Best Business Practices for Photographers [82]
It is also critical to understand that if you are billing a total of $70,000 each year, that is in no way, shape, or form the same as earning a $70,000 yearly salary. Costs for cameras, computers, overhead, and such could cause that figure to approach or go below zero. Your salary is what you'd earn before taxes. Don't confuse the two!
A remarkable survey by David Walker was published in Photo District News in June, 2006. It was the first survey conducted by Photo District News of salaries within the industry, and the response—it was not a random sampling, but a voluntarily contributed to survey—was huge. More than a thousand photographers were among the 2,114 respondents to their survey. The numbers in Figure 9.4 are average income figures—a fraction of the overall resulting insights, which can be viewed at the PDN website (www.pdnonline.com). There, you'll find breakdowns by state/region, median levels, and other survey results (such as what studio managers, art directors, account executives, art buyers, and photo editors also are earning).
Figure 9.4 shows the average income for freelancers in each category.
Figure 9.4
Freelance income averages.
For editorial photographers, an average wage of $60,000, with corporate photographers averaging just under $120,000, certainly gives you a good place to begin when thinking about what salary you should be earning. There are a number of factors involved in determining your salary, and because you're the boss and the employee, you'll have to set your own wage. The key is to actually set a wage and work toward achieving it.
Targeting That Salary in the Short Term and the Long Term
If you're just into the business a few years, perhaps your salary should be closer to the left of that bell curve in Figure 9.1, somewhere in the low to mid $30s. This is not an unreasonable salary to expect if you have a baseline skill set that will allow you to meet client needs on a variety of basic assignments. However, you'll want to be realistic about what you pay yourself now versus what you'll be paying yourself in 10 years.
One of the remarkable things that happens to people as they transition from one arena to another is that they have to make an adjustment in their self-perception. During your last year in elementary or middle school, you were on the top of the heap. All the other kids looked up to those in the upper grades, and this was true whether you were the cool kid or the nerd. Even the nerds got respect from those three and four grades below them. However, the tables quickly turned as summer turned to fall, and that top-of-the-heap elementary school kid became a freshman in high school, and it was back to the bottom of the ladder. And so it goes again as a high school senior transitioning to a college freshman. And again, the supposed top-of-the-heap college senior…until you graduate and find yourself in the lifelong climb of the professional world. Even the photo school award-winning valedictorian can easily find himself working for a weekly paper in the middle of