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What to charge in your metro.

Media rates track home prices, which is why every flat national answer is wrong. Set your market’s median, pick the job, and get the three numbers that matter: your floor, the market, and what the right agents pay.

$400K

The property

The job

Your floor
$—
Below this you’re paying to work. Never quote under it.
The market
$—
What working shooters in this metro actually charge.
Premium
$—
Top listing agents pay this — for reliability, not extra megapixels.
At $150 flat, a shoot in this metro — drive, shoot, cull, edit, deliver, invoice, chase the invoice — nets you about $28/hour. The kid bagging groceries is behind you and gaining.

Bands are modeled from published market-rate data by metro home price. A calculator, not a promise — and not a ceiling. Your market’s top agents are paying premium to somebody; the only question is whether it’s you.

Why the median decides your rate

An agent’s commission scales with the sale price, so what a listing “deserves” to spend on media scales with it too. In a $250K-median metro, stills on a standard listing run around $215–$250 and full listing-launch bundles $375–$500. In a $400K market those move to roughly $290–$425 and $600–$900. In $700K+ metros the top of the market clears $1,200 a listing. Same camera. Same hour of shooting. Different median.

Which is also why “what should I charge” threads full of national averages keep talking photographers into $150 — someone in a cheap metro is answering someone in an expensive one. Set the slider to your median and stop taking pricing advice from a different market.

Knowing the number is the easy half. Saying it out loud to an agent without flinching — that’s the pricing sheet, the scripts, and the 30-day plan.

Get My Roadmap — Free → The full pricing sheet by property type and square footage is in the $37 First $1K Playbook.