I got this on this web http://www.artbusiness.com but at Koko'TEN we provide the same if your in Tanzania.
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 and experienced 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.
Suppose you see a 2001 used Toyota Corolla with 180,000 miles on it
advertised for sale and priced at $45,000. 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 selling it for. 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 art.
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 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. It'll be worth maybe $500,000, maybe $1,000,000 or maybe a
little more... max. Same mansion; different neighborhood; different
criteria. 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. "But my
art is unique. You can't price art like that." You may be thinking
this, and you're right, your art is unique, but so is every house in any
given neighborhood. 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 bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage,
roofs, 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.), who your
audience is, and so on. Your job is to explore 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 it 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. For example, if materials cost $50, you take 20 hours to
make the art, and you pay yourself $20 an hour to make it, then you
price the art at $450 ($20 X 20 hours + $50 cost of materials). 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 that you want to generally 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 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.
At the same time that you're zeroing in on specific similarities to
your art, 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 settings.
Pricing by comparison works in the great majority of cases, but
you can get even more accurate with your pricing to really make sure
that your prices make sense, AND that they can be justified to anyone
who asks. In case you're thinking this is all nonsense, I appraise art.
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 proven methods and techniques exist for doing so. I'm
showing you some of those techniques here, ones that you can use to
value your 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.
At every step along the way, in order for your prices to make sense, you
have to fairly, honestly and objectively evaluate how your art measures
up to other art that's out there. In order to make valid comparisons,
you need a good ballpark idea how the quality of your art and the extent
of your accomplishments stack up to those of other artists,
particularly the ones who you'll be comparing yourself to. In other
words, you can't pad your resume. If you've been making art for three
years, for example, don't compare yourself to artists who've been making
it for twenty. This is not necessarily easy and it's not necessarily
pleasant, but it's essential if you want to make it as an artist.
The key word here is "objective." Don't confuse your own
personal subjective opinion of your art, or what you think the art world
should be like, or how you think it should respond to your art, with
how things actually are. If you find yourself saying stuff like "People
don't understand my work" or "People don't appreciate me" or "I'm just
as good as Vincent Picasso even though he's famous and I'm not" or
"Sooner or later I'll find the perfect dealer or collector or whatever
and live happily ever after," you may be making some errors in judgment.
If this is happening, invite a few people to look at your art and tell
you what they think-- preferably people who know something about art,
not your best friends, not your biggest fans, not necessarily Simon
Cowell, but people who'll be direct. Encourage them to be truthful
because that's what you need. And don't get defensive; doing this will
help you. When you're objective about your art, you maximize your
chances of succeeding as an artist.
If it's any consolation, and I know you want your art to sell for
as much money as possible, your art is still the same art, it's still
just as good, you're still the same artist and you're still just as
good, no matter how you price it. Don't use dollar values to validate
yourself as an artist; use them to sell your art. Just because you
price something at $20,000 does not mean it's worth $20,000 or that you
stand a ghost of a chance of selling it. Nothing is worth anything
until it actually sells, which means the following-- that someone places
their money in the palm of your hand and accepts your art in exchange.
While we're on the topic of expensive art and objectivity, here's
a bit more about comparing yourself to other artists. If you think
you're as good as Damien Hirst, for example, or some other famous
artist, and I've met artists who do, and you may well be, that does not
mean you price like those artists. Your art may indeed by as good as
that of a well-known or even famous artist who sells for lots of money,
but many other factors go into pricing, and must also be considered AND
compare favorably between the two of you before your selling prices can
come anywhere close to theirs-- not the least of which are your resumes.
If they're dead and you're alive, if they've had a one-person show at
the Tate and you've had a one-person show at Biff's Soup & Sandwich,
if your qualifications and credentials don't approximate their
qualifications, if their resume is 10 books long and yours is half a
page, don't make comparisons between their prices and yours. If this
was allowed in the art market rulebook, then any artist could sell any
work of art for any amount of money at any time based solely on how they
believe their art compares to the art of any other artist, without
taking any additional factors into consideration. And we all know that
doesn't happen.
This next point I already made, but because it's so important I'm
going to make it again this time from a different angle. Don't think
that your art is so unique that you can price it without regard to
what's happening elsewhere in your art community or in the art world in
general. All art is unique. Every artist is unique. Uniqueness,
however, is not and never will be the sole criteria for pricing art.
