How to Price Your Services: a Guide for Dietitians & Nutrition Experts Working With Brands
Written by nutrition student Saaimah Chhalawala. Edited by Dietitian & Snapstudio55 founder Elis Halenko.
Hello, registered dietitians and nutrition experts! This blog post is dedicated to guiding you through the process of pricing your services.
Pricing your services as a dietitian is very different from that of just a regular influencer. You need to make sure you charge for your expertise and education, in addition to charging for the actual service. Brands and companies are looking to hire YOU and you specifically because of such credentials. So, it’s only fair to you that your prices reflect all that hard work!
Here’s a breakdown of how you can charge brands for your services as a RD:
Coming Up with a Price Range Per Food Photo:
Start by setting a base price range to account for your credentials. When setting a base price, think about the years you spent studying to become a dietitian, building your page, and other credentials you’ve accumulated. I’ll share an example for my food photography services and how I go about charging for this in my 7th year of business as an RD partner. My base price for 1 image currently is between $150-1000 per photo depending on the task. I always share my prices as a range because it keeps the negotiating power high as the project unfolds and clients are informed from the get-go of the potential high end of my final billing. The final price per photo depends on all the other factors I’m about to share with you below,
How long will the project take? Once a base price has been set you can calculate a fee for the type of service you provide. When coming up with this number be sure to consider the amount of time you will spend providing the service. This should include time spent negotiating with the brand and communicating with the brand, time and money spent purchasing supplies, and time spent testing the recipes, setting up and creating the content as well as the final editing and client handover. For example, in a recent project, I spent 1 hour on administrative tasks, 1 hour to shop, 3 hours to test the recipe, 3 hours to set up and capture the content and 2 hours for editing and client handover for a total of 10 hours. In this case, I am billing a recipe development fee, a food photography fee and I integrated an administrative fee. My final project cost was closer to $2000.
Coming Up With an Hourly Rate
This means, my hourly rate is close to $200/hour for this specific project. I am taking into account my base range which accounts for the credentials and experience level.
Some of you may decide to charge less, while others may decide to charge more. The latter totally depends on you! If you want to take it one step further, you can set different hourly wages for different tasks. For example, you can set different hourly rates for food styling and photography and different rates for time spent doing negotiations.
Once you’ve done all your calculations and added up all the costs, the total number you come up with should be what you quote brands. This number might seem quite high at times, but don’t worry, you need to make sure that you are getting compensated fairly for the work you do.
TIP: To make calculating the quote easier try using Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.
Time to Pitch Brands
Now that you’ve got an idea of how to price your services and come up with a total, it's time to pitch your quote to brands. This is the part where many dietitians get intimidated, often pressuring them to reduce their quotes. If and when this happens, remind yourself of your worth, education, and expertise. Brands aren’t just paying you as an influencer/content creator! You also have ingrained trust and reliability with your audience.
Moreover, if you develop a good rapport with brands, they are more likely to use your services for years and years to come to make profit. So, make sure you don't lowball yourself when you are already so close- have some faith in yourself!
What Should I Do If Brands Refuse to Work with Me Because of My Prices?
If a brand does refuse to work with you because your quote is not within their budget, don’t worry, there might be various reasons for that. Your first thought is probably that the brand doesn’t value your work and expertise. If this is the case, do not settle for less! Fairly paying yourself is as important as landing a brand partnership as it sets the industry standard and once RDs & nutrition experts agree to low paying work, it becomes almost impossible after that to negotiate higher rates. It's also important for you as a provider to prevent burn out and to ensure you have the time to provide your best quality of work.
One piece of wisdom I will share with you is that brands may not have the budget right now. If that is the case, you could ask them to keep you in mind for future endeavors/projects and check back with them once a season.
Brands are actively looking for dietitians and nutrition experts to partner with, now more than ever. Just keep pitching yourself until you find one that aligns with you, your values and goals. Many one-time brand projects end up turning into multiple projects. This is why one high-paying brand partnership is much better than multiple bad/low-paying ones, so don’t get discouraged when you hear brands refusing your quote.
Key Takeaway:
One key message I want you to take home is that YOU must know your worth and believe in yourself before anyone else does!