I specialize in technically challenging projects for TV and print.
My income is 70% commercial photography, 20% commercial video, 10% random. Mostly corporate clients who are based in Phoenix AZ.
I have 2 food styling assistants I hire, when needed for projects but otherwise very little overhead.
IRA & mutual funds make-up my retirement funds. This is something I need to plan out better.
I get about 72-90 days on-set or billed as day-rate a year roughly.
Over the last few years my income has increased steadily, even thru the pandemic surprisingly.
As a food Stylist I start a job with 1-2 hours worth of meetings with the client & photographer or video team. Then a few hours on pre-production working on shotlist and grocery lists. Then one-day for prep-work that includes grocery shopping and prepping any food. And lastly the day/s on-set working as a food stylist.
I charge $1000 for prep day/s and $1000 for day/s on-set as a food stylist. I also charge a small ($50-$100) kit fee + cost of groceries (I generally do not mark these up), + cost of assistant, if used. So on a 1 day shoot I make about $2050 apx.
I pay assistants 500-550 per day.
Recently I worked a 12-hour over-night shoot for a rate of $1500. I struggled to find resources to guide me on estimating this rate for the client. I wanted to give the client a good-fair price that had some industry guidlines but found none that apply to me as a food stylist.
Here is how I ended up calculating my rate for myself (I did not share my math with Client):
$1000 day rate (10hrs)
$300 over-time (2 hrs @ $150)
$200 over-night fee (kind of made this up)
I made the mistake of giving a repeat client a big discount on my day-rate. I was charging $1000 a day to all other clients, but this one client I gave a $750 day rate. I still work with this client and have steadily been raising my day-rate by $50 each year.
I don’t do any marketing but could use some tips tho.
Best Advice: Know your value and stick to it. It’s hard to put a $ on your time. I highly recommend taking the time to research your market and find a $ that you are content with. Then STICK with that number. As a freelancer you need to consider all of your life expenses when figuring out your day rate.