But wait. Let's say, for the sake of argument that your art is unique
and that it's unlike any object, art or otherwise, ever created in any
manner since the beginning of time.
Now let's do a quick switch and consider that art from the
perspective of informed experienced dealers, curators, critics or
collectors. These people almost always compare art from artist to
artist and from gallery to gallery before they decide what to buy, sell,
collect, write about, exhibit or represent, no matter what kind of art
they're looking at or how unique it is. They rarely, if ever, find
themselves with only one choice. Can you imagine any knowledgeable art
person looking at an artist's art and saying things like, "I have never
seen anything like this! I must have it. I don't care how much it
costs. I don't care who you are. Give me everything. This is
unbelievable." Not going to happen. Even if your art is notably
unique, people who know art will find some way to compare it, categorize
it and relate it to other art by other artists in order to assess its
significance, its dollar value, and ultimately its institutional or
marketplace viability. You have to do the same.
Asking Prices vs Selling Prices
Once you're done with your evaluating and you're ready set your
prices by comparison, base your prices on what sells, not on what
doesn't. For example, suppose you've narrowed your comparables search
down to a handful of artists whose art is priced in the $2000-$20,000
range. If the only art that sells is in the $2000-$5000 range, and the
expensive pieces don't sell, this tells you that buyers don't want to
pay the more expensive prices-- they're too high. So $2000-$5000 is
probably where you want to price most of your art, and forget about
going much higher.
By the way, expensively priced originals are sometimes used to
sell more reasonably price originals or limited edition prints of
originals. Certain galleries or artists don't care whether they sell
their most expensive works, and may not even expect to; they're
perfectly happy to sell the more reasonably priced originals or the
prints. "This major original costs $50,000," they tell you. "But you
can also have this similar but smaller original for $5000 or the signed
limited edition print for only $800." Pricing certain originals high is
a marketing technique designed to make lower priced originals and
prints look more attractive to buyers, almost like they're bargains.
This coattail effect does work, so don't automatically assume that the
highest priced art always sells because oftentimes it doesn't.
Related to evaluating an artist's range of selling prices is the
fact that you want to price your art according to what other art SELLS
for, not what it's OFFERED for. In other words, if it's priced $8000,
but it sells for $5000, price closer to $5000 than $8000. Sometimes you
see galleries where retail value is one thing, but the price they're
really willing to sell it for is substantially lower. This is another
technique that is designed to make buyers feel like they're getting
bargains, and it may work for galleries, but it doesn't necessarily work
for artists. You don't want to get get known for substantially
lowering your prices because buyers will catch on, wait you out, and
refuse to buy until sale time rolls around. Negotiating a lower price
here and there on a case-by-case basis is fine, but avoid wheeler-dealer
sales techniques. Getting a reputation as a huckster may compromise
the integrity of your art.
Competitive Pricing
Now let's look at comparison-shopping from the BUYER'S standpoint.
Art is no different than any other product or service in that many
people who buy it tend to compare prices before they buy. I'll give you
a fairly common example. Suppose someone sets aside $5000 to buy one
piece of art. Let's say she goes to a bunch of galleries and sees a
bunch of art, and finds three paintings that she likes equally well, all
about the same size, same subject matter and quality, all by artists
who are equally qualified. If one of those pieces costs $4000, one
costs $4600, and one costs $5000, which one do you think she'll buy?
The moral of the story is to price on the low side of your
market, especially if you're less established, less experienced or
trying to gain a foothold in a new or more competitive realm. Doing
this increases your chances of making sales. You see, when someone buys
a piece of art from you, that's one less piece that they're going to
buy from other artists. You want to maximize the number of pieces that
people buy from you. That's how you make a living as an artist.
So no matter how you set your prices, be competitive. As
distasteful and capitalistic as this may sound, you're in competition
with other artists, not in the sense that you're having paint-offs or
sculpt-offs with the artists down the hall or across town, but rather
you're favorably positioning yourself for the people who see your art,
the prospective buyers, the ones who are doing the "judging," the ones
awarding the "purchase prizes"-- the money you need in order to survive
as an artist. This is why I keep hammering away about comparing. The
people who buy art do it; you should too.
