Do you know how much your art is worth?
After watching this video you will be able to set a base price on your art and learn
how to increase the value of your art even if it stays the same quality.
Pricing is a challenge for artists of all skills, so when I asked for examples to create
this video we received over 1,000 pieces in less than 12 hours.
And I say “we” because I’m joined by a group of full-time artists and buyers who
took time to price and critique some of the entries.
Arenia is a professional animator.
At the time of this video she is at Titmouse, a studio that creates a lot of cartoons you’ve
heard of.
Crunchy is an independent character designer and illustrator who works in digital and traditional
art.
Marina specializes in game design and animation, with a background in both 2D and 3D art.
Din is representing the buyer’s perspective.
He’s experienced with the convention side of things and purchases quite a bit of art.
Kallenin is not familiar with pricing artwork at all.
He’s here to give you an outsider’s point of view.
And then there’s me: animator.
During the gallery you’ll see some times when our valuations were very different.
Otherwise, everything is listed by median price.
Let’s start with a quick review of what goes into a price.
Materials.
Traditional artists: canvas, paper, pencils, etc.
Digital: the item you draw with and software.
Fees.
Paypal transaction fee.
Currency conversion.
Market, gallery, and convention fees.
Other Costs.
Shipping, websites, travel, insurance, business registration, vacation time.
Taxes.
Sales tax + income tax.
Freelancers and businesses pay double income tax.
Quality and experience.
Hours of work.
At the professional level all of these need to be factored into your price.
Otherwise you are spending more than you make.
For judging purposes I hid hours of work.
The judges had to assume based on the piece itself how many hours it may have taken.
At the end of the art gallery I’ll discuss how to calculate and add hours of work to
your price.
This topic video is sponsored by Amino, where I am posting mini versions of my tutorials
using Amino’s stories format, which allows some really interesting possibilities for
artists and animators.
Stories have to be short, you can fast flip between parts by tapping your screen, and
you can add polls and quizzes in between parts.
I’m already thinking of a bunch of crazy stuff I could do with that, like an interactive
mini comic series.
So instead of posting this exact video there, I made a game where you can test your art
pricing skills.
If you use Amino, please follow my CrownePrince profile before you play.
If you don’t have Amino, there’s a special link in the description where you can download
the app.
So let me explain how to use this video to price your art.
The art gallery is organized into categories.
Take the art you want to sell, find the category it’s in, and study the examples for a price
estimate.
Then, use the tips throughout this video to choose a final price.
We judged all of the prices as if we were a normal customer paying for personal use
art.
Situations other than this can drastically affect price.
For instance, if I wanted to buy art to put on merchandise I’m selling, or if the buyer
is a company, or if you’re selling mass digital prints instead of originals.
We’re not going to get into those things today.
We are focusing on commissions for individuals.
A little note on the $5-10 range: these tend to be beginner pieces.
if you find yourself at a similar skill level you’re probably not ready to sell art yet,
but if you do, make sure to charge at least this much.
You know, when I was collecting the data I thought I might have to ignore Kal’s prices
for the final estimate, but it turns out he was spot on almost every time.
Raise the price for every character in your piece of art.
Raise the price for a background.
Complex backgrounds are worth more.
For character sheets, charge a design fee on top of base price if you do a lot of sketch
work and communication with the buyer to come up with a design from scratch.
Illustrations and traditional art are the most expensive categories.
As Din says, it can be trickier to sell these because many casual buyers hesitate to spend
over $150 on one piece of art.
But people can and will pay the fair price.
Don’t undercharge, wait for the right buyer instead.
Be willing to say no to those who try to negotiate you too far down on prices, or offer them
a different type of art for their lower price - like a fullbody with no background.
Now that you have an idea of prices, let’s talk about the hours of work it takes to make
your art.
First, if you don’t know, find out.
Keep track in a document how long it takes to create different commissions, alongside
how much you charged for them.
You’ll get a brutal assessment of how many dollars per hour you’re making.
Increase your price to reach the dollars per hour you need.
If you’re scared of sticker shocking current customers, raise the price in increments over
time.
That’s something you should be doing anyway because of inflation.
You may have to face the fact you are spending too many hours per piece.
turtlehat has this fantastic illustration with a very marketable, unique style, but
it took 18 hours to make.
Even if you lowballed at $20 an hour, that’s $360, not including operating costs.
For that kind of price we’re looking at a different market than what this video is
talking about.
If you find your hours are too high and pricing you way out of the market, you have three
options: charge the high price anyway, develop a style you can create faster, or keep practicing
until you’re faster.
With experience you will be able to create an illustration like this in 4-8 hours, possibly
less.
And of course for advanced artists some pieces do take 40 hours to make.
Charge accordingly.
The customer base for expensive art is smaller, but it is there, even in the realm of individual
buyers.
Walk an art gallery at a convention (not the marketplace, but the art gallery) and you’ll
see what I mean.
If you’d like to sell your art for more money, these are a few things that increase
the value of the art even if the quality is the same.
One of those is reliability.
If you always deliver on time and communicate well, people remember that.
Word goes around.
Having a good looking store, well organized prices, pleasant to look at, that can increase
the value of your art.
As an artist you’re often told to practice all different kinds of art, but, for business,
if you get known for a particular style or niche, you can charge higher prices for that.
Stuff like tattoo designs or skateboard designs are niche markets you can get well known within.
And that ties a little into name recognition, which is basically you can charge a higher
price because you’re famous.
Or well known in some way.
So you might be familiar with some famous artists who are able to charge $100 or more
for only a flat color fullbody because if they didn’t, they’d be so overflowed with
commissions they wouldn’t be able to do anything else.
So if demand for your art is high, raise your price.
One last tip: people generally don’t buy art because it’s cheap.
When you have a small audience, having a low price doesn’t mean you’ll get more customers.
It means the customers you do have are paying less than what they are willing to pay.
A big thank you to today’s panelists.
You can find their links in the description, along with a list of the artists in today’s
gallery.
Thank you Acru for fixing my first messy price scale.
Would you like another video like this?
Have a question about pricing?
Write it in the comments section!
Visit my YouTube channel for more tutorials, subscribe for new ones, and join my Patreon
to overthrow Nitsua, who’s terrorizing the kingdom with his dastardly ironfisted grip
on that top tier.
(hums Wii music)