So, You Want To Make Art Your Career? How To Price Your Art

It's hard to make a career from art without selling any art, so, as an artist one of your jobs is to make buying your art as easy as possible. If you've been unsure about how to price your art, this article will help you figure it out!

Usually the most important thing a potential client needs to know after they decide they like a piece of art, is the price. In my experience, many artists are confused about how to price their art, and so they rarely ever do price their art. Not pricing your art is a guaranteed way to hardly sell any art. There's a million reasons people can be too shy to ask about a price, and not having one if people do ask is awkward and makes you look unprofessional.

But how do you set a price?

One way that's popular is by the square inch. This has a few issues with it. First of all, some artists can spend 5 minutes literally throwing paint on a big canvas and be done with a painting, while other artists can spend 10 weeks doing sketches and smaller studies and measuring etc... before they even start painting on a similar sized canvas.

Second of all, most people are generally bad at doing math on the spot. For example, people might do a quick "calculation" in their head and decide a 40 x 40 inch painting is 5 times bigger than a 8 x 8 inch painting because 5 x 8 = 40. But it's not - an 8 x 8 canvas is only 64 square inches. A 40 x 40 inch canvas is 1600 square inches, - that's 25 times as big! Like I said, your job is to make it as easy as possible for people to by your art. The less confusing it is for them,the more likely they are to skip to "OK let's do this!"

OK - so how do you price art?

If you're just starting to sell art, the best way is to price your art by the hour plus materials. That's something almost everyone understands, because almost everyone has had a job where they were paid an hourly wage. Ever heard "Time is money"? So has everyone else.

No matter how much experience you have creating art, if you haven't sold any (or hardly any) art yet, as far as the art market is concerned, you have no experience as an artist. That means when you're deciding your hourly wage, you should stay close to minimum wage in your area. Art isn't a minimum wage job, but, at first it's important to make some sales, and the more affordable your art is, the easier it is for a larger part of the population to afford it. It's going to be easier to raise your prices when some of your art starts to have "SOLD" next to it. You'll feel more confident about raising them, and since people will see other people have bought your art, they'll feel more comfortable paying higher prices. At first don't price your art too much lower than minimum wage though, or you'll risk not being seen as a serious artist.

Then what?

How you price your art will change as your career grows. Once you've made a dozen or so sales, start to increase your hourly wage a bit. As you make more sales, keep increasing it by a few $ an hour over time. At some point though, you're going to want to go full time. That's a big commitment, and the amount of money that your art will need to generate to keep your life and business bills paid will increase dramatically. So, you'll have to raise your prices dramatically too!

By the time you decide to go full time you'll have probably built some relationships with collectors of your art, maybe a gallery etc...One common fear is that they'll stop buying from you if you raise your prices. Some might, but, most won't, and everyone who owns your art already will be happy to see your prices going up, because it means they made a good investment! So, if you make the decision to jump into doing art full time, bump your prices up to hourly + materials x 2. The hourly plus materials should pay livable wages, and for your materials, the x 2 should pay for your business expenses. As you make even more sales and develop your reputation and relationships with higher end collectors and galleries, you can increase your hourly wage even more.

Let me know if you found this helpful, share your thoughts and experiences in the comments! -Adam

If you need some help getting your art career off the ground, I can teach you about pricing, how to attract collectors & get commissions, how to make prints and other products with your art , how to get licencing deals where you earn residual income, how to best use social media, how to make money at art fairs, how to pack & ship art worldwide and more. Basically a 90 minute consultation with me can save you years of frustration!

Visit https://www.nexusvisions.com/artsalesadvice