How to price your Art: Things to Consider

How do I price my art? It’s the single most often asked question from new and emerging artists. It's also one of the most discussed questions in online art forums with many and varied approaches of how artists arrive at a dollar figure on each piece of art they create.

There are many variables to consider, all quite valid, with no one 'correct' way to set your prices. In this article I will outline the various considerations and hopefully provide you with some direction when it comes to pricing your own artwork.

Things to consider:

• Cost of materials.
• Cost of your time.
• Living/Working Expenses.
• Size and complexity of the artwork.
• Intended market.
• Commission Fees.
• Importance of the Artwork to your artistic development.
• Your reputation as an artist.

Cost of Materials

This aspect of pricing is a 'no brainer'. If you aren't at least pricing your work to cover the cost of materials how are you going to fund your next artwork without getting a second job? No matter what method you ultimately use to price your art cost of materials should always be a factor.

Cost of Your Time

Many artists find this a stumbling point because they don't know how to put an hourly dollar value on their time. Rather than just picking a figure out of the air you could determine your hourly rate based upon research of:

• Hourly rates of other similar artists (it never hurts to ask).
• Hourly rates earned by commercial artists producing similar work
  e.g. graphic artists, photographers, jewelers. Any similar profession that has an entry level base salary or wage.

You could base your hourly rate upon any previous entry level jobs you may have held. Even if the job wasn't in the arts, It's still your time that was being paid for.

Living/Working Expenses

Do you want to be a full time artist? If so you'll have to factor in the cost of your living and working expenses since now you're attempting to pay all of your bills.

To make these calculations you'll need to have an approximation of how many hours a month you intend to spend creating your art.

Living expenses are fairly self explanatory. You'll need to work out approximately how much you spend per month for things like rent, electricity, water, food, vehicle expenses, entertainment etc. Divide that total figure across the number of hours you intend to work a month and add that to your hourly rate.

Working Expenses are everything you spend money on not directly related to creating each individual artwork but related to the production and sale of all your art. For example, studio hire, advertising fees, letterhead, business cards, printing costs etc. Total these up over a month and divide that figure across the hours you intend to be working.

Note that if you’re factoring in living and working expenses, to some extent the hourly rate of these are absorbed into the cost of your time. Essentially you’re trading time for dollars to pay the bills. Like you do with any form of employment.

Size and complexity of the artwork

One approach is to calculate prices by the size of your artworks. A popular method is to charge by the square inch. Set a dollar figure for one square inch and simply multiply that by however many square inches each artwork is in size.

In order to do this you will need to know approximately the cost of your materials per square inch and your hourly rate per square inch. To calculate your square inch rate you’ll need to create an artwork of average size and complexity.

Decide upon an hourly rate for your time and determine the cost of the materials used. Calculate the total cost of that artwork once you’ve completed it i.e. Total cost of time + Cost of materials. Take this figure and divide it by the total number of square inches in the artworks surface. The final number is your cost per square inch that you will apply to all future artworks.

Pricing by size tends to fall apart if you work in several different mediums, styles and complexities. In this case you'll need multiple size scales for different types and complexities of artwork.

Intended market

After cost of materials this is the single most important consideration when it comes to pricing your art. Your intended market covers things like:

• What type of person buys your art?
• What kind of income does that person earn?
• How much does this person spend on art per month/year?
• Where will your art be exhibited after purchase?
• Where does that person go to buy art?

Where a person goes to buy art is a big factor. People who buy from galleries expect much higher prices than people who buy from art fairs. Research is key here.

If you've never sold an artwork then you need to research the venue in which you intend to sell your art (whether that is ebay or a real world gallery). Look around for similar work that you know is selling and perhaps set your prices in line with that.

Knowing this kind of information will help shape the kind of art you produce and increase its chances of being sold.

Commission Fees

If you sell your work in a gallery or through an art show or some other venue that collects any kind of selling/commission/entry fee be sure to add that into your prices. If you don't it'll be eating into your profits. Not good if you only have a small profit margin. You’ve been warned!

Importance of the Artwork to your artistic development

As an artist you can't help but feel that some artworks have more importance than others and represent major leaps forward in your artistic development. What we're really talking about here is an emotional attachment to an artwork.

How important is that artwork to you and can you factor it into your pricing?

The short answer is you shouldn't consider importance because it will lead to inconsistent and difficult to understand pricing. How do you explain to your buyers why two artworks of similar size and complexity have such vastly different prices? How do you put a dollar value on 'importance'?

If you think a work is so important that you can only sell it for the right price then it’s better to exhibit it with Not For Sale notice on the tag. If someone really likes it they'll probably make you an offer. Then you can say, I couldn't sell this artwork for any less than... That way you won't mess up your pricing structure on works you are more than happy to sell at market value.

Your reputation as an artist

If you're an unknown artist you won't have any reputation outside of your family, friends and other people who know you. So this won't be much of a factor but it's something to keep in mind.

Once you start selling to people who are buying purely because they like your art (i.e. they have no other relationship to you) then your reputation will begin to grow. Reputation is a lot like importance, you can't really put a dollar value on it or logically factor it into your pricing.

Your work is worth what the market will pay. If you consistently sell at one price then test the waters with higher prices. If you still sell consistently then you know people value your work more than what they are currently paying.

Don't make massive price jumps though. People generally understand that your work will be worth more as your reputation grows but very few people will understand a massive price hike. At the very least you should be raising your prices annually, in line with inflation.

Conclusion

There are no hard and fast rules for pricing your art. The considerations I've listed are all points to think about when determining your own prices. You may not need to factor all of them into your pricing but in all cases, covering the cost of materials and understanding your market are the two most important.

After all you can't create art if you can't afford to buy materials and you'll have a harder time selling your art if you don't understand your market.

Note: This article was first published by me through the Triond Publishing Network and appears on Quazen as an article titled, How to Price Your Art.