More on lowballing

On the PDN forum there is an older thread that has been recently resurrected. It’s on lowballing and in it, as you might expect, I stated my opinion on lowballing and encouraged people not to do it. Rather than working from the negative, working from the positive (including valuing your work) is a much better way to go about your business, and I expressed that. Unfortunately, there are those who not only disagree, they get nasty about it (personal and nasty–ick). I don’t feel like responding to them directly (they aren’t open to thinking any way other than as they do, I believe, so it would be a waste) but it did get me to thinking again about the subject.

To be fair, I have tried to think about what the pros are to lowballing, but I can’t seem to come up with very much. Here’s my list:
*get a project now–so some money now versus potentially no money if you hold out for better terms (fees, etc.);
*possibly get repeat business (at the low prices)
*potentially work more often (at the low prices) and thus stay busy.

Now, the cons to the same point:
*if you make any money from a lowballed project, it will be a very low profit;
*clients will come to expect that photography is only worth that low price;
*clients who buy on price are usually difficult clients to work with who don’t care about quality so much as just getting it done;
*if your low price is based on time, then the client will try to get as much shot as humanly possible in the shortest amount of time (again sacrificing quality);
*you’ll have to work 5, 10, or more times as much to make the same money as you would if you priced appropriately (forget about having a life away from work!);
*lowballers rarely guard the rights to their work so if your client becomes the next Nike, you get nothing more for your work even though your client gets rich;
*once you work for a client for $X, getting that client to pay $X+$1 (or more) is nearly impossible (they’ll usually just replace you with another cheap-o);
*the chance that the work you will do for clients who want a lowball photographer will be something creative and/or inspiring to your creative nature are about .0000000000000000001 (and didn’t you become a photographer to be creative?);
*you might be able to pay the rent or feed your family today, but tomorrow there will be someone cheaper who will steal this client from you.

I’m sure there are more, but this is getting to be a long post. I only want to mention one other point: who ever got rich lowballing? Not even WalMart did. In the case of WalMart what they do is lose money in the short term when they set up in a new town. They lowball to undercut the competition and force them out of business. Then, when there are no more competitive businesses, they raise their prices to make a profit.

This system only works if you can force your competitors out of the market (and if you really don’t care about your customers). That is never going to happen in photography–not in our professional lifetimes at least. So lowballing is only a short-term desperate act, not a wise and well thought-out business plan.

More importantly, deliberate lowballing (which is very different from being un(der)educated about the business and mispricing!) requires that someone be so selfish and unethical as to utterly not care about anyone or anything other than him/herself.

I don’t think any of you are such people. I don’t think true creatives CAN be.