The ceiling calculator · fulltimerealestatephotographer.com/tools/ceiling.html ·
The Full-Timer Systems · Lesson 6
The ceiling calculator
If your income stops the second you stop shooting, you don’t own a business. You own a job with a camera.
Your real shoot times and your real price in. Your real ceiling out: the best week one person can have, what an hour of your life actually pays, and what each of the three levers does to it. It isn’t a forecast, and it isn’t a promise. Nobody can tell you what you’ll make, including this page.
1. Your numbers
Ten fields are yours to fill in. Everything else works itself out. Use your real numbers, not your hero numbers: time your next shoot from the front door to the car (lesson 3) and use that.
My packages start at $390 (lesson 1).
In the lesson: about 40.
In the lesson it’s two hours door to door, so about 80 on top of the 40.
Booking, confirming, rescheduling, the lockbox code, the running-late text, sending the gallery, the invoice and the chase (lesson 5). Count it.
Mine: $0.50 a photo.
A normal three-bed: 25 to 32 (lesson 3).
A real day, not a hero day. Every minute counts: the house, the drive, the texts.
In the lesson: five.
In the lesson, fifteen became twelve, because January exists and so do cancellations.
Take out vacation and sick weeks.
2. Your ceiling
Fill in every field. Your numbers show up when the last one is in.
Your weekly ceiling (what you bill)
$0
Write the weekly number down. Then decide which side of it you want to be on.
A day that short doesn’t fit one shoot, so the week is zero. Check the hours and the minutes.
3. The three levers, in the lesson’s order
Put a number in each row. Each one changes one thing and keeps the rest of your numbers.
| Lever | Shoots a week | Weekly ceiling | Weekly after costs | Yearly ceiling | Your hours a week | True hourly rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your numbers now | ||||||
It works, and it’s the first thing you should do. That’s lesson 1. But it caps out. There’s a number above which the market stops saying yes. | ||||||
That’s not a lever. That’s just the job eating more of your life. The weekly number goes up and the hourly number doesn’t move. | ||||||
| Hand off shoots a week: and pay the shooter $ per shoot | ||||||
The only one that actually moves the ceiling. It isn’t hiring an editor; that’s a cost. It’s not being the one holding the camera on every shoot. | ||||||
The honest part
Managing people is a different job from taking pictures. Plenty of good photographers try it, hate it and go back, and that’s a fine answer. But be there on purpose, because you chose it. Not because you never ran the math and nobody showed you the ceiling.