Pricing your art is different from making art; it's something you do with your art after it's made, when it's ready to leave your studio and get sold either by you personally or through a gallery, at an art fair, online, at open studios, through an agent or representative, wherever. Making art is about the individual personal creative process, experiences that come from within; pricing art for sale is about what's happening on the outside, in the real world where things are bought and sold for money, and where market forces dictate in large part how much those things are worth.
The better you understand how the art market works and where your art fits into the big picture of all the art by all the artists that's for sale at all the places where art is being sold, the better prepared you are to price and sell your art. Just like any other product, art is priced according to certain criteria-- art criteria-- and these criteria have more to do with what's going on in the marketplace than they do with you as an artist. They're about how people in the art world-- people like dealers, galleries, agents, publishers, auction houses, appraisers, buyers and collectors-- put dollar values on art.
You have an idea of what your art is worth, the market has an idea of what your art is worth, and somehow the two of you have to get together on a price structure that makes sense. Let's take a non-art example of how market forces dictate prices.
The owner is probably not going to sell that car. In order to sell a used Toyota Corolla with lots of miles on it, you have to price it according to certain criteria, used car criteria.
In the same way, in order to sell art, you have to price it according to art criteria. Learning what these art criteria are and understanding how they apply to you is essential to pricing your art successfully. Art prices are not pulled out of thin air. When you price your art, you must be able to show that your prices make sense, that they're fair and justified with respect to certain art criteria such as the depth of your resume, your previous sales history and the particulars of the market where you sell.
People who know something about art and who are interested in either buying, selling or representing your work are going to figure out one way or another, not necessarily by asking you, whether your art is worth what you're asking for it. In order to sell, you have to demonstrate and convince them that your prices are fair and reasonable. If you can't do this, you'll have a hard time selling any art at all.
So how do you start? If you don't have a consistent history of selling your art in a particular price range or in a particular market or your sales are erratic or you're making a change or you're just plain not sure how much to charge for whatever reason, a good first step is to use techniques similar to those that real estate agents use to price houses.
The selling price of a house that's just coming onto the market is based on what are called "comparables" or "comps" or prices that similar houses in the same neighborhood sell for-- real estate criteria. For example, let's take a nice big mansion and plop it down in the good part of Beverly Hills. It'll be worth maybe five, maybe ten, maybe forty million bucks.
Now, let's plop it onto the plains of North Dakota. Same mansion; different neighborhood; different criteria; different prices. Get it? You see, you can't price your art in a vacuum; you have to consider its "neighborhood," its context, the "art criteria" that connect it to the rest of the art world. You'll find that no matter what market you sell in, whether local, regional, national or international, that for the most part, every type of art by every type of artist has its own price structure, and that includes yours.
Now you may be thinking, "But my art is unique. You can't price art like that. No matter how unique your art is, it's also similar in certain ways to art by other artists-- just like one house is similar to another they both have certain numbers of rooms, square footage, and so on.
Here are some of the ways your art may be similar to other art-- it may be similar in size, shape, medium, weight, subject matter, colors, the time it takes you to make it, when it was made, how long you've been making that type of art, how many you've made, what type of art it is abstract, representational, conceptual, etc. Your job is to explore and get to know your market, keep an open mind, find that similar art, find the artists who make it, focus on those who have similar experience and qualifications to yours, and see what they charge for their art and why.
For those of you who have little or no sales experience, who haven't sold much art, a good starting point for you is to price your work based on time, labor, and cost of materials. Pay yourself a reasonable hourly wage, add the cost of materials and make that your asking price. Don't forget the comparables, though. If you use this formula and your art turns out to be more expensive than what other artists in your area charge for similar art, you may have to rethink your pricing, pay yourself a little less per hour perhaps.
So in summary, here are the basic art pricing fundamentals: Step 1: Define your market. Where do you sell your art? Do you sell locally, regionally, nationally or internationally? The art, artists and prices in your market are the ones you should pay the most attention to. Step 2: Define your type of art. What kind of art do you make?
What are its physical characteristics? In what ways is it similar to other art? How do you categorize it? If you paint abstracts, for example, what kind of abstracts, how would you describe them?
This is the type of art you generally want to focus on for comparison purposes. Step 3: Determine which artists make art similar to yours either by researching online or visiting galleries, open studios or other venues and seeing their work in person. Pay particular attention to those artists who also have career accomplishments and resumes similar to yours, who've been making art about as long as you have, showing about as long as you have, selling about as long as you have and so on.
Step 4: See how much these similar artists charge for their art. Their prices will be good initial estimates of the prices you should charge for your art.
More About Price Comparison Techniques At the same time you're zeroing in on art that's similar to yours, you also want to keep an eye on what's going on with other artists in your area, even if their art isn't that much like yours. If you focus too much attention on too narrow a slice of the art world and too little attention on the rest, or even worse, you dismiss the rest as irrelevant, your prices may make sense to you and a few people around you, but not to anybody else.
The more aware you are of the big picture, of what other artists make, how much they charge for it, who buys it for how much and why, the better prepared you are to price your art so that it has a chance to sell in a broad range of circumstances.
In case you're thinking this is all nonsense, I appraise art professionally. Sometimes, I have to justify or defend my appraisals to entities like the IRS, insurance companies, estate executors, and the legal system-- and sometimes those appraisals and justifications are subject to penalty of law.
My point is that people place dollar values on art all the time, that certain rules, methods and techniques exist for doing so. I'm showing you some of that here, techniques any artist can use to value their art. So let's get pricing. The following factors aren't in any particular order, and may or may not apply to you.
