Pricing artwork for success part 1: How not to lose money as an artist

When considering how to price your work, you must start with a basic thought in mind: you must not be loosing money in this proposition. If creating your piece of art costs more than what you sell it for, you're art career won't last very long!

Let's pretend we're businesspeople and evaluate this with numbers only. There are two types of expenses: variable expenses and fixed expenses.

Variable expenses are different depending on the amount of artwork you create. For example, if you're a painter, each painting you create will require more paint, another canvas and more time.

Fixed expenses don't depend on the quantity of art you produce. This generally includes rent, phone, internet, advertisement costs, insurance, professional fees (your accountant and/or lawyer), taxes, etc... Fixed expenses roughly correspond to your regular cost of living.

Now, the most important equation: your expenses (variable and fixed) must not exceed your revenues (achieved by selling your artwork)!!

Now, let's put this into perspective with an example.

Let's say that you're able to sell 40 pieces of art in a year and that your yearly fixed expenses are 10 000$. If the cost of creating each artwork sets you back by about 50$ (50$ x 40 pieces = 2000$), your yearly expenses equal 12 000$. Now, divide your total yearly expenses by the number of sales per year (12 000$ / 40 sales = 300$/sale). The quotient of this equation is the MINIMUM PRICE you should sell each item. If you price your art lower than 300$, you will be LOOSING MONEY.

Not losing money is of extreme importance, and recognizing this is the first step towards effectively pricing your art. Join me in a few days for part two of "pricing artwork for success"!