When to raise your prices: How do you know?

YOU’RE WORTH MORE

Pricing your artwork as a new artistpreneur is one of the first challenges to hit you. It seems like this one factor will determine if people buy your work at all or if you’ll fall flat on your face. Frankly, this isn’t true. 

In fact, the beginning price doesn’t matter that much at all. As long as you begin selling in general — THAT really matters. But your prices will inevitably change over time. As you grow, your prices will grow. 

If you’re pricing your art for the first time, make sure to read this pricing article here. 

After you’ve been selling for a while, the next question I see is, “When should I raise my prices?”

If you’re here asking this question, the answer is probably now. 

But you should raise them in different ways according to the different phases of your art journey.

Let’s get into the details:

PHASE ONE: selling as a beginner artist

Before we start there’s one thing that you need to accept. Although there are many formulas and concrete factors to consider when setting a base price, price is always subjective because everybody’s craft is different. Always.  

So when you’re starting out, set a base price and see how people react to it. 

Remember, the price itself doesn’t matter as much as the act of actually setting one. 

If you are still unsure but you’ve already read my base price post, look up what people are charging who do similar work and ballpark around that. A wild guess is better than never setting the price. Just set it. 

When I first started taking commissions, I charged $50 for a painting. Then I went up to $60. Then $75. Then $100. Now I’m at $225 minimum and every time I increased my price nobody flinched when I told them how much it was. I have more people than ever interested in getting a commission from me. That’s how you know it’s too low! Honestly I should charge more now that I think about it 😂 

Basically you have to feel it out. Trial and error is the name of the game. Listen to your gut. 

• If you feel like you did more work than you got paid for, you’re charging too little. 

• If you resent your client when they want to make a change in the piece because any extra work tips the scale from “a good trade” to “I’m giving more than I’m getting,” you’re charging too little.

• If no one ever flinches at your prices, you’re charging too little. 

• If the demand for your work is still increasing steadily, you’re charging too little.

Set a price that sounds okay to you and feel it out from there. Chances are you’ll start too low and work your way up. 

Once people start ghosting you after you tell them the price, you feel like you’re earning a solid amount for the work you put in, and the demand for your work is steady but not growing, you’re in a good price range. Stay here.

NOTE: Do not under any circumstances lower your prices. The psychology behind pricing says if it costs more, it must be worth more. When you raise your price, previous customers feel like they got a great deal on work that actually is worth more than they paid. When you decrease your prices, previous customers feel like they paid more for something that isn’t worth a lot after all. Never make your past customers feel this way. You will not make more money if your prices are lower. You will not make more sales if your prices are lower. When people see a higher price tag, they perceive it as higher worth. The more I raise my prices, the more sales I make. My art skills and my following haven’t grown that much. If you want further reading on this, check out this psychology article here.

Phase two: price to reach your goals

Once you’ve felt out a price that you’re confident in, hit your plateau, and then entered a second phase of growth, you’re ready to level up. 

Truly, you could follow your gut and use the trial and error method for the rest of your life. Raise prices, hit a plateau in demand, after some time see raise in demand, feel like you’re providing more value than you’re receiving –> raise prices, hit plateau in demand, after some time see raise in demand, feel like you’re providing more value than you’re receiving –> raise prices, and repeat forever. Some people do this. It works. 

But this isn’t a very calculated way of operating when you have specific goals in mind. 

You’ll see your prices and your earnings go up over time, sure, but what if you want to make a set amount each month? What if you have a specific revenue goal for this year?

When you start thinking in terms of financial goals for your art business, you’re ready for phase two.

By that I mean you need to start pricing in order to meet your goals. 

In calculating this, you might decide that the comfortable price you’ve settled on still fits. Or, you might realize that in order to reach your financial goals, the amount of work you’d have to do would be unsustainable. 

For example, if you need to make $2,000 a month to quit your day job and be a full time artist, that would be your financial goal. But if you’re selling custom commissions for $20 each, you’d have to make 100 of these custom pieces every single month to reach that goal. 

That is so much work! That’s about 3.5 paintings per day. It’s unsustainable.

That’s when you know your price STILL needs to be raised again. 

What would be more attainable is a price of $100 per custom painting. Then you’d have to complete 20 of them per month to reach your financial goal of $2,000 per month. That’s less than one painting per day.

If that still seems overwhelming, raise your prices again.

Follow this second process until it’s doable for you. 

If you want to read deeper into this topic, I have a whole blog post dedicated to it here. 

Phase three: high demand artist

The third phase of pricing your artwork comes when you have a big name and you’re in big demand. 

Imagine you’ve got thousands of followers on social media, a huge email list, and your artwork sells out within one day every time you update your shop. 

Dreamy right?

When you reach that point in your career, you can ditch the idea of being practical. 

You can charge way more than you need to pay your bills. You can set goals based on pure desire rather than need. The demand for your art is so high that even if you charge $2,000 per painting, you’ll still sell just as many as you did before. 

A concern for phase three that artists run into is, “What about people who can’t afford this? Will my sales go down if I raise my prices too much?”

You will exclude people who are not willing to pay that price, but there will be enough customers willing to pay it that you won’t see a painful drop in sales. Simply said, you will be serving a different audience. You will be marketing to people who can afford it, and not marketing to people who can’t.

Use the plateau-seeking method that you used in phase one. When you reach the ceiling of what people are willing to pay and you see a plateau or drop, you’ve reached your appropriate price. 

Don’t be afraid of turning people away! If you see a 10% drop in sales but you’re charging 50% more per piece, that’s still an increase in income. 

This is the final and most advanced phase of your art selling career as a fine artist. 

Diversity in price

If you sell multiple types of art — originals, prints, your art on merchandise like mugs, pins, patches, etc. — it’s a good idea to have multiple price points.

So while you may raise the price of commissions and originals to become high ticket items, you can still offer smaller trinkets for a lower price. This offers accessibility for your customers. And then you don’t have to ever feel bad about your $2,000 original paintings! If you can’t afford it, oh well, buy a $70 print or a $10 sticker pack.

But as you grow, don’t be afraid to raise the prices of your smaller offers in the same way as your bigger ones. 

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