Becoming an Artist Part II: Money
Hello, my Devils.
Welcome to part two of Becoming an artist. This blog focuses on one thing that I know many new artists always question and struggle to find answers. I’m trying to be regular on these posts, and I think this is an easier format to read, but we will see.
How do I price my work?
It took me years to figure that out, and it’s kind of annoying when you get down to it, but if you want to get paid, this is one of those details that needs to be figured out and is one of the more boring sides of trying to be more professional. There are many ways you can price your work, but the best that has worked for me, and I hope you will consider, is the wage method. It is really simple with some very basic math so it shouldn’t be too daunting.
In the wage method you actually work backwards instead of just trying to fix a blind number to your work.
First, figure out how much you want to make in a month. I like to start with a reasonable number such as $100 (yes, I’m American).
Next figure out how much time you honestly can dedicate a week to working on art. Let’s say, it’s a purely side gig for now, so very part time, maybe 15 hours (that’s about 3 hours a weekday leaving weekends free to prevent burnout).
So, you plug that into the following equation:
What you want to make a month / (Hours per week × 4) = The price of your time
100 / (15 × 4) = $1.67 per hour
Now that you know the price of your time, or your wage, the rest becomes easy. Now don’t despair if the number looks low (like the not even minimum wage example above, we will talk about that later in this blog).
When setting up your prices, think about how much time it takes to do it and the cost of materials (also known as overhead). If you are working in a physical medium such as sculpting or painting, it is literally, how much the materials cost time how much of it you used; when dealing with nonphysical mediums or no general overhead, you can kinda ignore this part, but if you wanna go into the cost of power and non-consumable equipment, power to you.
Let’s say that a commission piece you offer takes you three hours to make and you have no overhead. According to the math above, that piece would only cost a just outside $5. I can hear you on my screen right now; “Dude, what the heck, five bucks for three hours of work, that’s outrageous! I’m clicking away from your blog right now!”
Well first off, remember, I was going to address this and second, this isn’t an airport, you don’t need to announce your departure.
This equation gets you started. It helps you figure out how you feel about your value. Many new artists suffer from a disconnect between their labor and the value of their end product because remember:
Anything you sell is your product.
Any effort you put into making your product is your labor.
Now you can see how much you value your labor; we can tweak the equation to give you a better idea.
Maybe, instead of thinking that you are wanting to only make $100 a month (and this is assuming you have enough commissions for three hours a day at five days a week) you should consider making $500 a month instead meaning your labor will be worth $8.34 an hour, which is a dollar higher than minimum wage in the US for the last twelve years as the writing of this blog. That same piece would now be worth $25.02. Much better.
As your work improves and demand for it increases, you will either start adding more hours you can work under this wage. From fifteen hour, to twenty, to maybe thirty and this becomes a parttime gig. And at your current wage set of $8.34 and consistent enough work to fill in thirty hours a week, your income becomes, $1,000 a month, just from your current pricing.
However, if your art is so popular that you are working more hours than you are wanting to, then the next option would be to increase the price of your work. If you want to make that delicious grand every month, but don’t want to work more than 20 hours a week consistently (that’s four hours a workday), then your labor is valued at $12.50 per hour. Then that same piece that used to cost $25 now costs $37.50.
Record Your Income
Now you are making an income, you should really; and I mean this with every bone in my body and a few bones in my dog, keep track of it. There are plenty of tools, like if you use PayPal, it keeps track for you (I really recommend their invoice system to keep track, but you do you) but anything will help.
Recording your income from this endeavor will help you see trends. What sold and for how much and so on, will allow you to adapt your plans and strategies down the line.
It will also help encourage you when you can see your progress.
Regularly Reevaluate Your Prices
On a regular basis, you should look at your trends on what sells and doesn’t, and how much work you are putting into things. If a service doesn’t sell too well, but you like doing it, feel free to drop the price of the service a little bit to increase the availability of the service. If something sells a lot and you find it far more time consuming to complete, increase your price a bit to slow down the demand.
As said before, the formula is a place to start but the market wants what the market wants. Personally, I reevaluate my pricing every six months or so, unless there is a major event in the world that potentially affects a larger portion of my client base, then I may run sales and specials that drops the price for a little while.
Sales and Specials
Sales and special events are good, but just like sugar or drugs, only in moderation. Having a sale that rolls around on a regular schedule helps drum up interest and many of the fans that you have been cultivating may wait until your sales period to commission you. If you have a subscriber base, such as Patreon, Subscribestar, Gumroad, Ko-fi or whatever, having a recruitment period every year will help drive interest and encourage lower-level subscribers to check out higher tiers.
How you want to do your sales and how often is up to you, but some good guidelines I like following is fairly simple.
· Mass Sale! Everything discounted should be once a year, pick the period where you are in a sales slump. These regular slumps can be due to the holidays or major vacation periods where a lot of people are low on disposable funds. By putting a mass sale for a few days regularly during these periods, it will allow people to still commission you, even if they have more limited funds. If you keep this in a regular rhythm, some of your lower-level clients may save and wait until this period to get some of your more expensive options.
· Monthly Sale! You rotate a specific service or cater to a specific crowed every month. This allows for groups that you get commissioned by that may be more marginal or unusual that kinda get no love by a lot of other artists to have a chance to get something from you at the very least.
· Weekly Sales! I do not recommend unless its part of something else like, if you stream some of your work, you might sell a limited number of slots at a discounted price as their work will be broadcasted and used to gain more attention. Beyond that, all you are going to do is create a lot of extra work for little profit.
How you price your work is up to you, but depending on how regular the sale is, you shouldn’t cut the price too deep. A yearly mass sale can be easily cut 75% of your labor cost since this happens only once a year, but a monthly sale shouldn’t be much more than 50% of your labor cost.
DO NOT LOWER THE PRICE LOWER THAN COST OF MATERIALS!
While capitalism is kinda a terrible thing, you must at least cover your costs, and if you lower your price below the cost of production, then for everything you sell as part of the sale will COST you money, which is kinda the opposite direction of your goal.
Now that you understand the basics of how to price your products and services, you need to learn something very important that I still struggle with, and its time management.
Until next time!