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Pricing Your Artwork

Pricing Your Artwork

Pricing your artwork is an important component of your strategy for marketing art. Pricing should not be an over-complicated procedure in the primary market. (Secondary market sales can be much more complicated.) If you are new to pricing your artwork, there is a formula to determine where to start.

Pricing Your Artwork Formula

  1. Start with the total costs of the materials used. Use the relative cost of only the materials used.
  2. Track the amount of time you actually spent creating the artwork.
  3. Multiply the number of hours by the rate you would charge per hour as a professional art consultant.
  4. Add the cost of materials and time.
  5. Multiply the result by a multiple based on your overall experience. This is typically between 2 (just starting out) and 10 (top of your field).

Price of Original Artwork = [Materials + (Time)(Hourly Rate)] (Experience)

For example, [$100 materials + (20 hours of work)($25/hr)] (5 years of experience adds a multiplier of 3) = $1800.

Pricing reproductions

  • Highest quality (limited edition giclee prints or high-end reproductions) = 50% of original price
  • Mid-grade quality (limited edition reproductions) = 30% of original price
  • Low quality (one-off prints or open-ended reproductions) = 10% of original price

 

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