Saturday, February 6, 2010


The Case of the Freebies

We all like things for free. It makes us feel good when we know we got it for the bargain price of – nothing.

But does it have any value?

We recently attended a concert at a local botanical gardens. Every year they have a whole summer of concerts, and every Sunday night you can attend a different concert. They have local talent, and even bring in some big names from the past (we saw Firefall the other night).

For most of the series they charge a small fee for the tickets, anywhere from $10 to $30 a ticket. But for the Father’s day concert, the concert was free. The only catch was you had to have a ticket.

So I went and got my free tickets, along with paying for a couple of the other nights.

Guess what? The free concert was their biggest “sell out” yet. Meaning they had given away more tickets than ever before. Yet from freepast years I know it was a fairly small crowd.

Is free good? Did people consider the tickets to be of value?

If something else came up, the people didn’t come. The tickets were free, so it didn’t matter if they used them or not. In essence, they had no value.

But if you paid $20 a piece for the tickets, I bet you would make an effort to attend. 

Now let’s swing this around to what I’m seeing with the photography industry.

Photographers love to pile on the stuff in their “package” deals. For one small fee, we’ll give you everything.

Does that put any value on what you do?

The real value comes from what you do that other’s don’t do.

If everyone does a quick shoot and hands over the files on a CD, that’s your competition.

How can you be different?

By providing an entire service, from beginning to end.

People don’t want a CD with 100 photos on it. They want one beautiful portrait of their baby daughter, printed on the finest canvas, retouched to perfection, matted perfectly, and framed in a way that matches their home decor. They want the nail and the hammer to be attached to the frame – less to think about when they bring it home. Maybe they would even appreciate a photographer that hangs the portrait on the wall! What service!

You can’t hang a CD on the wall. 

There is a difference.

source of photo ba1969

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