How To Price Your Artwork
How To Price Your Artwork - Episode 28
Recently I made a reel on Instagram about how I priced my prints and multiple people asked me to break down how I price my paintings. It is January of 2023 and my prices may have changed by the time you are listening to this episode. This is accurate at the time of recording.
Today I’m going to tell you about all the ways I’ve priced my work in the past, why those didnt work for me in the long run, and what I do now. If you are looking to price your artwork based on one of these methods, please keep in mind that I make Abstract Oil Paintings on wood Panel, and what works for me might not work for your artwork/product.
Price based on competition
When I was selling my first art products on Etsy, which were custom sketchbooks and hand painted converse, I priced based on my competition. At this point what I was making was more craft than artwork. It was a product you could use and it was easily comparable to others like it on the platform i was selling it on (Esty). If you typed in Custom Sketchbook in Etsy’s search engines and compared a sketchbook that was 5x8 inches with 100 pages with other sellers, people are going to click on the cheapest one. It’s the nature of online shopping.
What I wanted to do was base my pricing on the time I spent making it, but that would mean my sketchbooks would cost $50+ and then i wouldn’t sell anything. So I sold my sketchbooks for $34.
On etsy my biggest problem was getting people to even look at my listing. So I devised a plan: I sold 99 cent ‘paper samples’ that cost me $3 to make and send. The paper sample included a piece of the cover paper, two pieces of the interior paper, samples for other books I made, and a discount code to my shop if they wanted to purchase a book. Doing this made my listings the cheapest for the sketchbook category and got me thousands of people looking at the sketchbooks. It was advertising and made me able to make a profit off the new sketchbook sales.
With fine art, its really challenging to price your art based on what other people are making. First you have to categorize what specifically you are painting. Is it botanical art? Is it portrait drawings? Is it abstract? Is it sad? Is it cheerful? Then you have to find similar art (which is a recipe for imposter syndrome if i’ve ever heard one.) and figure out if the price would work.
Free Shipping
I abandoned this for fine art pretty quick. But one thing I did learn from this way of doing it was the power of free shipping.
Now, as makers we both know there is no such thing as free shipping, but having that little sign that says ‘free shipping’ next to your artwork is good for so many reasons.
First, there isn’t a surprise cost at the end above tax for the buyer. When they click ‘add to cart’ they aren’t going to get sticker shock at a $50-$400 upcharge for shipping their art to their home.
I always put in the cost of shipping into my final retail price for artwork. I’ve been selling art long enough that I know that certain sizes of artwork will take under $30 to ship and others will take a much bigger chunk of change.
Online vs in person
I don’t change the price of art when I’m selling it in person vs online. The shipping cost is always in the cost of the artwork, weather the person who buys it picks it up in person or has me mail it. If they happen to get it in person, that portion of my sale that was dedicated to shipping picks up slack in other areas of my expenses. Like gas bills, electricity, upgrades to my twitch stream, and more.
The other reason not to change the price for in person vs selling online is that your prices stay consistent. If you are selling the same painting at two different prices at two different locations, it gets weird. People will start to wonder if they got a bad deal because they bought the artwork off of your online store. Be consistent with your prices.
Price = time + Materials + 20%
This was the next system I used to price my artwork. I learned it from an office manager when i began to sell my paintings to offices for their conference rooms (This is still a big money maker for my abstract artwork). She saw my comparison system and was berating me for under pricing my artwork. She said this was a common formula for selling anything and that I should consider it for my artwork.
I took one of my paintings, which was a 3x5 foot oil on canvas and had taken me 32 hours to paint. The canvas cost me $40, the oil paint was about $15, and the art studio cost me around $140 worth of use. (I had been renting a studio with a monthly cost at this point in time)
Estimating the cost of your brushes and easels and more permanent items in your studio into your materials is tricky. If you choose this way of working you need to think about some materials as consumables and some as one off buys. At this point I averaged that these things cost me about $25 per painting, while making 4-6 paintings a month.
So far the 3x5 foot canvas cost me $220 to make. Now I had to figure out how much money I wanted to make per hour.
In Seattle the $15 min wage didn’t quite exist at the time I made this painting. I had though, oh my part time job teaching horse riding lessons paid me 12 an hour. Let’s do 11 for this. That’s $352 for 32 hours at 11 an hour. Plus material equals $572. Plus 20% = $686.40
When I look at that hourly rate I actually think that is too little for the kind of artwork I make now. But when I got that advice I wasn’t doing art full time and was only a few years out of art school. The work I was making was more towards beginner than intermediate. This number felt WILDLY overpriced for what I was making.
Now add the idea in that I wanted to have free shipping. Sending a 3x5 inch painting anywhere in the US is between $150-400. Let’s say it goes from Seattle to NYC, That would make the painting at least 1086.40. Not to mention the cost of packaging.
That sounds like a lot of money. I would have made about $350 in profit from it.
But I didn’t price my work that way. Because I struggled to get any art sold for more than $250.
I ended up selling that 3x5 painting for $275 and that was a win for where I was in my career.
Art is so subjective and your skills as an artist and what people are willing to pay you change what you can charge dramatically.
I never seriously used this system for charging artwork, as it wasn’t right for where i was with my skills. Plus to get the number down to what I was actually able to sell my art for I would have had to reduce my hourly wage down to about $2. Which is extremely disheartening to think of as a young artist. But it’s also the truth of how artist typically start out.
