The quote is the first piece of work

A freelance photographer in Dubai who shoots products for small online shops hears one reason more than any other when she loses a job. Price. Someone else was cheaper.

The natural response is to cut. Sharpen the number, trim the hours, promise the same work for less. Do that for a year and she is running hard to stay where she is, against people willing to go lower still.

But "too expensive" usually means something narrower than it sounds. It means: as far as I could tell, the two of you were offering the same thing, and the other one cost less. That comparison only works if the offers look alike.

They do not have to.

The quote she sends is the first piece of her work the client ever sees. If it reads like a figure scribbled on the back of a receipt, it invites a comparison of figures. If it shows she has understood the shop, its products and its customers, and how the pictures will look on a phone; if it offers a few ways to do the job at different levels; if it shows what happened when she did this for someone similar; and if it lands the next morning rather than next week, then the client is no longer comparing two prices. They are comparing a safe choice with a gamble.

Plenty of clients want the safe choice and will pay for it. The quote is how they recognise it.

The other half of the craft is knowing when not to write one. Some people only ever want the lowest number, and nothing she sends will change that. Those she can point, politely and gladly, towards the photographers who will go lower.