Are You Selling Yourself Short?
The Temptation is Real
You’re an artist and you want to sell some of your work. But how do you price your work? The temptation is to price low so that you get sales. A sale is better than no sale, right? True, but selling yourself short not only devalues you, but your work as well. Don’t sell yourself short! I get it. Trust me. I really do.
The average person has no idea the true value of art. (Photo Credit: 123RF Image ID: 49774450Copyright: vadymvdrobot)
The average person has no idea what artwork sells for and most of the time is blown away if you price your work for its true value. I’ve had people ask me how much I would charge to do an 8”x10” portrait (the smallest size I offer) of their pet and then nearly choke when I tell them the price. Others don’t even bat an eye and more often than not tell me that I should be charging more. The way I see it, the ones whose jaws hit the floor at the price are the ones that are clueless about how much good art sells for. I’m sorry, but if you expect me to sell a photorealistic pencil rendering for $25 or $50, you’re sorely mistaken.
First of all, an 8”x10” portrait takes me anywhere from 36-48 hours. Let’s say I charge purely by the hour. If I charge a client $50 for the portrait, I’d only be making $1.04 per hour. I might as well do the work for free. Talk about selling yourself short!
Secondly, I’m doing something that not everyone can do. I’m an artist. I have a special skillset, which is exactly why people come to me. Even at $250, my rate for an 8”x10”, well…you do the math. That’s just over $5.00 per hour. But if I want to stay competitive, I keep my prices in the ballpark of what other artists who do what I do charge for their work.
How do you figure out how to price your work? (Photo Credit: 123RF.com Image ID: 43804233 Copyright: luckybusiness)
At the same time, I’ll admit to being highly uncomfortably charging the true value for my work. So just how do you go about pricing the art that you put your heart and soul into? Do you charge by the hour? Do you pull a price that just sounds good out of the ethers?
According to art appraiser, Alan Bamberger, there are several things to consider. If you want your art to sell, your prices should be competitive or at least comparable to other similar artworks. If you slap a rather large price tag on your work, people will ask why your prices are so much higher compared to other artists doing similar work. But chances are more than likely that they’ll just go to those other artists and buy their work instead.
This is what I did. Since I had no clue what to charge for portraits of various sizes, I checked websites of other artists doing work similar to mine. I checked out how they priced by size, if the client wanted multiple pets per portrait, whether it was black and white or color, and whether or not they want background details included.
Another point of consideration is where or how you’re selling your work. What’s your market? Are you selling through a gallery or at a local art fair or swap meet? Galleries can obviously ask for much higher prices and people would expect to see that. Keep in mind that galleries also keep a cut of the sale price so they will generally mark up your work. Now imagine having those gallery prices on works you intend to sell at a swap meet or art fair. You see what I’m getting at here? Obviously, you won’t make any sales with gallery prices at an art fair. Price according to where you intend to sell.
Many factors go into figuring out how to price your work. (Photo Credit: 123RF.com Image ID: 14895758Copyright: doomu)
Other factors to consider when pricing your art include:
- What is the cost for materials you use?
- Are you selling prints or the original?
- Have you made a name for yourself in the art community or are you a relative newbie?
- What type of art are you making?
Hopefully you’re not selling yourself short. But if you are, maybe it’s time to rethink things. If you’re having a difficult time putting a price on your work, check out Alan’s page on pricing. You might just choose to retain his services, which usually start at only $75. It’s something I plan on looking into very soon in order to help differentiate between prices for my commission work versus my personal wildlife portraits, which generally have a lot more detail work involved. This has been a topic that’s made me uncomfortable for a long, long time, but selling myself short makes me even more uncomfortable. I’m very hopeful that his expertise will not only shed some light on the mysteries of how to price artwork, but also take some of the squeamishness away from this often times uncomfortable task that all artists have to face.
Recent Comments