Random pick/ Intuition based pricing
For many years I did a system I learned in art school from a painting professor. This is the easiest way to price your work and is entirely intuition based.
Basically you look at your painting, let’s use an 18x24 standard size for example, and you say a number out loud. I might start at $200. Then you look at the work and think “does this feel right”
Then you go higher or lower based on what your gut is telling you.
$350
$800
$455 Yeah that feels right.
I'm not kidding, I used this method for 5 years. It’s wildly inconsistent and giving an estimate to say, a client who wants 4 paintings but isn’t sure about the size, is a nightmare.
Does the price feel right is a great way to be underpaid. It’s a great way to never raise your prices and loose more money year after year to the rising cost of rent and materials.
But i used it. I used it until my rent went from $340-$550 each month. I used it while I shaved off part time jobs and when I didnt get to the studio for months at a time. It works until it doesnt.
Ultimately this system feels unprofessional because it is. In hindsight it’s actually better to use the materials plus time plus 20% rule.
Sliding Scale, Price pr square inch (current)
Finally we get to the pricing that I currently use. This isn’t a system I learned from anyone in particular, but one I had to make out of necessity when I started selling prints on my website.
At the time I was selling prints on both Etsy and stephaniescott.art, and they both had differences in fees and taxes.
I made the worlds greatest spreadsheet for my prints. I went around to websites other artists had that I admired and looked at their pricing for prints, with the same materials. Then i looked at how the price changed based off the standard sizes they were selling. (8x10, 18x24, etc) Some had a clear pattern, others didn’t.
I landed on doing this. And I’m going to tell you all my secrets now so pay attention.
I made a category for each item I was selling on my website.
Matte Glicee prints
Tote bags
Canvas wrapped prints (which i no longer have on the site)
And the rest.
I noted the Base price from Printful (who is my third party printer), the shipping cost for the item to it’s farthest distance, the cut that printful takes with each sale, and made those into their own colums. Then on the x axcess I wrote down every variation there was for the item. Every size of print, every depth of canvas wrap, every combination.
Then i made another colum, that is the percentage of profit from retail base. Then I picked a price per square inch starting at 50 cents until the percentage of profit was over 20%. I landed at $2 per square inch.
Essentially what this does is cover the cost of shipping, the cut that printful takes, the cost of taxes, the cost of a discount if i ever give it 10% off (an occasional occurrence for me) and give me a good range of profit.
When I sell an 8x10 inch print, I made 37% profit. When I sell a 24x36 inch print, I made an 86% profit.
There are miscellaneous costs to making prints like the obvious one of getting professional photos of the prints, and minor ones like website subscription fees. Those get absorbed by the profit margin.
I liked this system for prints so much that I moved it into my paintings. It gives me the flexibility to have sales and not lose money, like I was doing before.
For paintings I have two main categories, Commissions and paintings I make on my own.
I start all my paintings at $150, as this is a reliable number that will cover the cost of my materials, excluding gold leaf if a client wants me to go in for that.
I then have a sliding scale for my price per square inch, because at a certain size the price for the painting seems like way too much.
Right now I price my paintings at
Price per inch
$2.35 - 8 in or smaller
$1.8- 12 in or smaller
$1.6 - 13 inches in any direction or bigger
Wit this system, a 10x10 standard painting will cost $180.00, an 18x24 will cost $691.00, and a big painting at 3x4 feet will cost $2,764.00
If i were to have it all at $2.35 per square inch the 3x4 ft painting would be $4,060. Which feels way WAY too high.
For commissions I raise the prices a little.
Price per inch
$2.35 - 8 in or smaller
$2- 12 in or smaller
$1.7 - 13 inches in any direction or bigger
It starts the same for work under 8 inches and starts at $150
10x10 - $200.00
18x24- $734.00
36x48- $2,937.00
I raise the prices for commissions because I’m working with someone else’s ideas.
Prices current to 6/2023
These prices include shipping, include taking the work to be photographed, include my years of experience, include my materials, include the bills to keep the lights on. Below is a screenshot of my price sheet as of June 2023. Feel free to use as a reference!
I love this system. I’ve used it for the last two years and I don’t think I’ll go back if something else changes.
As a rule I usually raise my prices In January of each year. With this system it’s really easy to change the the numbers for sizes in my artwork. I can raise the price by 10 cents and see big differences.
Sales
I run a 10% off sale at all times to my email subscribers. They can get anything off my website including paintings for a discount. I often give this discount to family and friends and i definitely give it to people who are repeat collectors.
I’ve never run a sale bigger than this, and I don’t do yearly sales. The thing about art is, once you put your art on sale you make it susceptible to being on sale. You give your collectors the impression that if they wait long enough, they might get it on sale. You don’t really want that for your art. It makes it feel like a product.
I want people to feel rewarded for buying my artwork and letting me into their emails. I want this discount to feel special and that the collector is in the ‘in crowd’
How do you price your paintings, prints, or other kinds of work? I’d love to hear about it.
Host and artist Stephanie Scott breaks down the practicality of the art career with topics including: sustainable creative practices, social media skills, and the mindsets that keep it all together. New episodes every Tuesday!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephaniescott.art/
Website: http://www.stephaniescott.art/brushwork
Music by @winepot https://www.instagram.com/thewinepot/
Podcast Cover photo by Maryna Blumqvist https://instagram.com/picturemaryna