When you are planning on pursuing art in a professional way, you will find yourself wondering a lot of things. In order to be a professional artist, you will likely need to rely on sales to pursue this passion.
While some artists have the luxury of having their expenses covered, this isn’t often the case. In order to make sales, plenty of artists rely on prints to provide products to consumers.
Prints make it easy for artists to get their art designs out to a lot of people through an online platform. Pricing prints is a valuable skill that much is considered when you sell art professionally.
Prints are printed versions of certain designs that are becoming incredibly popular over time. This new approach to selling art makes it easy to make a lot of money off of one single design.
It is particularly effective if you are using appropriate means to market your content. The more prints that you sell, the more money you will make. You can then sell the originals for an even higher price. While there is no right or wrong way to price prints, some methods are simply more effective. Understanding how to remain reasonable without going bankrupt is the real key.
Other featured topics to help you with your art business:
- How Do I Copyright My Artwork?
- How Do I Get My Art Noticed in 2020?
- The Secret You’re Missing To Sell Art Online
- 30 Tips On How To Sell on Etsy and Skyrocket Your Artwork Sales
- Do You Need A Business License To Sell Your Art?
- 10 Best Websites For Artists That Will Skyrocket Your Exposure
- How Do I Make A Pamphlet Template For My Business?
Price By Effort
–As far as pricing prints go, this is generally a pretty ineffective way to price. However, there are instances where it is appropriate to do so. Pricing by effort means that you will focus on choosing your prices based on how long you took to do it.
While there are some instances where this might be beneficial depending on the type of art, it can be problematic for you. If you take a large amount of effort to do something, chances are that you won’t make your money back.
Pricing by effort is something that can be effective for originals. Since original versions of work are a direct example of the effort that went into them, it can be helpful to price that way.
This is often factored into the price. To some extent, this can be carried over into pricing prints because it is still indicative of that effort. However, generally works that take a lot of time are much less valuable as prints. You should expect to make the majority of your money on the original.
In the event that you are offering prints of a complex work, you can boost your prices a little bit. People are likely to pay a bit more if it is impressive. However, if you go well beyond traditional pricing, you should not expect many sales.
When you price by effort, focus on considering the prints to be a boost on the money made off the original. You will want to operate with a traditional print baseline and go from there.
Price By Material
–When pricing prints, this is a remarkably effective way to price. Considering the magic of prints relies on the fact that it is printed, you can expect to enjoy a variety of material options. Considering the fact that some materials cost more than others, you will factor this into your pricing.
Depending on what materials you use, your price can be expected to increase or decrease accordingly. This will help you to determine how you can make money without losing any to the material cost.
The materials that you use will be dependent on you. If you are running your prints through an online service like RedBubble, you can expect them to provide you with options.
They will hand you a collection of breakdowns to show how much the various materials cost. It will be up to you to factor this into your pricing on each different type of product. These sites generally offer their suggestions on how to do this, so that can be beneficial to helping you find what will work best.
If you are managing and shipping your own prints, you will already know how much the materials cost. Since you will be paying these costs upfront out of pocket, you can easily determine the cost of the item itself.
After you know how much it costs you to make the item, you can easily add how much you want to make to the item. This will help you to determine exactly how much you make on each transaction. It also allows you more versatility when it comes to choosing materials. Generally, companies that offer these prints to you will allow for discounts on bulk orders.
Price By Vendor Charges
–Vendor charges are incredibly important to consider when you are planning out your prices. A good vendor will provide you with a simplistic breakdown that covers all associated costs.
This will help you to learn how much it costs you to make the product. Using this approach, you can easily map how much you need to make on each item to turn a profit. The last thing that you want is to end up losing money because of vendor costs.
The reason that many people offer similar product prices on sites like Displate is because they are all operating from the same cost. When you know how much money you will be spending to have your product made, you can easily determine what else you need.
This provides you with a helpful way to make reasonable prices that turn a profit every single time. The beauty of this is that you can well and truly decide how much money you want to make. However, this can get people into trouble.
