Zenfolio ‘Smart Pricing’ Uses Data Analysis to Help Price Photo Prints

Zenfolio has announced what it calls Smart Pricing, an “advanced data-driven technology” that uses pooled historical transactions to help photographers competitively price their prints and photo products.

Zenfolio is a photography website hosting platform as well as a business solutions provider that allows photographers to easily show, share, and sell their photos. It recently acquired Format and the company is now expanding into business analytics.

The photography platform says it is the first to produce a data-driven pricing recommendation system. The Smart Pricing recommendations are based on hundreds of thousands of transactions, the photography genre, and a photographer’s geographic location in which they sell as well as other key market factors.

“Smart Pricing is a Big Data solution based on historical transactions collected and analyzed over a rolling 12-month period across all Zenfolio platforms,” the company tells PetaPixel.

“The algorithm evaluates product types and price points at which these products have been sold, along with the business zip code and photography genre. It also includes Zenfolio partner lab fees ensuring the suggested price accounts for the cost structure of different products and labs.”

The company says that Smart Pricing will help photographers who it says often struggle with balancing competitive pricing and profitability.

“Pricing products and services is often one of the biggest business challenges a photographer faces, whether they are aspiring, part-time, or seasoned professionals,” the company says. “Photographers tend to be focused on the creative aspects of their business and do not have the resources to do the extensive research required to ensure they charge competitively.”

Despite being what Zenfolio describes as a “big business” solution, the data-driven analytics here are narrowed to best help small, local businesses.

“The exclusive Zenfolio Smart Pricing tool saves photographers hours of time researching local market rates, calculating margins and worrying about setting appropriate prices to achieve optimal earnings and profits. Photographers have full control with the ability to create multiple price lists for various client types or genres of photography, and adjust prices anytime to fit their needs,” the company claims.

Smart Pricing is being added at no extra cost to the Zenfolio PortfolioPlus and ProSuite plans that include e-commerce starting today.