When working with any of my full branding wedding vendor clients I always get asked the same question:

“Should I list my prices on my site?”

The answer depends on who you are and what you do. If you are a florist listing prices it would be impossible as every client orders different quantities of different types of flowers. If you are a wedding photographer  it is much easier to list prices as every client pretty much gets the same thing more or less. My answer in either case is this:

“I always recommend listing your prices on your site even if it is just listing a minimum requirement.”

WHY YOU ASK?

You probably fall into this universal fear: You don’t want to list your prices for fear of losing inquiries. Here are my thoughts. Why waste time and energy responding to inquiries who have a budget half of what you cost? Who cares if you don’t get as many inquiries as long as the ones you are getting are legit and already know your cost. You weed out all the “budget” people and truly get inquiries from people who know what you are selling and how much you cost.

I’m very upfront about what I include in my full branding and how much I cost and people respect that and I only get inquiries from people serious about hiring me. I rarely get someone who says “Can I get ‘x’ and ‘y’ out of your branding experience to lower the cost?” because I’m very clear about what is included. Not only that, I really sell myself as a one woman branding shop that gives clients everything they could possibly need.

There is one fly in the ointment. “I’m a photographer and have three packages. I list my starting price of $3000 but my highest package is $7000. For this reason I always get people wanting the $3000 package and they haggle.”

I feel you girlfriend. It gets tricky if you have multiple packages and a wide range of cost. There is a simple solution to this:

“Reduce the number of packages you have.”

If you only have two or even one package then you can list that higher starting price. I am ALWAYS a fan of less packages because you will inevitably get a lot of the lower end package because people have options. Give them less options! Again weed out the people who are truly only concerned with cost and not quality.

“Not only that, do what you want to do. Why offer a package that you don’t get excited about when someone books it?”

I used to have three collections and the bottom one was creating a brand board only. I found that I hated doing just a brand board because I would get so many great ideas for their website and wouldn’t be able to do it. It was a tease. So, I decided I’ll just create one package with everything in it and sell that.

Do what you love. The work will follow.