Retail Prices vs Wholesale Prices
When you set your prices, always remember the difference between
gallery prices and artist prices, the difference between retail and
wholesale. Selling art directly out of your studio is wholesale;
selling it through a gallery is retail. If you're not a gallery or are
not represented by a gallery, if you don't have gallery overhead, if you
don't offer gallery-style amenities, don't use gallery retail to price
your art. When a gallery sells a piece of art, the artist usually gets
about half the selling price. So if a gallery sells art by other
artists that is comparable to yours for $2000, that means the artists
get about $1000, so you should price your art for sale directly from you
at about half the gallery retail-- at about what the artist gets-- more
in the range of $1000 than $2000.
If you already have or are about to get gallery representation,
all of this changes as the two of you will have to decide how to reprice
your work for a retail setting, whether you will be allowed to sell
direct from your studio, what the arrangements for direct sales will be
(if allowed), and so on. But for now, assuming you are an artist
without representation, keeping your prices in the realm of wholesale
increases your chances of making sales.
By the way, sometimes a gallery marks up more than twice what the
artist ends up getting. These tend to be high profile galleries with
high overhead. It's up to you how much you'll allow a gallery to take,
but the less experienced you are, the more seriously you should consider
any gallery's offer to show your art even though they may have high
mark-ups, assuming they agree to pay your prices, assuming they're
reputable, assuming they don't rope you into long term contracts. You
see, if a gallery only pays you $1000 for your art, but they sell it for
$4000, buyers perceive your art as being worth $4000, not $1000, and
that's good for you in the long run. In a sense, you're paying the
gallery to promote you, to increase your name recognition and the value
of your art in the eyes of the public, and a gallery that does this well
deserves the commissions they charge.
Suppose you hook up with a gallery like this. You don't have to
stick with a lopsided split forever-- I sure wouldn't-- but if it works
and they're selling your art, the two of you may want to keep the
relationship going. When it's time for you to have a new show,
renegotiate the commission. If you can't, you may have to leave, but if
you decide to leave, make sure you have other sales options to fall
back on. Don't cut your life support.
So to repeat, especially when you're starting out, don't demand
too much. In general, anytime anyone proposes to sell your art for more
than it's ever sold for before, even though they may want a lot in
return, assuming they're reputable, assuming a reasonable contract,
think about it. The extra money they may make in the short term will be
nothing compared to the extra money you stand to make in the long term
by having someone set new high selling prices for your art. Those new
high prices will be good for the rest of your life, and that's a long
time. The way the art world works, by the way, is that more famous you
get and the higher your prices become, the more control you
progressively gain over your artistic destiny. Some well known artists
actually dictate their commission arrangements to galleries that want to
show them, rather than the other way around.
Consistency in Art Pricing
Let's talk consistency. At all times, be consistent with your
pricing. Artists sometimes price arbitrarily based more on how they
feel about their art than on what the market for that art might dictate.
Remember our used Toyota example? No matter how much that car means
to the seller, whether he met his wife driving it, whether they
crisscrossed the country in it, whether he won the lottery in it, the
$45,000 asking price is not consistent with what similar used Toyota's
sell for. Sentimental value is non-transferable, and cannot be measured
in monetary terms. The car is not worth more than Kelly Bluebook, no
matter how special it is to the seller.
Here's how this applies to art. Supposing I'm consulting with an
artist, as I am on many occasions, and we're going over that artist's
selling prices. We're looking at a series of paintings, similar in
size, subject matter, and other particulars. They're all priced in the
$1000-$2000 range except one which they've priced at $10,000. So I ask,
"Why is this one so expensive?" I get answers like, "It means a lot to
me" or "I don't really want to sell it" or "I really love it" or "Just
look at it." "I am looking at it," I say. "That's why I'm asking."
This artist is equating dollar value with personal feelings like
how emotionally attached he is to that painting or what he went through
when he painted it. And that's just fine; he has every right to feel
strongly about that art, as do you about your art. All artists feel
this way, but you can't base selling prices on feelings. Feelings are
intangibles, and intangibles don't translate well into dollars and
cents. "Why is this painting $10,000?" the artist answers. "I'll tell
you why-- because not only do you get the painting, but you also get a
pound of love and twelve ounces of inspiration." See what I mean?
Doesn't work.
