📁 Photography
Photography Business Prompt: Session Pricing From Your Costs
Price photography sessions from your real costs, hours and booking capacity: cost of doing business, price floor, package fixes, and a client-ready explanation.
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Prompt
Act as a photography business coach who sets session prices from a working photographer's real numbers. You start from the income the photographer needs, add every business cost, count the true hours behind one session, and only then look at packages and what to say to clients. Inputs: - Take-home income goal for the year, before income tax: [IncomeGoal] - Yearly business costs, itemized: [BusinessCosts] - Hours behind one session, step by step (shoot, travel, emails, editing, delivery): [HoursPerSession] - Sessions I can realistically book in a year: [BookableSessions] - Current packages and prices: [CurrentPackages] - What I know about my local market (prices I have seen, client feedback): [MarketNotes] - Constraints (days I will not work, max sessions per week): [Constraints] Generate: 1. Cost of doing business: total BusinessCosts and cost per session = BusinessCosts / BookableSessions. Show the math. 2. Price floor: revenue needed = IncomeGoal + BusinessCosts; price floor per session = revenue needed / BookableSessions; effective hourly rate at that price = price floor / HoursPerSession. 3. Current price check: for each CurrentPackages price, the yearly revenue at BookableSessions, the gap to revenue needed, and the effective hourly rate after cost per session. 4. Package rework: 2 or 3 packages built around the price floor, with what changes in time or deliverables, not just price. 5. Capacity check: weekly sessions needed against Constraints, and the hours that adds up to. 6. Client explanation: a short, honest paragraph for the pricing page about what the price includes. 7. Need from you: anything missing, such as payment processor fees or sales tax rules, listed instead of guessed. Rules: - Use only my numbers. No invented market rates, average photographer prices, or tax rules. - Round prices to the nearest dollar and recheck every sum. - This is not tax or legal advice; tell me to confirm taxes and contract terms with a qualified professional.
Instructions
Fill every cost line from last year's records or bank statements. Rerun the prompt when your costs or bookings change, and test the new price on new inquiries before changing it for past clients.
Generated Output
This image was generated using the prompt above.
Examples
Example Input
IncomeGoal: $60,000 take-home before income tax. BusinessCosts: gear replacement $4,000; editing software and gallery hosting $1,500; insurance $900; website and domain $600; marketing $2,400; mileage and travel $2,000; accountant $800; education $1,000. HoursPerSession (family session): shoot 1 hour, travel 1 hour, emails and planning 0.5 hours, editing 3 hours, gallery delivery 0.5 hours. BookableSessions: 120 family sessions a year. CurrentPackages: one family session at $350 with 30 edited images. MarketNotes: two clients said my prices felt low for the quality; I do not have reliable numbers on local prices. Constraints: no Sundays, at most 4 sessions a week, 46 working weeks.
Example Output
1. COST OF DOING BUSINESS Total: 4,000 + 1,500 + 900 + 600 + 2,400 + 2,000 + 800 + 1,000 = $13,200 a year. Per session: $13,200 / 120 = $110. 2. PRICE FLOOR Revenue needed: $60,000 + $13,200 = $73,200. Price floor: $73,200 / 120 = $610 per session. Hours per session: 1 + 1 + 0.5 + 3 + 0.5 = 6 hours. Effective hourly rate at $610: $610 / 6 = about $102 an hour, before income tax. 3. CURRENT PRICE CHECK At $350 x 120 sessions = $42,000 a year, which is $31,200 short of $73,200. After $110 of costs, each session leaves $240, or $240 / 6 = $40 an hour. 4. PACKAGE REWORK Mini session, $395: 20 minutes, one location near you (cuts travel), 10 edited images, about 2.5 hours of total work. Family session, $610: 1 hour, 30 edited images, online gallery (your current package at the floor price). Extended family, $850: 2 hours, two locations, 50 edited images, about 9 hours of total work. Keep mini sessions to a few dates a year so they do not replace full sessions. 5. CAPACITY CHECK 120 sessions / 46 weeks = about 2.6 sessions a week, inside your limit of 4. 2.6 x 6 hours = about 16 hours a week on session work, before marketing and admin. 6. CLIENT EXPLANATION "Every family session includes planning help before the day, one hour of shooting, careful editing of 30 images, and a private online gallery. The price covers the time behind your photos, not just the hour we spend together." 7. NEED FROM YOU Your payment processor's fee per booking, and whether you collect sales tax where you work. Confirm taxes and contract terms with an accountant or lawyer; this is not tax or legal advice.