wallets a lot.


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## musicaleCA (Aug 6, 2009)

Imaginis said:


> Considering that seniors have more disposable income than many adults (i.e. they don't have to pay rent, mortgage, car loan, utilities, etc.), what would be the reasoning to make them a special deal?



Wait, seriously? That certainly wasn't the case for me or most of my friends when I graduated from high school.


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## Christos_2006 (Aug 6, 2009)

Although i dont market to seniors, i would have to say no. Your pricing is your pricing and since your business costs are fixed and you put the same amount of work into each session you are entitled to get paid what you are worth.
I would consider incentives for seniors more wallets, 1 free 5x7 with a purchase of 2 8x10 at regular price. 
But ultimately if you have a style that no one is doing in your neck of the woods or the fact that you created a buzz about your work, you should be charging a premium then. If they want you they will find a way.
As I said i dont market to seniors but these guys have the market cornered in there local, check them out. 
TriCoast Seniors - Tell Your Story...


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## Christie Photo (Aug 7, 2009)

sarahp said:


> Do you offer a seperate pricing structure/seperate collections for your high school seniors?




I _used_ to have special pricing for seniors, but not any more.  In fact, I had five different pricing structures:

1) Custom portraits  hand done enlarger prints, N surface, mounted and sprayed... neg retouched and flexichrome as needed.
2) Seniors  machine prints from a multi-printer, E surface...  negative retouching
3) Wedding (candids)  individual machine prints, E surface...  no retouching
4) Commercial  straight machine prints... F surface
5) Memory Mates

But this was in the day when the pro labs had the same pricing structure.

So now, my portrait customers enjoy the same lower pricing as my senior customers.  I mount all prints 11x14 and up, and sprays are at my discretion.

Another change from the old days is I no longer have a first print price...  well, sort of.  Now I charge a fee for each pose (view) added to cover file prep time and retouching.

-Pete


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## athomasimage (Aug 10, 2009)

What's the strategy behind your pricing?  To answer this question, you need to know:

Who is your competition?
How does your pricing compare to theirs?
How does your quality compare to your competition?
Are you loosing business because of your pricing?

When you start to get answer those questions, the pricing issue will become more clear and you'll begin to know where your pricing should be.


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## darciphotography (Feb 20, 2010)

Well you should make packages that are worth YOUR while!  Price your lowest package the lowest sale you would take for a session.  Lets say you want the lowest sale to be $150, price the package at $150 and if you want a savings for them of $25 put $175 worth of prints in that package.  The 2nd package you should double and have double the savings...have about 5 packages with the 5th one being a monster...most people won't buy it but I always have 1 year year that suprises me!  Your target package sell should be your 2nd one, which would double what you originally wanted to sell anyway!  Good luck!Darci Amundson Photography


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## Jamie71 (Feb 24, 2010)

I keep my portrait prices the same for seniors as my other clients but offer crazy good deals on wallets-Seniors nowadays really hand out alot of wallet sized pictures.


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