Usage/rights fee confusion from clients
Our take
I shoot commercial work in a relatively small Midwest market, like brand lifestyle shoots, events, your typical advertising photography array.
After having a few clients go a little overboard distributing my images on countless marketing channels and to potentially hundreds of thousands of impressions, I’m really trying to hone in pricing for usage rights. I haven’t charged for usage thus far but certainly limit how and where they can distribute my images in my contracts, but now I’m running into confusion from clients when I include a “usage” fee in my quotes.
These businesses are small (but definitely have money) and have only ever worked with freelancers that do creative work as a side gig and not as a serious full-time career, so when they see me include $500 or $1000 for usage licensing they are dumbfounded.
“Usage? Aren’t we already paying you a day rate to shoot for us?”
“So after a year we have to take these photos off our website?”
It’s like they don’t understand the concept of getting compensated for usage, likely because it’s a small market and they’ve never had a photographer with the self respect to think of charging for that. It’s an awkward conversation when it comes up, and I’ve lost a gig because of it recently.
Wondering how you all navigate pricing for usage? And also, how do you structure getting paid for it? Is it a one time flat fee?
As an example, I have a client in the tourism industry who uses my images on their website with 8 million annual visitors, social media accounts with roughly 500k followers, and print marketing. How would you charge for this?
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