We’ve talked about setting our prices by the hour and calculating them via size and base fees, and now it’s time to tie it all together and talk about project based pricing. 

What I mean by this is the way we present our prices to our customers; the easiest and most straightforward way is to just add all of our expenses, base fees and pricing model of choice and end up with some rounded-up number, but a bit of tweaking can make our prices a lot more understandable and transparent to our customers.

I always divide my prices into two main segments; the value of the materials I use and the value I bring to the table (so the price of me making a painting, rather than somebody else).

To just touch upon material costs; it’s a great idea to talk about the materials we use and to give a little bit of context about how much they actually cost. 

A lot of people do not know that high-quality acrylics cost a fortune and if we can explain to them that the paint we use is future proof (most brands say that they won’t crack or fade in direct sunlight for at least 100 years if not more) and the canvas of a high quality — just quickly describing the value that such materials have, compared to the cheap ones, can not only make the higher material costs understandable to anyone who may not be aware of their prices, but also provide a lot of peace of mind to anyone, that has never bought art before.  

From my personal experience, people do value the information that the work they are buying is made with quality materials, because while they are of course buying you and your story, that story has to be embedded into something (the art work) and it’s preferable that it ages better than a open milk bottle on a sunny summer day in Florida.

As for the artist fee; this is where I use my price calculations and base fees to determine its amount. The important thing to keep in mind here is that nobody cares how you structure your prices — many times telling people the mechanics of your pricing actually devalues your work!

We all know that prices need to originate from some place (preferably a consistent one), but I feel that as soon as somebody tells me they charge 500€ for their work, based solely on some simple size calculation, it subconsciously devalues the experience of their art for me.

What I mean by this is that while all the pricing structures we use focus solely on the product and thus make determining the price much easier for us (especially when we need to give a quote on-site), the end goal of our art isn’t just to make a product. 

The main factor is actually the experience that it provides for our customers. And if we do not address this experience as part of our evaluation to the customer, they will deem it unimportant — when in reality, it’s the most important one!

How I tackle this issue is by roughly calculating my price via one of the two models I use (mostly I do price-by-size, as most my commissions are abstract paintings) and add my base fee and a varying markup percentage — this only changes if I am doing work for a friend (because I know they won’t sell the work and as such I don’t fear such price inconsistencies to affect my market price as a whole), but thinking about sales to friends and family and having a “discount” preprepared for such occasions just helps me stay consistent with my pricing.

So, after I have my price, I tell them the whole number as my fee; I don’t discuss the ways I calculate it, I do not defend it or try to persuade them in any way if the price quote I gave is too high. We might sometimes haggle a bit, but usually I only do so when making more than one work.

I feel a large order deserves a bit of flexibility but I would never give discounts to my customers (especially on commissions) — I might let some older work go for less then what I want if it turns out there’s no demand for it though. Giving discounts only teaches people to ask for one every time we make business and nobody wants to be known as the discount artist …