You decide what works best. To begin with, be objective about your art and your experience. While working with a gallery does provide a seal of approval for your art business, what matters more is that you are actually selling your artwork. Because each sold piece acts as its own stamp of approval, and you can use the funds to continue making art. To boost your art business, check out these nine worthwhile ways to cut galleries out of the equation and make a successful living:.
Without gallery representation, you have to find a way to sell directly to art buyers. And, studies show that more and more buyers are turning to social media. Want to know which ones are right for your art business? Check out these social media pro-con lists. Just like with social media, go where the buyers go—and that includes art fairs. Buyers of all kinds attend art fairs to see what catches their eye. Another way to attract potential buyers to your booth: spruce up your selling space.
Try out one of these affordable, DIY booth options you can build in a weekend. You are going to need a professional way to display your work, and Artwork Archive is just the place. Your Public Profile Page acts as a mini online gallery that you can instantly show to potential buyers.
Generate invoices with the Artwork Archive Paypal integration to be paid quickly and create other professional reports for your buyers. Artwork Archive gives you the tools you need to manage your own art business successfully. Sales are never automatic and car companies know this. Car companies spend billions of dollars each year to convince you that you need a car and that the car you need is the car they make.
They do their best to convince you that you need their car. One thing we can say for sure is that Apple products sell. Like gangbusters. Every time they launch a new product, people line up outside the door ready to trade their hard earned cash for the next new thing.
Clearly Apple products are good enough to sell, but are they good enough to sell themselves? They are innovative and well-designed and more often than not revolutionize whatever product category they are in. The iPhone changed the mobile phone industry forever and almost overnight decimated the landline phone. Before the iPhone everyone had a landline. Apple knew they still had more work to do when they launched the iPhone 1.
If you need proof of that just take a look at the iPhone 6. Sure it was good, but was it perfect? Not by a long shot. The success of the iPhone was built on the success of the iPod, and the iPod was launched on a foundation built by their computer sales, and their computer sales were built on this — the very first Apple product sold.
The first product that Apple went to market with was called the Apple 1 and was introduced in March It came standard with 4kB of RAM and……. No keyboard, no monitor, not even a casing!
The owner of the unit pictured above had to build his own case! And you know what? They sold out of them! Do you think that Apple product was the best it could be? Do you think it sold itself? But do they sell themselves? The answer is no. Apple still has to market their products to sell them. They had to be good at marketing to sell the first computer they made and they have to be good at it now to sell the next device they make.
They carefully plan each product launch and generate massive excitement with accidental leaks and misinformation. Think about it for a moment. Apple keeps it a secret! How the hell do you become the largest publicly traded company in the world by releasing a product that no one even knows for sure what it is? If Apple had waited until they invented the iPhone to start selling their products, the world would be a very different place and Apple would not be the company they are today. They released what they had and improved as they went.
Apple knows there is no such thing as good enough, there is only good for now and better next time. Are you saying we should advertise like Apple? Spend money on commercials to sell my art? Great read. Must get onto selling what I have now. Thanks for the push in the right direction. Look out for me on my Facebook page Jae Linen Craft. Lemons and oranges: sell a car or Iphone is a thing, sell a piece of paper or a.
Same again. Only means that you have a routine of drawing and is a motivated person what is essencial if you want to became a pro some day. They will like some stuffs just to motivate you. Parents and relatives too. Know this: nobody likes everything you make.
If someone likes every art you post on Facebook, is not real. A pro keeps doing this until his death. But only this isolated fact guarantees nothing about quality if you are looking to the wrong place.
Even being perfectionists, we protect ourselves from the truth that we are not kings of the universe. Hi Kaz, great comments, thank you very much. Super happy to have you here if for no other reason than to keep me on my toes. This fact alone gives them an audience they can seek out and nurture and sell to. I studied anatomy by dissecting the human cadaver and drawing what I found. I actually ended up providing anatomical illustrations for the second edition of the class workbook.
I know my anatomy. However, in my recent work I have chosen to deliberately distort the figure to subjugate the laws of nature to the demands of composition and beauty. Or for that matter the insane figures that grace the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The point of the article is to encourage artists to take the leap and get their work out there for sale. The point of the rest of this site is to help them acquire the skills to make a lasting professional career. Again, I truly appreciate your comment and the obvious knowledge you posses and would love to hear your thoughts on this reply. And, you can write off the value of the work when you do your taxes.
If you make a gift of your work for one of these occasions, always try to negotiate a ticket or two to the event, as these are usually a great opportunity to network. Your career will be in a different place in five, 10, or 15 years and the more information you have at your disposal about who has your works, the better.
In addition to creating your own online store, there are many other ways to sell your art online. From Artsy to Etsy, Paddle 8 to Deviant Art, there are a plethora of platforms that can help showcase your work to a wider community. Some sites require that your work is already shown through a gallery or fair like Artsy , while others like Paddle 8 are generally looking for works by artists with name recognition so they can more easily market it to their audiences. These days, it seems like almost every online retailer is dipping its toe into the art world, so as you do your research, you might also want to check out the options on non-traditional platforms like Ebay and Amazon.
White Columns has, arguably, the best-known registry. It should go without saying that you should never turn over an artwork without having received payment in full. Once a check has cleared, then you should get the piece wrapped and ready to go.
Of course, you can also request payment via Venmo, PayPal, or whatever works best for you. Before this happens, though, be sure to have all the following in place when closing a sale. In your invoice, you should also include a copyright section. A little online sleuthing can help you find some canned language that feels like the right amount of copyright protection for you and your artwork. This protects you and your artwork and allows the seller—in this case, you—to buy back the work if it ever gets to the point where the collector wants to sell.
Before you close out the sale, both parties should sign a copy of the invoice for your personal records. Overall, selling artwork is about developing good communication skills and being patient.
0コメント