So I get asked this question a lot, "How much should I sell my artwork for? and When should I raise my prices?" Now, this is a pretty tricky little topic, but I think for beginners this article might really help you out and get you through the first couple of years when trying to sell your artwork and for how much.

These are 12 things to consider about the prices of your art and when and how to raise prices. 

MAKE A QUALITY ART PRODUCT 

UNDERSTAND THE COST TO MAKE YOUR ART

HOW MUCH EXPOSURE YOU HAVE CREATED

HOW MANY ART PIECES YOU MAKE AND SHOW

YOUR AUDIENCE DETERMINES YOUR PRICES

RAISE YOUR PRICES EVERY YEAR

YOU CAN ALWAYS RAISE PRICES BUT NEVER LOWER PRICES

OK TO BE A STARVING ARTIST... FOR A LITTLE BIT

SHOW YOUR COLLECTORS WHY YOUR PRICES ARE GOING UP

PRICE YOUR ART TO BE ABLE TO BE IN AN ART GALLERY

ITS NOT YOUR MONEY 

ADDING PRINTS AND REPRODUCTIONS

MAKE A QUALITY ART PRODUCT

You can't charge a ton of money for a piece if it's not really finished that well or, it's just kind of in that beginner stage or poor craftsmanship. So, you know, you need to have your name on there, title of the piece written on the back, ready to hang a finished quality, something that you just something that you ran out of time on. This is going to play a big role in what the buyer is going to see and how they're going to value your artwork.

UNDERSTAND THE COST TO MAKE YOUR ART

The cost to make your art is important. If it costs you $100 to make it, you don't want to sell for $80. You also might not be able to sell it for $3,000. So you kind of have to figure out where a little happy medium is. If you spend $50 in paint/materials, selling at $100 is great. Yeah, you might get not that much money for your time, but we're talking about those early steps of getting out there, start establishing prices and figuring out what it costs you to make it and what the collector will pay for it.

For me, my work is really expensive to make and it's very time consuming. So in the beginning when I was charging not very much, maybe $80 for an 18 x 24" original, I was losing money or barely breaking even. But I was able to sell a lot of pieces, gain experience from practicing sales, and getting exposure. I was also getting feedback from collectors, I was able to keep the art business moving forward, even though I was making very little profit. But the knowledge I gained from that time and confidence i got was priceless.

(R) Retail: cost of art online, in galleries, at art markets and festivals

(W) Wholesale: The amount of money the gallery will give you for your art.

(M) Manufacturing Material Cost: How much it costs to make art, cost of materials, studio space, etc

(L) Labor in Hours Making art: How many hours to paint your artwork

(CL) Cost of Labor: Up to you but be real and start as low as possible.

(S) Selling Labor: How much time do you spend on selling your work, art festivals, galleries, online, instagram 

(P) How Much you would like to profit. Its ok to not profit for a little bit while you grow your business. Don't quite your day job

R = W x 2

W = (2M +10%) + (L x CL) + S + P

Use this equation or one like it (I'm not a math expert) to figure out your prices. You will see your retail goes up real quick the more you cost per hour gets as well as when you start having to wholesale to the art galleries.

HOW MUCH EXPOSURE YOU HAVE CREATED

Another thing to consider is how much exposure you've received. If you've gotten articles written about you, if you've done a lot of art shows, if you're showing your artwork in galleries, art festivals, coffee shops etc, all these things help contribute to how much you can sell your art for.

It always goes up in slow steps. So don't think that you got one article you can triple your prices, you really want to inch your way up. How much exposure you have does play in to how much you can charge for your art, but at the end of the day, if you're not selling, your art is bad and or your prices are too high. Slow and steady wins the race. Exposure is great but also be careful. If someone asks you to do a project for free, but the "Exposure will be great for you" I would say that is often not the case. Exposure for you is only good if it can result in sales, traffic to your website, or get new collectors emails.

HOW MANY ART PIECES YOU MAKE AND SHOW

How many pieces do you make?  if you only make one or two pieces a year because you're kind of just a hobbyist, you're going to have a hard time raising your prices, or getting the prices you think you deserve. People want to collect from an artist who is committed to the art game.

The more art pieces you make, the more you're going to be able to show, get feedback on them, sell them. All of this is going to help you raise your prices. If you only make ten pieces total, it can be really hard to charge a lot for them. Make more art. Get more experience. Show more art. Slowly raise your prices.

If you're making hundreds and hundreds of art pieces, it becomes easier to charge higher prices for them. And a lot of it just comes from confidence of having experience, being written up in magazines, doing art shows, selling art, and doing all the stuff that helps give you the confidence to raise your prices. You get more the more you make. The more you make the better you get at it. The better you get at it the more you can charge, the more you charge the more you can spend on making better art. It fuels itself.

YOUR AUDIENCE DETERMINES YOUR PRICES

It's not just how much your artwork cost to make, it's if collectors are buying it. Your audience and the people collecting your work determine how much your artwork is worth. You may think it's worth $10,000 and your mom does too, but that's not what people are willing to spend on your art, at least not yet. The collectors determine how much your art is. If you start selling your artwork at a price point where no one's buying it, then your cost is probably too high. The audience really gives you the feedback of what you're able to charge. That is why you need to get out there and start showing and selling your work. Start low, start humble. Slowly raise your prices when you can t keep your art in stock. Selling out means that you're doing something right. Don't raise your prices the second you sell out. Be busy, stay busy, get over whelmed with too much demand. Be back ordered for 6 months to a year. Then raise your prices 10% then stay busy for 6 months then raise them again 10%. Slow and steady if you are busy.

