Birthday parties can be great opportunities to add photography services to your portfolio and make extra money.
In the process, especially if you’re an amateur photographer without a huge portfolio of wedding photos or other more lucrative types of photography like real estate or headshots.
But how much should you charge for birthday party photography?
To answer that question, let’s break down what it takes to offer this service and come up with some different scenarios based on your experience level and the number of hours you want to spend on the project.
Table of Contents
Determine Your General Fees
It’s good practice to determine your general prices before you look at specific jobs. It’s also important to consider how much time you want to spend on each job.
Work out how many hours you can devote per client; considering how demanding each job will be, it might make sense for you to cap your number of clients at any given time.
This is a personal decision that depends on your business goals and personality, but if you’re just starting out, I’d recommend keeping things simple by focusing on one type of photography (and one or two clients) at a time.
This way, you’ll have more time to learn about what works best for you and develop your skills in a single area rather than spreading yourself too thin across multiple types of photography.
How Much To Charge For Birthday Party Photography?
In order to determine how much you should charge, you need to consider what you will be offering.
For example, do you include a lot of photographs or just a few? Do you shoot videos? Do you include any prints or albums at all?
By considering these factors, you can calculate how many hours it will take to provide your services and from there, come up with an hourly rate.
Because your personal rate of pay may not be consistent across every job type (it doesn’t make sense for a wedding photographer’s rate of pay.
In general, to apply in your birthday party photography package), use whatever rate is fair for that given project and then multiply by your estimated time frame.
Generally, you want to keep your hourly rate somewhere between $90 and $150 per hour.
The average hourly rate for photographers is about $100 in 2022, so if you’re charging less than that, you might be able to take on more birthday parties per month.
If your rate is higher than that, it may be difficult to find clients who can afford your prices. If you want to charge a higher rate, consider having a day rate that applies specifically for birthday parties.
This can be more enticing because you won’t have to break it down into smaller pieces of time. The average range is $300-$500 per day (including setup and takedown).
One photographer with experience shooting over 100 birthday parties reports that she charges $350 per day plus expenses.
If you’re planning on charging hourly, it’s important to understand how long you think each session will take. Your time could be limited by your client, as some may have other obligations and appointments throughout their day.
Most birthday parties are about three hours in length so if you charge $150 an hour for your first two hours of work and $100 per hour after that, you can make a profit off one party without breaking a sweat.
Another way to determine how much your business should charge, look at how much other photographers in your area charge for similar services and use that as a benchmark.
A good place to start is by asking people who’ve used photographer’s services in your area; keep an eye out on Yelp! reviews and check out what comparable businesses are charging for similar work.
What Should Be Included In a Birthday Party Photography Package?
You can include fine art prints and photo editing in your package. When you include fine art prints, people can display your work in their homes.
It’s a great way to build brand awareness and generate new business. While you could offer print packages as well, adding them into a birthday party package is a fun way to make parents feel special on their child’s special day and help them remember every detail about it!
Showing just how much you care about making memories for families is also a good way to upsell clients later. If they love their print so much, they might want to get more than one!