Some people get the idea that they would like the buyer to cover all associated costs and pay a high price on top of it. Many artists find themselves thinking that the prices they see for sales online are what they will make.
Unfortunately, that is not realistic. The truth is that you have to factor in a variety of other costs that will be deducted from the price. This is common across various artistic fields, but when you make enough sales, it will work out.
Price By Rarity
–Pricing prints by rarity is a tactic that has been used for art sales for ages now. The fact of the matter is that pricing rare items automatically allows you to charge more. Since the item is rare, business rules indicate that it is worth more value.
When you are not going to be selling a lot of a product, you can generally charge more. There are a few considerations that go into pricing appropriately in this manner.
First of all, the rarity needs to be driven by the fact that people actually want the product. If you are selling a print that no one actually wants to buy, it is not rare. Rarity has to imply that there is a known value to the item that causes it to be rare.
It is not simply the fact that you only made a few copies. The print should be special in some capacity. This will make it so that more people want it. When more people want an item that is not going to be available for long, this is where you make money. Pricing prints in this fashion can actually help you to make a lot of money on certain designs.
In order to have a rare item, you will want to make sure that you have the audience for it. Find a way to generate excitement around the item and go from there.
This will help you to justify the steeper price because it is something that is desired by many. For established artists, a great way to go about this is to create limited edition items. Since you are actively stating that only a few will be made, you can justify charging more because it is special.
Price By Industry Standards
–The most effective way to price is generally to go by industry standards. Pricing prints is hard because you can literally charge anything. However, people will not necessarily pay anything that you ask. More importantly, since art is a competitive field, you have to remain competitive.
If you overcharge, you will likely lose sales to the competition. If you undercharge, you will cut your overall profits. Doing either is an effective way to lose money, so you want to avoid it at all costs.
Finding an appropriate baseline is a great way to effectively cater to consumers. Consumers have a lot of information at their hands. They know when a person is overcharging, and it generally upsets them. Even if they pay the price, you run the risk of bad reviews.
It is a common complaint online that something is nice but not necessarily worth the money. This can hinder future sales and means that you will lose a lot of money for this simple mistake.
Following industry standards is great for a few reasons. First of all, it helps you to compete with the other guy. This makes it easier for people to choose you over them. Second, it helps you to find appropriate pricing easily. This saves you time trying to guess on what is appropriate.
Third, it is effective for helping you manage price variations. If you have a solid baseline, you can easily calculate sales or upcharges.
Price By Sales
–When it comes to pricing, sales are absolutely crucial. You will absolutely want to be the person who offers sales. It is a good way to get new customers and to win over customers who have been on the fence. Sales are a tactic that has been used to push consumers to take action for ages.
It is a great way to ensure that people feel more confident in buying something. When a person sees something is on sale, they automatically want to jump on it.
Sales can be used in a few different ways. You can offer sales on products that are smaller or more simple than some of your other products. You can run promotional sales on items that are appropriate for a special sort of event or holiday.
Another option for you is that you can even have sales to move out old merchandise as you introduce new items to your lineup. All of these are effective ways to move a lot of merchandise very quickly, which is why companies do it.
It is easy to feel like you are losing money with sales, but it generally doesn’t work out that way. Even a slight sale can drastically improve the number of people interested in your products. Sales are often shared online and drive a sudden boost in purchases.
This allows you to make a lump sum of money instead of waiting for your products to stagnate. Consumers tend to see this as a courtesy, which makes them like your brand more as well.
Conclusion
Pricing prints isn’t something that comes with a specific guidebook. No one is going to come down and tell you that you can or can’t charge a specific price. This is problematic because your pricing is crucial when it comes to making people buy products.
There are a lot of considerations to make when pricing an item. However, it is easy to see how much it can improve your presence and consumer base. Learning how to effectively price can help your business to boom.
Putting plenty of thought into your pricing is a great way to help your art to sell, so think long and hard about it. If you notice something isn’t moving, consider changing the price and see what happens.
What type of prints are you trying to sell?