RAISE YOUR PRICES EVERY YEAR

I generally raise my prices every year. Every six months we kind of increment our way up to higher prices. Now you don't have to double or triple your artwork price every time. Doing small increments along the way can help you get confidence and raising prices your prices at a steady rate like 5% or 10% is a safe number that wont discourage collectors. Try 10$, try 25$ a little bit can make all the difference. Now you can buy that expensive brush, or buy 2 canvases for everyone you sell. Every penny helps move the needle forward.

YOU CAN ALWAYS RAISE PRICES BUT NEVER LOWER PRICES

You always can raise your prices, but it's really difficult to lower your prices. Spend a year not making much money on your artwork, but able to grow from there, versus trying to come in hot and being like, "This piece is $700", but no one buys it. Then next time you're at a show, you're like, "This is $600" and then no one buys it or the people that are looking at your work and having interest but your prices going down. This is not a good sign in my opinion.

I think you should start low, sell your artwork, get it moving, get practice selling it, get practice with the collector, closing the sale, doing all that and then you can raise your prices. People often overestimate what they can do in a year and they underestimate what they can do in ten years. So don't think of this as a short term thing. If you want to be a professional artist, you're going to be doing this the rest of your life.

OK TO BE A STARVING ARTIST... FOR A LITTLE BIT

It's okay to spend a year in that sort of starving artist situation, but remember, that's just a phase of being an artist, and it's usually in the very beginning when you're figuring out how much to sell your artwork and you might not be making very much money or just breaking even. But you can grow from there. The more artwork you do, the more shows you do, the better you're going to get at it. Don't let the starving artist persona define you. People want to see their favorite up and coming artist succeed. They will be happy for your success because it will confirm what they believed. That you are a talented artist and they made the right choice in rooting for you.

SHOW YOUR COLLECTORS WHY YOUR PRICES ARE GOING UP

It's going to be hard for collectors to see the value in new higher prices if you don't improve. Always be improving your work, getting better at it, making a better product for collectors and the art galleries. If your art is improving, getting better, quality is going up, more exposure, better art booths, your confidence is growing, you are becoming a better all around artist, the collectors who have been watching you will take notice and see the value in your art prices increasing.

PRICE YOUR ART TO BE ABLE TO BE IN AN ART GALLERY

Art galleries generally take around 50% of the total sale. So if you get into a gallery, you will want to raise your prices up. And you also don't want to compete with the gallery, you don't want to go to an art festival or art market and sell your prices at wholesale, or less than the art gallery is selling them for. If you do, you're going to burn that bridge real quick with the art gallery and probably not get into any other art galleries in that area, why? because all the art galleries talk to each other. It's a small art community, so play it safe. be cool, the only person who is going to get short changed is you.

You'll have to sell all you artwork at. the same retail price as the art gallery, no matter where your art is, even online. Getting into galleries is a good way to help you raise your prices and help you gain more confidence when you're selling at those higher prices.

Now, you won't be making the retail price of  $300 out of the gallery, you'll be making $150 from the gallery. So it' might be a little pay cut from what you're used to making at the art markets, but you're in a good position to grow and start raising your prices. Now more people will see your art and getting more collectors interested in your work.

ITS NOT YOUR MONEY 

When you are pricing your artwork, it's important to price your artwork in a way that it doesn't deter people from buying it. Remember that it's your not your money that's being spent. Often when you're starting out as an artist, you're often pretty broke. So $500 can seem like a fortune to you. But for someone else who owns their home and has a steady income and they want it, art makes them happy and they love looking at it on the wall. $500 isn't that much. Remember it's not your money that is being spent on your artwork. Collectors have a different relationship with money than you do. 

A good way to price artwork is going to Art Fair and look around and see what other artists are charging. If you're going to go do an art festival, it's great to have seen that art festival before. Find out the prices of other people. Try to figure out where you sit in as a new artist. It's it's really good to have an understanding of what people are selling around you. It's going to give you a really good baseline of where you should start out. It's okay to go to your first show and sell your artwork for rock bottom prices and sell out your work. You're going to be so stoked.

Yeah, you might just break even, but when you're a beginning artist it is a huge win. It is going to give you confidence and motivation to keep going and to get better at it and work on it and make more artwork.

ADDING PRINTS AND REPRODUCTIONS

Adding reproductions to your your line of artwork is a great way to increase how much money you're making. Start raising your prices is when you have another product to come in behind it and help support those lower, more affordable price points. If you start selling matted prints, you can raise you original prices. If you add aluminum or canvas giclee, you can raise your originals. It’s great to have artwork in all the price points for collectors to become fans no matter what their budget is.

FINAL THOUGHTS

If you dedicate yourself and work your butt off and get out there and start showing your work, start low, work your way up, you'll be as surprised of what you can achieve. And it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen in a year. It takes a couple of years to get to a point where you're starting to be confident in your shows. But you have to start somewhere. Start now, find out the closest and cheapest art craft fair, art market you can get into and sign up. You’d be amazed how quickly you can go from your first art fair to making $50,000 a year selling your artwork. 

If you dedicate yourself and have a lot of discipline in how you approach your shows, your artwork and just learning about the business in general, you're going to find that it goes really quick. Be prepared for that. It's super fun and I wish you the most of luck.