Pricing your art is different from making art; it’s something you are doing along with your art after it’s made when it’s able to leave your studio. Making art is about the individual personal creative process, experiences that come from within; pricing art available is about what’s happening on the skin, within the globe where things are bought and sold for money, and where economic process dictate in large part what quantity those things are worth.
The better you understand how the art market works and where your art fits into the massive picture of all the art by all the artists that are available in the slightest degree the places where art is being sold, the higher prepared you’re to cost and sell your art. Similar to the other product, art is priced in keeping with certain criteria– art criteria– and these criteria have more to try and do with what is going on on within the marketplace than they are doing with you as an artist. They’re about how people within the art world– people like dealers, galleries, agents, publishers, auction houses, appraisers, buyers, and collectors– put dollar values on art. you have got an inspiration of what your art is worth, the market has a thought of what your art is worth, and somehow the 2 of you’ve got to urge together on a price structure that produces sense.
Let’s take a non-art example of how economic processes dictate prices. On that advertised purchasable and priced at $45,000, suppose you see a model 2001 used Toyota Corolla with 180,000 miles. The owner is perhaps not visiting to sell that car after checking it in VIN checking sites. So as to sell a second-hand Toyota Corolla with plenty of miles thereon, you have got to cost it in keeping with certain criteria, used car criteria. In the same way, so as to sell art, you’ve got to cost it consistent with art criteria. Learning what these art criteria are and understanding how they apply to you is important to pricing your art successfully.
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Art prices aren’t pulled out of nothingness. After you price your art, you want to be able to show that your prices be, that they are fair and justified with relevancy certain art criteria like the depth of your resume, your previous sales history, and therefore the particulars of the market where you sell. Those who know something about art and who have an interest in either buying, selling, or representing your work are visiting work out a method or another, not necessarily by asking you, whether your art is worth what you’re requesting. So as to sell, you have got to demonstrate and convince them that your prices are fair and reasonable. If you cannot try this, you will have a tough time selling any art to the slightest degree.
So how does one start? If you do not have a regular history of selling your art during a particular price range or during a particular market or your sales are erratic or you are making a change or you’re just plain undecided what proportion to charge for whatever reason, an honest opening is to use techniques kind of like those who land agents use to cost houses. The asking price of a house that’s just coming onto the market is predicated on what is called “comparables” or “comps” or prices that similar houses within the same neighborhood sell for– property criteria.
For example, let’s take a pleasant big mansion and plop it down within the strength of Beverly Hills. It’ll be worth millions. Now, let’s plop it onto the plains of the American state. It’ll be worth maybe $500,000, maybe $1,000,000, or even a touch more… max. Same mansion; different neighborhood; different criteria; different prices. Get it?
You see, you cannot price your art during a vacuum; you have got to contemplate its “neighborhood,” its context, the “art criteria” that connect it to the remainder of the art world. You will find that regardless of what market you sell in, whether local, regional, national or international, for the foremost part, every variety of art by every sort of artist has its own price structure, which includes yours. Now you’ll be thinking, “But my art is exclusive. You cannot price art like that.” Yes, it’s unique, but so is every house in any given neighborhood. Regardless of how unique your art is, it is also similar in certain ways to art by other artists– rather like one home is like another.