The fastest way to lose a sale is to hide the price. When people cannot see what something costs, most do not message to ask; they assume it is expensive and scroll on. So put the price on the picture, in plain sight.
There is a second reason to show it, and it works in your favour. People judge a price against the first figure they are shown. Tversky and Kahneman found that whatever number lands first quietly sets the scale for everything after it (Tversky and Kahneman, Judgment under Uncertainty, Science, 1974). Lead with your honest, normal value and it becomes the anchor people measure against, so a little extra thrown in reads as generous, without you ever dropping your prices.
Black Friday shows the right way to do this. You cannot out-cut the big shops, so do not try. Show your real number, the proper price of a good thing, not a slashed one. You can see this on the Black Friday run-up: lead with your normal value and add a small extra on top, and it reads as generous next to a wall of fake discounts.
So what does “price on the picture” look like day to day? A café posts the lunch deal with “£6.50” right there on the photo. A barber lists “cut and beard, £18” under the picture of the finished look. A florist shows the bouquet with “£35, ready to collect today”. The person sees the thing, sees the cost, and knows where they stand. No guessing, no awkward message, no assuming the worst.
This also filters for the right customers. If your price is fair for what you offer, showing it plainly brings you people who are happy to pay it and saves you the ones who were only ever going to haggle. Hiding it does the reverse: it wastes your time on enquiries that go nowhere and hides you from the people who would gladly have booked. A decorator who posts “hallway repaint, from £180” gets calls from people ready to book at that price. A decorator who posts “message for a quote” gets tyre-kickers and silence, because the people who would have paid assumed it was dear and moved on.
There is a quiet confidence in showing your price, too. A shop that states its number plainly looks like a shop that believes its work is worth it. A shop that says “message for prices” looks like it is bracing for an argument, or worse, like it charges different people different amounts depending on how they ask. Which one would you rather buy from?
A caution. Showing the price is not the same as being the cheapest, and it should not become a race to the bottom. Charge what your work is genuinely worth and show that. If you are more expensive than the shop down the road, let the picture show why, the quality, the care, the finish, so the higher number looks like value, not a mistake.
The short version: show the price, every time. People will not ask, they will assume and leave. Lead with your true, normal value so the first number sets a fair scale, and let a small extra on top feel generous. A clear price on a good photo does more selling than any “message us” ever will.
Put the price where people can see it, every time. Open What should I post?, tell it what you are selling and the price, and put up the caption and the words for the picture it gives back, with the number front and centre where it belongs.