How to Price Your Work

If you want to put this support guide into practice, we’ve developed a workbook. Check it out here!

Rates of Pay

Scotland - https://www.artistsunion.scot/pay_rates_2020
England - https://www.artistsunionengland.org.uk/rates-of-pay/
Canada - https://carfac-raav.ca/2021-en/

Part Three: Advice from Industry Professionals

We’ve spoken to some industry professionals to give you some insight into their methods of pricing their work. We wanted to make sure that we covered as many different types of work as possible, so have gathered tips and advice from:

KIRSTY CAMERON - DIRECTOR OF SECOND HOME STUDIO + CAFE, ABERDEEN
Kirsty explains how to price workshops, and gives some advice for setting up as a Community Interest Company or Not-for-Profit.

SWEETPEA GALLERY - COMMERCIAL GALLERY FOR EMERGING CREATIVES VICTORIA, BC
Sophia and Catriona of Sweetpea Gallery share some tips for visual artists when pricing work.

ROHANNE THOMSON - ILLUSTRATOR AND ANIMATOR, EDINBURGH
Rohanne gives us some insight into her experience as a freelance designer, and shares some amazing advice for pricing work.

I’m Kirsty Cameron and I’m a Director and Arts Facilitator at Second Home Studio + Cafe. Second Home is a not for profit organisation focusing on making art more accessible. We provide classes, studio + exhibition space at affordable rates to ensure everyone has the opportunity to explore their creativity. In my roles at Second Home, I oversee the running of the business day to day, interact with customers both in person at our cafe and over social media, organise exhibitions, facilitate workshops, curate our retail space, and generally just try to help people on their creative journey in anyway I can. I really feel like it’s what I was put on this planet for.

Kirsty Cameron - Second Home Studio + Cafe

Workshop Facilitation

When pricing a workshop, I’d keep in mind the following:

1 - Who are your customers? More to the point, how much disposable income do they have and how do you market to them? It might sound brash but that’s just business. You’re trying to make money and there are people you need to make money from. What can they realistically afford, and how are you going to get them to buy it? At Second Home, we’re committed to making art more accessible, and that includes those on low incomes. We tend to keep this in mind when pricing our workshops, but that might not work for you. If you’d like to make this an option, you might consider a sliding scale pricing programme, or taking a deposit instead of an upfront fee.

2 - What materials will this need? Materials can be a huge upfront cost when starting workshops. When pricing your classes it’s important to take into consideration if they can be reused, if it’s been taken away by the customer, or if it’s unusable after that one class.

3 - How many people can you fit into a class? This is a tricky one. If this workshop doesn’t need a huge amount of tuition / only takes minimal materials / or if you can generally fit a lot of people in at one time, you might be tempted to reduce ticket prices. While this makes sense on the face of it, you need to be pretty confident that those reduced ticket prices will pull in more numbers. Otherwise, you’ll be left running a workshop with only a few participants, and you’ll be getting next to nothing for it.

4 - People pay for what they see value in. This kind of ties all the points together and is the most important part. People will pay for the things that they see value in. Even if you are just starting out, don’t undervalue yourself, your expertise, and your time. Price accordingly, then add tax.

Setting Up as a Community Interest Company or Not-for-Profit

When setting up a not for profit, it’s really important to have a very clear mission of who you are trying to help, and how you are going to help. You don’t need to start with a polished business plan, but you do need to have a whole load of passion.

When setting up, check which structure best fits your organisation. The government website lists the different types and the requirements here (https://www.gov.uk/set-up-a-social-enterprise).

Setting up a not for profit is much more complicated than setting up a regular limited company. Limited companies have almost no regulation whatsoever whereas not for profit organisations have to adhere to strict guidelines and have extra end of year reporting duties. I find it incredibly ironic companies that are set up with a view to help people are saddled with all of these extra duties and regulations, where as limited companies can do pretty much whatever they want as long as they’re paying tax - and if you’re big enough sometimes not even then (looking at you Vodafone, Google, ABB Finance, Baker Hughes). I digress.

All of the official stuff can look really scary. There is language in there that you probably won’t be used to but persevere! You’ll get the hang of it after a while, I promise. And if you need any help, my DM’s are open. :)

Sweetpea is a digital and (sometimes) irl space that supports early career artists. We do this through pop-up gallery installations, online content, and the sale of artwork & merch. Our goal is to engage with young artists to strengthen their practice and with buyers who may not see themselves reflected in the traditional art market.

