Making Photo Books for others

[puddin]

What is a reasonable price to charge for creating a photo book for someone (editing & organizing their photos (about 40 photos), adding some scrap booking techniques, customizing the templates, adding/editing text).

Let's say for the standard 20 page, hard cover book, (valued at $30). The problem is no matter what is charged, 30 dollars will go towards the printing so it seems like you have to charge high in order to make a profit worth your time.

[Jen D]

Honestly I haven't found that it is really worth it to scrap for others for profit. Like you said the price of printing and supplies is so much already many people don't then want to pay you for your time and talent.

When I did paper scrapping for people I charged an average of 10.00 per page and I think after all the work I put in it was too low.


Best of luck if you can find the right market... but I think it is tough to compete with the larger companies that make it easier and easier for people to do it themselves.

[anke]

I must agree with Jen, I don't think it's worth it at all! I know some photographers include a wedding album with their photos, their prices must be really high to begin with, I don't know how else they could do it.... I have done them for gifts and they were very much under-appreciated, so I wouldn't do that again either. That is a tough market to get into!

[esther_a]

I would spend at least an hour per page. Lets say $20 (which is a low hourly rate). Add for product, lets say $5 per page (will you need to pay extra for a commercial licence?). Multiply that $25 by 20 pages. That's $500.
Heck, I've never added it up!!
Even at a super cheap $10 for your time and $2.50 for product per page it's $250.
And supposing you didn't use ANY product and you're a SUPER FAST scrapper and did quite a few pages per hour, you'd still need to charge much more than they would be prepared to pay.

[echogirl]

I think totally not worth it either! Also remember if you are doing it for a scrap for hire then you should be buying the commercial license not just the personal license.
Even my basic photo pages take me at least an hour (fiddling with which picture to use and basic photoediting!)

[puddin]

Thanks ladies it's worse than I thought, but this is all good to know before I put serious time into it. I won't really be fully scrapping using any kits, like you mentioned echo I don't own any commercial licenses so I'm just thinking about the basic photo books which are indeed very easy to make now. So even if I used a special little scrapping or photo effect here and there most people wouldn't notice.

The other angle I was thinking was to make the books for small business owners (such as wedding coordinators, caterers, seamstresses) to show their customers displays of their work, pricing, and other info you would see on a website. I figured it would be a unique way to stand out to potential customers. But many people will probably just be satisfied continuing to put their photos in a regular photo album.
I was also thinking about something with schools/educators. Like (with permission) rather than a band or cheering squad just having a few pages in the yearbook, they could have an entire book that focuses on them. I'm in the education field so there should be some things I can do that mix academics with graphics/photos.

Okay well, wait, I just got a job interview for tomorrow! Hopefully I will get the job so I won't have to think too hard about any of this & just do it all for fun. Thanks again everyone.

[anke]

I really hope you find some kind of avenue you could pursue, so you could use your hobby to make a little money. THat would be so fun!

[digigrandma]

Best of luck to you, Puddin, with the job interview tomorrow and with pursuing your ideas to use your digital scrapbook design talents.

[echogirl]

Good luck with the interview!