Invoice Breakdown #4
Hello Weekend Club Members!
Welcome to the fourth invoice breakdown post!! I'm writing this in the midst of a crazy season for us. We're headed to Spain on Sunday to film a new course with Domestika which is super exciting but also very hectic haha. You might have noticed that we've been silent on social and now you know why lol. Anyway, in this series I'm going to share some of our invoices and break them down for you. I was inspired to do this because of this site which I've found to be super helpful.
A couple of reminders:
This is solely for the purpose of educating, not for bragging or for making anyone feel bad about their rates. This is partly why I want to share some of our old invoices so that you can all see how much we've grown - and know that you can do this too!
These are meant to be examples and not specific financial advice. We don't know the ins and outs of your business, process, or the projects you take on. We can't give super specific advice because every job and client will be so different. We encourage you to take all of these posts with a grain of salt and then apply them to your own business and shoots however makes sense for you.
I'm also not going to share any names since I want to protect our client's information but I'll do my best to describe the project as best I can in order to give you some context.
As much as we talk about pricing your worth, I always still feel self-conscious about our own prices and it's scary to put them out there for other people to see. I'm doing it because I love you guys so BE NICE OK?
If you have any questions about the specifics of any of the invoices that I share, feel free to reach out to me and ask questions in the Slack channel or comment on the post so that everyone else can see and learn too!
This shoot took place this summer and was for a brand new skincare brand that was launching.
18 STYLED PRODUCT IMAGES AND 3 GIFS
Art Direction and Production..................$1,200
I probably should have charged more for the art direction and production of this shoot, it ended up being more work than I anticipated. The client did help a lot with the art direction though which was great.
Photography and Lighting..................$3,000
This is pretty standard for us, we typically charge $2,000-$3,500 for photography (or what some may call a day rate) depending on the complexity. We don't do half day rates since if we book a half day shoot that still take up our full day as we won't book another client in the second half of the day.
Prop Styling..................$600
I definitely should have charged more for props. I charged this amount because I knew that I wanted to hire a texture stylist who would help me a lot with the styling. The reason I should have charged more is because there ended up being some props that were pretty challenging to find and it took me a lot of time to hunt them down. I didn't know this when I quoted which is just a lesson to ask the client if any specific props are wanted and look them up before quoting to see if they will be challenging or even available. Regardless, I think this is too low for props because it doesn't even cover one day of shopping/making, one day of styling and one day of returns.
Post Production..................$4,000
We probably should have charged more for this. Part of my justification for this rate was that three of the images included in the final count were actually stills from the gifs so they were already being edited for those. There was definitely a lot of post that went into this shoot though so we probably should have charged a few thousand more.
Equipment and Studio..................$450
This is our standard studio/equipment charge. This covers any wear and tear on our equipment as well as items from our studio that are used during the shoot such as paper towels.
Set and Props..................$340.16
The estimated price was $450 so I came in under budget which was great. We ended up buying a few things that we kept so we charged a rental fee for those as well as our moodelier props. We purchased some paint and some ingredient props as well.
Meals on Set..................$79.91
I had quoted $80 so this was right on budget haha. When I quoted I only included Arabela and I but the day of the shoot one of the clients came as well so this included lunch for 3 people.
Talent..................$1,994.37
This was for two models as well as the talent booking fee which I just included in this line item ($150/model).
Texture Styling..................$910.48
As mentioned, we brought on a texture stylist for this shoot to help with all of the swatches and product styling. This was such a good decision, I can do textures but it takes me forever and it stresses me out. Having someone who really knew what they were doing to take this off my plate made a huge difference and really made the images better. I definitely recommend hiring help for areas that you aren't as strong in. Reach out to different stylists in your area to see what they charge so you can include those numbers in your estimates.
Usage..................$7,040
This usage was for the Client's own website, organic social media, email newsletters, and digital press/pr for one year. For a larger company I would probably have doubled this rate, but this was a brand new company just launching and I knew that we were out of their budget to begin with. My goal was to build a relationship with them and I made it clear that this usage rate will grow as their business grows. I definitely believe in charging less for usage for smaller or brand new companies as less eyes will be seeing the images.
INVOICE TOTAL..................$19,304.92
There's our latest invoice breakdown! I hope that this encourages you to charge your worth. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, if it's helpful or if you have any questions! Also feel free to let me know if you would have priced things differently - I always love hearing how other price things.
Is it the weekend yet?
Elle