We started Sweetpea because we loved being around creativity, but hated the stuffy air that surrounded so much of the commercial art world. Going into an art gallery shouldn't feel like a pop quiz in being cool, it should be about finding a work of art to fall in love with! It is all a process, so we are throwing ideas out there, trying new things, and learning more all the time. Because of our model, we don't have to make rent every month and can instead focus on doing what's best for our artists, the work, and our customers

Sophia Seward and Catriona Reid - Sweetpea Gallery

Some Things to Consider When Pricing Work:
Pricing is really a process of matching the right work with the right customer. Typical standards like hierarchy of medium, doubling the manufacturing costs, and price per square inch are great guidelines, but each work is so unique!

The best approach to take when starting to price work is to think about who is buying it and the role the work is going to play in their collection. Will they enjoy it once like a nice bottle of wine? Is it going to be a beautiful addition to what they already own? Or is this going to be a statement & investment piece that is going to root everything else? Getting a sense of where an individual work fits in is a great first start (and your practice should include a ton of options in all the categories!). As much as a work has value and sentiment to you, it is the value for the customer that matters for pricing.

When it comes to unconventional works, you should consider setup costs in the price. This could mean hanging infrastructure, custom frames, digital screens, and plinths, as well as shipping and packaging costs. If a $500 drawing is going to cost $600 to custom frame, could you work on a slightly smaller scale to fit in a conventional frame, work on canvas, or mount on MDF board? There are a whole bunch of levers you can use to maximise the value you get out of the deal if you can think through the life cycle of the work.

Works that maybe are not the easiest commercially can also play a big role in expanding your practice and growing your audience. Price =/= value!

What would you like to tell early career artists just starting out?
There are a lot of resources out there to help guide you. We love the book Art/Work and it continues to help us. Know who you are working for! Being an artist is a 24/7 gig, and while you might not be making money, figuring out who should be laying eyes on your work is super important.

Rohanne Thomson - Illustrator and Animator

Could you describe your experience as a freelance designer?
The majority of my paid Illustration work has been editorial; magazine covers, spot illustrations. My first ever commission was for the Scouts Magazine, creating spot illustrations for a feature on April fools day pranks. This was completely up my street and I was so excited but, in hindsight, no way prepared. I didn't take enough time on the colour palette and I formatted the files completely wrong. I also signed over all rights to the work as I had no knowledge on contracts. However, the first is always going to be the most difficult right? Since then I've learnt a lot more about licensing and displaying my work. Having worked with Beer52 on an illustrated cover for their subscription mag, Icon design for a mental health organisation and more recently animated and illustrated GIFs for a vegan food brand.

How would you recommend that emerging creatives go about pricing their design work?
Pricing your work will never be easy, I get confused about how best to price my work almost every time. A lot of creatives work by a day rate, which can work for some but not others. This method would mean calculating how long a project takes to complete and multiplying that by your day rate. This is a great place to start and is useful as a baseline to refer back to for similar work. Of course as your experience grows your rate will increase. Pricing should also be relevant to the licence you're giving the client. If the work can be used worldwide, is exclusive to them and is perpetual, your fee should be a lot higher. If you can always ask for the clients budget first, and when they hopefully give you a fair fee this will help in pricing similar work.

What are some things you wish you’d learned at art school that you had to learn yourself when setting up as a freelancer?
I really wish that I'd made more of an effort to learn about licensing, contracts and promotion at art school. Coaching and mentorships programmes such as the one run by Lisa Hassel at Inkygoodness has been so helpful and I can't recommend it more. Putting together a quality portfolio of work that reflects you and being able to promote that through email and physical mailers is something I am still working on.

Do you have a specific process you go through when working with brands on commissions?
When I receive a commission I like to keep or move this to email, it's a lot easier for keeping track of than a social media message. I start by asking the client to detail the work they are after and if they have a budget in mind for the project. Once this has all been agreed I write up an acceptance of commission agreement (using a template from the AOI). This is crucial in protecting your rights. If the client pulls out and you will be paid for the work completed. When it comes to the work I keep to a rough template of stages: rough drafts/concept of 2 or more designs, developed chosen concept, final artwork and files. Confirming the next steps with the client after each stage. As soon as the final artwork is supplied I send over an invoice for the work completed.

Do you have any other tips?
Self initiated work is so so important. If you want to be creating a certain type of work or be creating for a specific brand, create yourself the dream brief. I used to hear this but never really put it into practice. Another thing I've found super useful is putting projects in front of organisations like the AOI or The Dots, these companies love to share work from creatives so show them what you've been up to.

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