How to set the right price for your artwork
As creatives, we absolutely love what we do. Part of the reason we started a journey of becoming a professional artist, is being able to do what we love day in day out. But when starting out as an artist, pricing can be very tricky, and fearing it can easily keep you away from getting the results you desire. We’ve all had to struggle with it, but with keeping in mind the factors listed below, you should be well on your way to realistically pricing your artwork.
Print or original?
Creating prints from original artwork is a very good idea when marketing to an audience with a smaller budget. The pricing of a print can be way less than the pricing of an original work of art; because of the latter there is only one, and prints can be reproduced. The average price of a high quality print usually runs around $15 to $25 a piece. Create prints from your originals to market your art to a different audience than you normally would and get the word of mouth going.
Materials
Most artworks require the heavy use of professional materials. When creating a piece for the purpose of being sold, you should aim for high quality materials and add the use of them to your prices. How many times a week, month or year are you buying new materials? Calculate the use of them and spread the costs out on your pricetags.
Time
Make sure to give yourself an hourly wage, just as any other freelancer would when determining their price for professional services. Remember: you are a professional and people are not only buying the product, but they’re buying your time as well. When first starting out, pay yourself a wage of around $20 an hour, but quickly raise your prices as you gain experience and popularity.
You love your art supplies - but don't forget to weave these purchases into your prices, as they are investments in your business.
Experience
The amount of years you have been practicing your profession should greatly affect the prices you set for your artwork. Also consider degrees you’ve earned and courses you’ve taken, as well as press mentions, exhibitions and publications. You are your own boss, so allow yourself raises as you accomplish great results throughout your artistic journey.
Uniqueness
When determining the value for your artwork, consider how unique it is. Are you using techniques that you invented yourself? Could anyone else be doing this? Chances are that when you are the only person in the world using your methods, buyers will be willing to pay you a lot more for owning this unique piece of art.
Your emotional connection
Don’t let pieces you emotionally connect with go too easily. Price a piece you greatly love in a way you wouldn’t feel too bad when selling it to someone else. Tag it with a price you could use to invest in something you love or you have been desiring for a long time – replacing letting go of the piece with something else you emotionally connect with.
To learn about how to increase the value of your work and sell your creations for more than you are currently doing, make sure to check out the launch of the Work Your Art academy in the get started section and claim your earlybird discount before we launch in a couple of weeks. Good luck!
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(something went wrong with the last comment, how typical)
Awesome post, as usual. This is actually something I have trouble with from time to time. I think most of us tend to set lower prices to our work than we actually deserve. In the long run this can even lead to lack of respect from your audience…
If you are a beginner thinking about pricing your work- make sure your work is up to par. In other-words –are people begging to buy your pieces or are they buying because you are a friend? What ever you release first creates your reputation …they are good, great, awful, don’t go there. What type of artist do your first pieces present? You need about 10 good pieces on hand, that are everything you want to represent yourself before you break into the market. It is hard to raise your price. Better to wait and start off a little higher. Obviously every one starts off somewhere and if they work at it , they get better. If you need to raise the bar, now is the time to do it.
“The average price of a high quality print usually runs around $15 to $25 a piece. ”
That statement needs a qualifier. Are you talking about something the artist runs off on their home computer? Are you talking high end fine art/archival/giclee prints? Or offset commercial printing? What size print are you talking about. What sort of paper? Art paper or commercial grade? Is this a limited edition? Signed or unsigned? Archival ink? Or simple inkjet? To size or a different dimension? Greeting card? Postcard? Poster? WHAT?
In this example I’m aiming for giclee prints, unlimited, though I’ve seen people asking the same amount for simple inkjet prints. You’re right, I should’ve been more specific on what type of print it could be.
Inkjet and ‘Giclees’ are the same thing really……… just higher end colour reproduction and resolution. Even cheap inkjet prints have pretty good fade resistance if printed onot calcium carbonate buffered cotton rag digital printing papers. Giclee is just a fancy word made up by people outside the real art industry in order to make money from inkject/photographic reproductions and sell it on to unsuspecting individuals who themselves know nothing about art, and who get taken advantage of. So they charge a ridciulous sum for something that is in fact very cheap to make. Dont get me wrong, Im not strictly against it, but as a printmaker, I mean I MAKE PROPER FINE ART PRINTS, people now mix the two and have no idea about real printmaking i.e releif and intaglio proccesses.
I matt all my prints so there is no way I will sell them for 15 to 25 dollars. I also have giclee prints on canvas which run for an 18×24 about $90 to have scanned and printed on canvas. My price for these are around $150