How to Price your Paintings so your artwork will sell - in 7 easy steps
So, you’ve finished painting and your artwork is ready to be sold, but how do you value your work and set a fair price? I’m not selling a secret formula nor am I going to tell you some complex method. Here, I ask and answer the questions you need to know to be able to price your art to sell. Simple!
In a hurry? Here’s a summary for you:
Price up material costs (point 2)
Price up your promotion, advertising and website fees (point 3)
Price up your sellers transaction fees (point 4)
Price up your postage and packaging costs (point 5)
Price up the size of your painting (point 6)
Check your pricing (point 7)
1.Why do you want to sell your painting?
This may seem like an odd question but if you are just creating art as a hobby and hoping to sell the fruits of your labour your motivation will be very different to someone wanting to make a living from their sales. For the latter, you will want to be paid an hourly rate whereas a hobbyist is less concerned with the value of their time, after all, they are creating during their free time!
Personally, although I now sell my artwork on a regular basis I don’t charge by the hour. I find this unfair because I might find that I’m a very slow artist compared to others and I would therefore be charging unfairly high rates for my slowness - hardly fair on the customer! On the other hand, I might be very fast and then underselling my work! I’ll come back to how I charge later on. (if you can’t wait go straight to point 6!)
2.How much do your materials cost?
A really good habit to get into from the start is to keep records of everything you buy when you create artwork. I didn’t at first and it created all sorts of problems later on. I keep a folder for all of my receipts (which I number sequentially) and a log book (just a spreadsheet in Excel) to make a note of the following information:
Receipt Number
Date on receipt
Merchant or shop name
Details of the materials purchased
Net cost
Tax
Total cost
Trust me, later on you will be glad you did this!
Now, the first value you need to know is the total cost of the materials used to create your artwork. Obviously, you won’t use all the paint in a tube so you need to estimate how much you’ve used and divide the cost up accordingly. Don’t forget to include the following:
Paints
Varnish
Canvas
Primer
Mounts and frames (including fixings)
3. How much do your website, online shop and advertising/promotion cost?
This often gets overlooked but can be a considerable hidden cost that can eat into your profits. It’s all well and good creating art that people will buy but if you have to pay to let people know it exists then that cost also needs to be recovered.
Simply add up the total costs of all of the platforms and services you pay for that directly promote, advertise or support your artwork sales. Make a note of the total cost.
I don’t mind telling you that my total costs amount to around £120 per year and I started off aiming at selling, on average, two paintings a month. So, I simply divided the cost by 12 and again by 2 meaning I add £5 to all of my paintings to cover these costs.
4. How much do you get charged for sellers’ transaction fees?
This is another one that often gets forgotten but can be quite significant. Etsy, Ebay, Square and PayPal are all great but they all charge you for completing a transaction. Don’t forget that with Etsy you are paying both to list your item as well as completing a transaction. The sellers fees are clear to see so look up your costs for the value of the artwork you’re selling and add this to your running total of costs.
5.How much does it cost to package and post your artwork?
It’s a fact that everyone loves getting something for free. It’s also a fact that nothing is ever really free!
From my personal experience, I have found that advertising my artwork with free postage and packaging makes the artwork a lot more desirable and I have gained more sales since removing this as a separate charge. It also seems that Etsy will favour listings that offer free delivery.
I learned the hard way on this when I sold a painting last year and, after buying the packaging materials and paying for postage, I made a profit of just £3! Hardly worth the effort! I so wish someone had written this blog and sent it to me beforehand!
So, make a note of the cost of postage and packaging for each painting.
TOP TIP: Make friends with your local post office and ask them to assess your paintings for size and weight to provide an estimate for postage costs AND NEVER POST 1ST CLASS - seriously, it makes no difference at all to the speed of delivery (an insider tip from the Royal Mail!).
ANOTHER TIP: Buy bubble wrap, parcel paper and card wrap in bulk - it is much cheaper that way and will keep your costs down. I also re-use all of my outer cardboard packaging.
6. How to value your artwork - pricing your painting
Okay, this is really what you wanted to know, isn’t it? As promised at the start, I’m not about to direct you to some random website with a secret formula that you’ll have to pay for. Nor will I insist that you have to sign up to my exciting newsletter to learn my secrets - although I’d love it if you did sign up below and become a subscriber!
I have two charging rates that I use; one for artwork that I produce myself and another for commissioned work where I am working to someone else’s specification.
Pricing my own paintings:
Total cost of all materials and services included postage and packaging
Double this figure and note it. This may seem odd but this will easily cover you for other additional costs such as your tax (see note below) and other incidental costs that you will not have foreseen or realised. This is also a common practice amongst gift retailers, so I’ve been told.
Measure your painting in inches and multiply the height by the length.
Multiply your painting size by a factor.
Okay, this is the nebulous bit. If you had a factor of 1 you would be charging £1 per square inch. For a modest canvas of 16x20 inches, this would cost £320 before even adding your material costs. This might be a lot for a new artist to hope for.
I started off using a factor of 0.15 when I first started to sell and this seemed reasonable and I made sales. My factor has steadily increased as my sales have increased, which is inevitable and expected. Indeed, this is actually a good thing for those that bought my art when it was cheaper - their paintings have effectively increased in value!
Finally, simply add your painting value to your material costs and you have the total cost for your painting.
Pricing my commissions
I use the same calculus as above but I use a higher multiplication factor for charging commissions. The reason for this is that I put a lot more time and effort into these works and they often involve more time interacting with the client to develop the specification and I also produce prototypes before embarking on the final painting. I use the same factor for all commissions regardless of painting style or genre so every client is being treated equally and fairly.
Most of my commission clients are very private about the amount they have paid for their artwork so I will not be divulging my charging rate. I will say however, that I always agree the price up-front with the client and, on the basis that I’ve never had a painting declined, I guess I’m pricing them about right.
NOTE: Currently in the UK a hobbyist or “self-starters” can earn up to £1000 per annum (gross) before needed to register for, and pay, tax.
7. Are your prices reasonable and realistic?
The final thing I do with my painting prices is check them with similar works online. This is relatively easy to do with Etsy because you can search for paintings in your similar style, size and media. Then look at the sellers. It is relatively easy to work out who are new artists (or at least new to selling) and those who are professional or have been selling for a long time.
Rather helpfully, Etsy will tell you how long someone has been on the platform as a seller, will tell you how many products they have sold and also how many positive reviews they have had. You can then read their bio to see if they are in the same place as you, in terms of artistic journey.
Armed with this knowledge you can down-select those sellers that are most similar to you and look at how much they are charging for similar artwork. I review my pricing periodically and have found that this works well and my prices, even though they have been steadily increasing, are still in line with the prices of other artists’ work of similar quality, style and size.
Of course, the final litmus test for any pricing strategy is sales. If people are prepared to pay what you are asking for you’re probably doing it right (or maybe even undershooting a little). If you aren’t making any sales then your pricing may be off. In this case, the best thing to do is ask people - most will tell you if they think you are over-charging.
