How to price your prints (and actually sell them)

Most photographers underprice prints because they price from cost, not from value. The photograph is the value. The paper is almost free. Here is a way to price that respects both.

Anchor with a signature piece

Offer one large, beautifully finished print at a confident price. It sets the frame for everything else and makes the mid-sized options feel reasonable. Without an anchor, your cheapest print becomes the anchor, and that is the wrong one.

Sell sets, not singles

A trio for the hallway or a small album outsells a list of individual sizes, because you are selling a finished result instead of asking the client to design it. Build two or three packages and let the gallery do the upselling.

Make buying frictionless

Clients buy in the moment they are reliving the day. If the store lives inside the gallery, that moment turns into an order. If it lives in a separate email three weeks later, it usually does not.

Price in your client's language

A Lagos wedding client and a destination client in London should not see the same number with a different symbol. Set clean price points in the currency your clients actually pay in, ₦45,000 reads as considered, ₦43,127 reads like a currency conversion, and review them when your costs move, not when a client complains.

Keep your margin

Work out what a print costs you to make and deliver before you set the price on it, not after. Price for the work rather than to cover whatever the last order ate, and the numbers get a lot friendlier.