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More on Pricing
Pricing your Art - Where to start.
Explains process of discovering where you are in terms of being "known", your level of expertise, the client's budget, time and materials. How to put it all together.
Many artists who are just getting into selling their work may have a problem with deciding how to price their work. Are you underselling yourself? Overpricing your work? How do you judge the situation?
You don't want to price yourself out of the market but you want to get a fair price for your hard work.
There seems to be several general guidelines that various artists go by to determine price:
- Determine your experience level.
- Determine your technical skill level.
- Evaluate how "established" you are.
- Evaluate the popularity of your style of art.
- Figure time and materials.
- Check out prices of comparable work in area of display.
- Determine price in relation to geographical area.
- Figure price based on all the above.
If you are just starting out you will not have name recognition to demand the higher prices of more established artists. If you plan to sell through art fairs/shows the price would probably be lower than if you are selling through a Gallery. Art selling in large metropolitan areas can demand higher prices than in other areas.
Gallery curators will want to know how long you've been doing your work, how prolific you are, and how long you expect to keep producing. They don't like to take chances on artists that are here today and gone tomorrow. They also want to be sure that they will have a constant supply of your work if it sells well. It is a good idea to try to establish a relationship with a prospective Gallery before you start offering your work. Personal impressions may not matter to you but they do to the Gallery.
Getting name recognition is one of the most important aspects of selling your art and being able to demand higher prices. Buyers tend to buy the work of artists that are familiar to them.
If you are doing commissioned work the budget of the customer is another factor to examine when pricing your work. If the customer has a limited budget and your price is high you may lose the commission even though the customer likes your work.
Some artists, especially artists working in large format like murals, price their work by the square foot. If you can break down your expenses, labor, etc. into this format it may make pricing easier.
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