How To Price Your Artwork — Part 1
I’ve been perusing a lot of art galleries lately and I’ve been paying special attention to the prices applied to each piece. Selling Art is part of being a professional artist. It may seem distasteful, like you’re selling out your ideals, but living in a capitalist society we have to get used to that idea. In order to make a living making Art, we will eventually have to sell it.
Seeing what others are selling their artworks for can give you a good idea of where other artists were coming from when they set their prices and what they think their art is worth. You know something? I’ve come to the conclusion that most artists don’t believe their artwork is worth all that much.
There’s an epidemic of underpricing going on in the art community. We’re currently in a recession, that is true, but I can’t believe it is completely to blame for what I’ve seen recently. Underpricing has been around a lot longer than the recession and no one is to blame for that more than the artists themselves. I’m willing to bet the prices I’ve seen lately won’t even cover the cost of making the artwork.
I’d like to think that most of us who have molded our lives around the production of Art see it as more than just a commodity to be purchased. We invest time, effort, energy and little bit of our soul in each piece. It’s not just a painting, sculpture or print. Its an extension of our inner selves, our beings. We’re peeling the banana and putting it on display for the world.
Now, I know I’m being a bit of a romantic, but with that kind of investment I’d run through a burning building to save my artwork, wouldn’t you? Forget the T.V. Forget the queen sized bed. Rescue the artwork!
Here’s a scenario for you:
You’re walking alone along a deserted stretch of road one night around dusk. A Demon appears before you, his grimy, clawed hands clasped in front of him. He says you can have anything you want as long as he gets your soul in return. You contemplate the proposal and wonder just how much your soul is worth. Could you get a million dollars for it? Two million? A hundred? What about everlasting life? Power over all mankind? Friendship with every man and woman on earth? A cure for all the worlds diseases? That chicken-turkey club sandwich you’ve been jonesing for all day?
Chances are if you decided to take the Demon up on his offer you’d want to maximize your end of the deal, get as much as you can for what you’re selling. So how come artists aren’t doing the same when it comes to their artwork?
With that in mind, here are a couple of handy dandy tips to aid you in pricing your artwork so you don’t sell out your talent when you sell your work.
Number 1: What is your TIME worth?
First and foremost you have to determine for yourself exactly what your time is worth. Time will nine times out of ten be your biggest investment in your artwork.
When you work a day job you probably work for an hourly wage. A salaried wage can be broken down into an approximate hourly wage too. This is how you support yourself. The number of hours you work multiplied by your hourly wage gives you the amount of money you’ve got to live on. Every week you make money and every week you live.
If you want to make the making of Art your life then you’ll have to look upon the hours you spend producing Art as your day job. There’s no shame in this. We live in a capitalist society and you need money to survive. The number of hours you work on Art multiplied by the hourly wage you desire gives you the amount of money you’ve got to live on. Every week you make Art and every week you live. Simple, isn’t it? You dont’ have to be a superstar to make a living creating Art but you do have to be realistic.
So, how do you determine your artistic hourly wage? First, have a look at what you need and what you desire. If your financial requirements are $1000 a week (that includes expenses and a profit margin) then you’ll have to bring in at least $1000 a week to meet them. If you’re working only 40 hours a week then you’ll have to price your time at a minimum of $25 an hour. If you create one artwork in that time, you’ll have to price it at $1000 in order to meet your financial model. If you create two, each could be priced at $500, the end result being the same, $1000 income.
What? $25 an hour seems too high to be the hourly wage for an artist? If you find that an unreasonable figure let me ask you this. How much do you make per hour at your day job right now? How many other people are you working with who are doing the same thing making approximately the same wage? Now, how many of them could drop what they’re doing at this very moment and create a beautiful, unique work of Art? Those skills that you’ve been honing for the last 15 years, the ones that allow you and only you to do what you do – what are they worth to you?
Are they worth at least the same amount of money you’re getting paid at your day job? Are they worth less? According to the prices I’ve seen in the galleries lately, the overwhelming answer to that question is yes, an artist’s rare skills are worth less than the common skills used by everyone to work over the counter, every day, basic, boring day jobs. And again, I don’t believe the recession is solely to blame for this situation.
This is scarcity thinking and it saddens me. Ultimately, based on the prices I see, most artists don’t think their artwork and, by extension, their skills are worth all that much. This begs the question, “Why bother?”
Figuring out how much your time is worth to you is the first step you have to take in order to price your artwork properly. Without putting a monetary figure on what an hour of your precious time is worth you may as well slap a $0 price tag on your artwork and give it away, because this is essentially what you’ll be doing. Can you hear that Demon rubbing his hands together yet?
Number 2: What will the market bare? Flexibility and YOU!
So you’ve bitten the bullet, pulled yourself up by the boot straps and decided to price your artwork according to what you think its worth, $1000 per piece. You now have to look at what people are willing to shell out to purchase it.
It’s unfortunate but living in a capitalist society we rely on the money that other people are holding to support us. We have to create a product, bring it to the market and sell it. The money we make becomes our income which other people will then quest after to support them — and the cycle continues.
But what if no one is willing to buy your artwork for $1000? You think its worth that much but the collector doesn’t. Now that I’ve filled you with monetary righteousness, how do you get around this road block? Easily. By tempering your newly found fiscal fortitude with a dose of financial flexibility–say that five times fast!
Sticking to your monetary guns is admirable, but if no one will buy your artwork at your asking price, it may as well be wearing that unwelcome $0 price tag because the end result will be the same. You have to have a bit of flexibility in the pricing of your artwork to accomodate all the types of buyers and markets you’re likely to encounter. If a collector was willing to give you $2000 for the painting you’ve priced at $1000, you’d sell it in a heartbeat, wouldn’t you? What if he was only willing to give you $500? What then?
At the moment we are in the midst of a recession. Everyone is feeling the pinch. Buying artwork is probably not at the front of most people’s minds but that doesn’t mean that someone with an amount of money alloted for the purchasing of artwork isn’t walking around right now looking for exactly what you’re selling.
But what if you can’t find that someone? What if the customer you’ve got standing in front of you is offering only $500 for your $1000 artwork? Can you sell that piece for $500 and keep on living? By deciding ahead of time on a price which meets or exceeds your financial needs (don’t forget to factor in a profit margin), you’ll give yourself a bit of leeway should this situation arise. And it will arise.
When it does you’ll have to decide for yourself if selling your artwork for less than you think it’s worth is a good deal or not. No one can make that decision for you.
When the economy is depressed, there is an expected downturn in the pricing of everything including items such as artwork. This doesn’t make the artwork any less valuable to the artist or the buyer, but the market may not be able to bare proper prices. When this happens, you’ll have to ask yourself if it’s worth selling your artwork at the moment or not.
To be continued…
Article of interest: How To Price Your Artwork — Part 2
