How much to charge?????

[slang61]

January 7, 2015 at 11:53 pm

Hi all.
I am just looking for some advice on what to charge for a job.
I was asked (through a friend of a friend kind of thing) to photograph a CEO of a small Irish company for use in a one off article in a national newspaper.
I agreed to do the job, I was on site for around 1 hour and after editing i have submitted them around 16 images, all quite similar. The publication will probably only use 1 or maybe 2 of these images in total.
My question is – How much do I charge, considering I am not full time photographer and not VAT registered.
Total travel time = 30 mins
Total shooting time = 1 hour
Total editing time = 1 hour
Of course the marketing person I was dealing with said they might need me for future work, so I don’t want to under price me, but i obviously don’t want to charge full professional rates as i am not “professional”.
Also, what way will I invoice them as I do not have official invoices and how do I include VAT etc…..?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

STU

[paul]

January 9, 2015 at 7:55 am

VAT only comes in if you earn more than roughly €34k from photography business. Full and proper details can be found on the Revenue website.

What to charge comes down to what you feel you are worth. I know, a crap answer. People can charge anything from €50 to €1,000 for a proper CEO business portrait like that. It all depends. I would say the €100-150 area would be a comfortable price range to be in, depending on what you plan to provide.

[slang61]

January 9, 2015 at 10:42 am

Thanks Paul,
In regards to sending them a physical invoice… What would you recommend?
i.e. would i even show VAT or would you just make a word document and show – eg – Photography services… 100 eur inc. vat ??

[Mark]

January 9, 2015 at 4:44 pm

Stu,

You wouldn’t show VAT unless you are over the ~34k mark and registered for VAT, ie you wouldn’t have a VAT number for them to claim back against.

[Ashley]

January 15, 2015 at 7:22 pm

To provide an image of the…
slang61 wrote:

.. CEO of a small Irish company for use in a one off article in a national newspaper.

So that is what you would invoice them for – rather than for ‘you to do the work’, as the work has already been done, without you having anything in writing beforehand, to say they would agree to pay you to do the work.

So it’s simply X amount for a Licence to use your work, that you are now billing them for, based on the above information.

Should they then want to use your work for anything else besides this, at a later date – then you would renegotiate the fee at that stage, based on that new information – as this is basically like a ‘stock image’ you are providing them with here, at this point in time… for a very small and/or limited amount of use.