Pricing by how you feel looks arbitrary to outsiders; they see
isolated high or low prices, can't figure them out, and, most
importantly, they rarely ask why. They don't ask because they feel
insecure around art or artists, they don't want to insult you, they
don't want to look stupid, and so on. Even though your prices make
perfect sense to you on a personal level, they may make little or no
sense to others, and when that happens, they tend to shy away from your
art.
The good news is that solving emotional price problems is easy.
All you have to do with art that means the most to you, the stuff you
won't sell unless someone really pays you for it, is keep it. Don't
show it in public. If you really want to show it, put NFS on it-- not
for sale-- or "Collection of the Artist." Don't price it. Know that if
you do show it, though, certain people will come up to you and say
things like "Oh-- that's my favorite. It's the best one. It's not for
sale? I would have bought it." But guess what? If it were for sale,
they wouldn't have bought it. They just want to act important.
Regardless of who may be playing what kind of games, you may well have
lost a sale by making someone jealous of what they cannot have.
The art you love the most, love it in the privacy of your own
home. Any insights, enlightenments, experiences, transcendences,
whatever you go through when you make that art should be for you only,
or for your journal, or maybe for you and your innermost circle of
friends. Don't tease strangers by pricing it high and dangling it in
front of their faces; they confuse easily when you go all intangible on
them, and they won't understand. People are used to buying stuff with
simple price structures like food, clothes, laundry detergent and
personal electronics. They're uncomfortable enough around art already
without you having to lay inscrutable valuation explanations on them.
When selling time comes, be consistent, be straightforward and be able
to clearly and concisely explain any one selling price in terms of all
your others. Consistency in pricing is a cornerstone of successful
selling.
Inconsistent pricing works both ways, by the way. The opposite
of pricing some art really high is pricing other art really low, for
example, because you don't like it, it's the old stuff you don't make
anymore, you're tired of looking at, you've run out of space, it reminds
you of someone you don't want to be reminded of, you're cleansing your
environment, whatever. Experienced buyers who bargain hunt for art love
it when artists underprice art based on emotions rather than on
objective market factors. If you're planning on having an
art-I-don't-like-anymore sale, get an informed outside opinion first to
make sure you don't sell yourself short.
The Real World vs Friends & Family
Make sure you understand the difference between complete strangers
and friends & family. What you sell your art to friends or family
members for is not necessarily what your art is worth on the open
market, and not generally a good way to value your art. I can't tell
you how many times I'm working with an artist on prices, they say
something like, "I've sold three paintings for $2000 each and one for
$3500," and frankly, I don't see the value. So I ask, "Who'd you sell
them to?" And I get answers like "My best friend," "My mom and Dad,"
"Uncle Mike," and so on. These people love you; they want to see you
succeed as an artist and will do anything to help you achieve that goal
including paying whatever you ask for your art (assuming they can afford
it). They are not the cold cruel impersonal art world. Let them love
you, let them help you, let them be generous, but by all means, don't
use the prices they pay as indicators of what your art is worth on the
open market.
The Real World vs Charity Fundraisers
What your art might sell for at a charity fundraiser or benefit
auction does not necessarily have anything to do with the value of your
art on the open market. Oftentimes, people who buy or bid art at
fundraisers and benefits care more about supporting they organizations
involved than they do about what they are getting in exchange for their
donations. In other words, bidders or buyers may pay excessive prices
for art not because that is what the art is realistically worth, but
rather because they know their money is going to a good cause. The art
to them is secondary to the contribution they are making. If a piece of
your art sells for substantially more at a charity auction than it
might out of your studio, this is not necessarily a good reason to raise
all of your prices (read more about when to raise your selling prices
below).
Additional Price Pointers to Keep in Mind
* Some people who really like your art can't afford much. They may
be among your biggest fans, though, so give them a chance to buy
something-- a print, a drawing, whatever. Have affordable options.
Your art is your billboard, your business card. The more art you sell,
the more people you sell to, the more places show it, the more people
see it, the more you get your name out there, the better known you get,
the more good will you create, and in the end, all that good comes back
to you, much of it in the form of increased sales.
* If you're in a group show, submit art that's in the same price
range as the rest of the art in the show. You don't want to enter the
most expensive piece; you don't want people's first impression of your
art to be sticker shock. You want your art to stand out for art
reasons, not money reasons. If you're not sure what the show's price
range is, ask the organizers before you submit.
