Pricing, Prestige & The Business Of Photography - Miriam Schulman, E115
4/29/202657 min
In this episode, Matt sits down with Miriam Schulman, professional artist, art business coach, host of the Inspiration Place podcast, and bestselling author of Artpreneur (HarperCollins). Miriam left Wall Street after 9/11 to build a six-figure art business and now teaches photographers, painters, and visual artists how to price their work, sell art online, attract collectors, and build a sustainable photography business without relying on social media. In this conversation we cover photography pricing strategies, how to sell prints at higher prices, the psychology behind luxury art buyers, why charm pricing kills photography sales, how photographers can find art collectors, the truth about Instagram engagement rates for artists, AI's impact on professional photography, and how to transition from hobbyist photographer to full-time professional.
So if you are learning how to make money as a photographer, how to price photography prints, or how to build a photography business in 2026, this episode delivers the frameworks Miriam uses with her six-figure photography and art coaching clients.
Other things we discussed:
- How to price photography prints using prestige pricing instead of charm pricing
- The belief triad every photographer needs to sell high-ticket prints
- Signal excavation: how photographers find their unique artistic voice
- How to build an email list as a photographer (and why it beats Instagram)
- The $40 champagne pricing study and what it means for photography sales
- AI and photography: why photographers face more risk than painters
- LinkedIn for photographers: the most underused platform for selling art
- How to use local press and PR to sell photography prints
- The five biggest mistakes photographers make when pricing their work
- How to identify a production problem vs a pricing problem in your photography business
- Why marketing matters most when you believe your photography matters
- The wishy-washy pricing mistake that loses photographers paid bookings
Find Miriam and everything she offers on her website:
https://www.schulmanart.com/
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMiriam Schulman· Guest0:00
Like many artists, I was not always an artist. I was told you couldn't make a living that way, and I believed them. When I first started out and I was selling portraits, I looked around to see what other people were charging and decided I should charge less, and that was a big mistake.
Matt Jacob· Host0:16
Tell us about those years and the mistakes you made early on that you see other people making.
Miriam Schulman· Guest0:23
So one of the biggest mistakes that I made myself and I see other artists making is the idea that cheaper is easier to sell, when really people are looking for things that are reassuringly expensive. People associate a higher price tag with something being better. It's not always about beauty, it's about what does owning this art, this photography say about you as a person? That's the key. I can give you some hacks today that will work. So one of the hacks...
Matt Jacob· Host0:54
Okay, Miriam Schulman, welcome to The Moo Podcast.
Miriam Schulman· Guest1:05
Hi, thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt Jacob· Host1:08
Thanks for being here. We've got a lot to go through, um, a lot of which is in your book, Artpreneur, which I'm gonna kind of reference as we go through the conversation. Um, but before we do, give us an insight into you, kind of a little bit of your origin story. We're gonna kind of dive into how you transitioned