The Cost of Starting and Being in Business - Photography part 5
(This is a reprint of a series of notes I wrote on Facebook in 2009)
In our last episode we discovered our Start up costs for a homebased photography business would be about $2950 with an additional $2661 annual reoccurring costs.
I this episode we'll talk about Copyright registration costs. In any photography business if you want to protect yourself, your clients, and your business; you need to register your images with the copyright office. If you ever publish your images even to facebook , blog or website; you need to protect what you created. The creation of a photograph is intellectual property, it is art, it is one of a kind.
I know there are lots of photographers who think I'll take my money give the client a disk with hi-res photos, provide a release with all the rights, and run. But doing that opens you and your company to risk. Once those files leave your possession with a full release the cat is out of the bag. Here are some potential issues: you no longer can use the images in your portfolio as you no longer have rights to the image, Your client can sell the images (you lose that revenue), your client can post all the bad images on the web and talk about how bad of a job you did, your client posts the images and you get sued, you get sued for using them in portfolio because you don't have rights, future clients expect you to give away your images and the kitchen sink....etc.
To help protect yourself and your business you need to: 1) register every image with the copyright office and 2) never give away your image rights.
to figure the cost per year for registering images with the copyright office our subject decided to estimate the number of images they'll shoot in a year. As a portrait and wedding business our subject guesses they'll shoot 2 weddings in a weekend and 6 portrait sessions in the week during peak time. That works out to 20 weddings and 100 portrait sessions for the year.
It costs $35 per copyright claim to file electronically. Registering each of the 120 shoots as a collection would cost $4200
That cost will be factored into our pricing but an amount of that will need to be set aside before hand to get the ball rolling and as a back up for any late payments. Copyright registration reserve of 10% of the estimated annual cost will be $420
That brings our Start up costs for a homebased photography business to about $3370 with an additional $3081 annual reoccurring costs.
In our last episode we discovered our Start up costs for a homebased photography business would be about $2950 with an additional $2661 annual reoccurring costs.
I this episode we'll talk about Copyright registration costs. In any photography business if you want to protect yourself, your clients, and your business; you need to register your images with the copyright office. If you ever publish your images even to facebook , blog or website; you need to protect what you created. The creation of a photograph is intellectual property, it is art, it is one of a kind.
I know there are lots of photographers who think I'll take my money give the client a disk with hi-res photos, provide a release with all the rights, and run. But doing that opens you and your company to risk. Once those files leave your possession with a full release the cat is out of the bag. Here are some potential issues: you no longer can use the images in your portfolio as you no longer have rights to the image, Your client can sell the images (you lose that revenue), your client can post all the bad images on the web and talk about how bad of a job you did, your client posts the images and you get sued, you get sued for using them in portfolio because you don't have rights, future clients expect you to give away your images and the kitchen sink....etc.
To help protect yourself and your business you need to: 1) register every image with the copyright office and 2) never give away your image rights.
to figure the cost per year for registering images with the copyright office our subject decided to estimate the number of images they'll shoot in a year. As a portrait and wedding business our subject guesses they'll shoot 2 weddings in a weekend and 6 portrait sessions in the week during peak time. That works out to 20 weddings and 100 portrait sessions for the year.
It costs $35 per copyright claim to file electronically. Registering each of the 120 shoots as a collection would cost $4200
That cost will be factored into our pricing but an amount of that will need to be set aside before hand to get the ball rolling and as a back up for any late payments. Copyright registration reserve of 10% of the estimated annual cost will be $420
That brings our Start up costs for a homebased photography business to about $3370 with an additional $3081 annual reoccurring costs.
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