* For those of you with websites, don't show art that's already
sold. Showing sold art doesn't help you make sales. Some artists think
that if visitors see how much is selling, they'll want to join the
crowd and get one too, before it's too late, before they're all gone.
But exactly the opposite happens. People see a bunch of sold art and
think, "All the best ones are gone; nothing's left but the bones. I
don't want sloppy fifteenths." People don't want to see what they
missed, what they can't have. They want to see computer screens full of
studio-fresh art where they get first pick, and everybody else can
fight over the crumbs. Remove sold art and replace it with new art; if
you don't have new art, make some.
* If asked, be willing to talk about what you've sold, how much
you've sold, who you've sold it to, where you've sold it, or how much
you've sold it for. Better yet, have a section of your website titled
"Past Works" or "Select Past Works" where you show your best sold works
like ones that are in significant private, corporate or institutional
collections, ones that have won awards, ones that have been written
about, ones that have been illustrated on websites or publications, etc.
You can also include many of these accomplishments in your resume.
Providing information about your sales history serves to support your
asking prices and makes people feel better about buying your art.
Flaunt your past sales; don't ignore them.
Should People Be Able to See Your Prices?
No matter where you sell your art, make sure it's priced and that
people can see the prices. ALWAYS price your art. Don't make them ask.
Don't make them email. Don't make them call. Not pricing your art
and making people ask is a game. Here's how it's played... "You tell
me which one you like the most. Then I try to figure out how much you
like it and how badly you want it. Then I look at your shoes or your
email address or your online profile or your area code, and try to
figure out how much you can afford. Then I price it as high as I think I
possibly can." This turns people off; they know what you're doing;
they don't like to be played and they don't want to be saps.
Pricing your art also protects you from having to field
unanticipated questions, especially if you're not comfortable talking
about money. Suppose, for example, someone asks a price and you're not
sure what to charge, so you start fumbling around. "Oh... that one,"
you say. "You like that one? Hmmm. Let me see, I haven't thought
about selling that one before... I really like it though; it's one of
my favorites. I would have thought you'd like this one." And on and on
you go, looking bumbling and unprepared as the asker makes a beeline
for the door. Also, people don't like to ask prices and then find out
they can't afford the art. This is embarrassing. Let people see your
prices first, think them over, decide whether they like your $1500
sculpture $1500 worth, decide whether they can afford it, and when
they're ready, then they'll ask questions.
When to Raise Prices
Let's say you've been selling art for a while and are thinking about
raising your prices. Should you? Good times to raise prices are when
your art sells regularly, you've been selling consistently for at least
six months to a year, preferably longer, you have a show where at least
half of your art sells, or you're selling at least half of your art
within several months or so after you make it. If sales are good,
demand is high, your art is moving like that, raise prices 10-25%,
closer to the 10% if you are consistently selling well, closer to 25% if
you reach some sort of major career milestone like getting a
significant museum show or receiving a prestigious award.
Be able to justify all price increases with facts. Don't raise
prices arbitrarily based on how you feel, on what another artist does or
because you think your prices have been the same long enough. Always
have a good reason. And be careful not to alienate your collector base
by getting too expensive to fast; always remember those faithful fans
who've been buying your art and supporting you the longest. Don't price
them out of your market.
***
OK. We're done. You've got your art priced and you're ready to
sell. But can you answer the big question: "How come this one's
$2000?" When someone asks you about a price, do exactly what the
galleries do. Show that you've been regularly selling comparable art
for dollar amounts comparable to what you're charging for the art
they're asking about. Talk about sales you've made through dealers,
galleries, online or straight out of your studio. The more such sales
you can talk about, the better your chances of convincing that person
that $2000 is a fair price to pay for that art.
People want evidence; they want to feel confident about spending
however much money they're about to spend. They want to understand what
they're getting in exchange, and feel like they have some degree of
control over the situation. This is especially true for buyers on the
fence who don't know your work that well or who haven't bought a lot of
art and are just starting out. So support your prices with facts.
People care about how they spend their money-- they want to feel like
they're spending it wisely. So show them that they're doing the right
thing, that your art is worth what you're selling it for, that other
people buy it, and that its OK for them to buy it too.
***
Still not sure how to price your art? I do price consults for
artists all the time. Not only do I price your art, but I also tell you
how to explain your prices to potential buyers in language that they
can understand. Want to make an appointment? Call me at +255 786 072 399
or email Koko'TEN
