***Why you MUST charge a Portrait Sitting Fee***

I’ve had a few of my mentoring clients contact me over the past few weeks to ask about Studio or In-home Portrait Sitting Fee’s, should they charge a “Sitting Fee” or not?

Well my advice is simple, YES always charge a Sitting Fee, or at least make sure you advertise your Sitting Fee charges across your website and social media.

*By having a fixed sitting fee this allows you to discount your fees at select times of the year when you run special offers.

*Clients know where they stand with you if you have a sitting fee that covers the cost of the shoot and a free print. If you don’t charge a sitting fee then clients tend to presume that they’ll get the hard sell after the photography session, as we all know that nothings for free in this world.

*You can run competitions and promotions on your social media pages to Win a Portrait Sitting Voucher. By having your sitting fees displayed on your website this adds validity to the cost of the prize that’s up for grabs.

*Always include just ONE print, no more. I usually include a 10”x8” as this adds value to the session, 1 hour portrait session plus a FREE 10”X8” print worth ￡50. I tend to charge ￡49 for the session.

*Never supply digital images. By just providing a single print image you massively increase the chances that the client will purchase more. For example if you provided the free print digitally there’s nothing stopping the clients printing out copies for the grandparents and producing enlargement prints to frame themselves.

*Increase the size of your free print when running seasonal special offers. I often include a FREE 16”x12” print worth ￡125 when running special offer promotions prior to Christmas or over the School Holidays. This really adds weight and impact to my special offers and again because the clients are only receiving just one free print I still benefit massively from the upsell.
The 16”x12” is a fantastic size for adding value to your promotions and large enough to be classed as a “Wall Enlargement Print”. In reality only costs me a just few ￡’s more than a 10”x8” to give to my clients but adds ￡125 to the value of my special offers.

*If you are ever tempted to run promotions with Groupon or any of the Experience Day Companies then they will want to see a fixed value for your portrait sittings.
We sold over 3,000 portrait and makeover offers with Groupon, Virgin, John Lewis and Living Social. Each package included a FREE 16”x12” allowing the Voucher Company to promote our ￡125 package at just ￡29 to their clients this made the offers look very attractive.
By suppling just one single print we did fantastically well with upselling to our clients. In addition to this because the Voucher Company took 40% commission of the ￡29 voucher price we added a condition to the voucher that an additional ￡10 fee must be paid for weekend appointments.

Hope this helps with your portrait sitting fee pricing.
If you need further help the pricing of your portrait packages be sure to check out my Blog posts on Portrait Pricing.



Thanks for following and good luck with your future promotions. Jeff