As Creatives, we constantly have to deal with people undermining our work. Sometimes, we do so ourselves. You’ll find clients trying to bargain prices or pay less for something we spent a lot of time and energy on. Other times, we charge too much or too little.
How do we get it just right? How do we confidently charge and get paid for our work?
Ann Rea, Artist and Founder of Artists Who THRIVE and Making Art, Making Money, shared 5 focused steps to take to confidently price our art in her ebook “Are You Charging Too Much or Enough For Your Art.
via Pinterest
Though it focuses on art, it can be applied in other creative fields as well.
We will be sharing the five of them, but will discuss only three here. They are:
1. List the Price for Your Most Popular Item
You will need to make an honest appraisal of your work. If you don’t know how much it should be, don’t be afraid to ask others who are already versatile in the field. For an artist, go to galleries, ask art representatives, find art works similar to yours and check out their prices. If you’re a freelance writer, look online, network, ask other already established freelance writers.
2. Subtract the Cost of Your Materials of this Item
List all the materials that you use in your work, then estimate the portion of costs of the materials used in doing a particular job.
3. Subtract the Daily Overhead Cost of this Item
- List the total reoccurring monthly overhead associated with your workplace or studio. E.g: rent, utilities, supplies, etc.
- List the total annual or intermittent overhead costs. E.g: taxes, insurance and dues.
- Multiply your monthly overhead by 12 (which represents a year) and add your intermittent overhead
- Divide the total by 12 to get your monthly costs
- Divide what you get by 365 to get your daily cost
- The result is an estimate of the cost of running your studio each day
- Multiply that dialects by the number of days it takes you to complete an urgent job or your most popular item
4. Subtract Cost of Your Time for the Item
5. Calculate Your Profit
To read the rest, go HERE.
Note: Find out if you’re loosing money or making money. If you’re loosing money, you don’t have a business, at least not yet. Endeavour to find out what’s preventing you from making a profit. If you’re making money, then well done, you have a business. But still ask yourself if its enough and devise ways to do better.
“Is being an artist your expensive hobby or is it your business?”
– Ann Rea
Listen to Ann’s interview where she talks about how she was able to confidently create an art-centric career capable of generating over $100,000 per year HERE.
Featured image via Steves-Digicams.
