Artist Myth #1: The Non Profit

I have to admit, in the early days of my artistic career, I chased so many “golden,” poorly-communicated collaborations that I nearly ran myself ragged. And, I would be lying if I told you that they no longer interest me. As an artist, I tend to be susceptible to signing up for things when they appeal to me on an emotional level. Now though, instead of walking blindly into them and hoping everything works out through a wing and prayer, I usually sleep on the idea, give myself some time and then, if I feel it will benefit me and is in line with my mission, I will be very clear up front about how much I expect to get paid, when I expect to be paid, and what the work will entail.

Through the years I’ve made the wait time more official by having an imaginary personal assistant on my side, (I’ll blog more about that in the coming months). It’s easier for me to tell someone, “I need to run it past my business partner and get back with you,” then it is for me to say, “Uh let me think about your proposition.”

Artist Myth #1: Money gets in the way. It’s better not to talk about it.

Introduction

To treat your career as a business, you’ll need to gain some distance on your work. It helps if you can begin to think of the fruit of your creative endeavors, not as artwork, but as a product. The easiest way to do this is to create an Artist Menu. Creating an Artist Menu will help you begin to view and organize your art from a marketing perspective.

The Artist Menu

Now that you’ve come up with prices for your services, paintings, shows, or merchandise it’s time to do something with them. I suggest you create an Artist Menu. Like a restaurant menu, the Artist Menu is a descriptive list of everything you offer including prices. Just like a patron at a restaurant likes to have information about possible items (which includes prices), this information can be invaluable for any number of reasons.

First, having this information can help you make income projections for the year and develop a budget. For instance, if my T-shirts sell for $25 each and I know that I sell roughly four t-shirts per show, I can calculate how many t-shirts I may sell by the end of the month or year based on how many shows I will be performing.

Secondly, it’s good to have an Artist Menu on hand when you meet with a potential venue. I not only bring one into every meeting, but I leave one behind for the person I’m meeting with. The menu adds a nice professional touch and helps you appear prepared and organized which can give you the upper hand when you’re competing with other artists. Venues like to work with professionals.

During my last meeting with an art center, having my menu on hand helped me sell three additional products which probably might not have happened had I not had the menu. By the time I left our meeting, the venue booked three shows, one workshop and decided to take the menu to a school and pitch an additional workshop for me.

Third, the artist menu puts all your information in one place, which is good to have when developing your website. Whether you build your site yourself or have someone else do it for you, you’ll want to have all the information in one place for easy reference.

And lastly, once you set a price, it will give you an idea of who will want to pay the set price, thus helping you define your ideal buyer.

Artist Speak on Pricing

"once, in the early days of my visual art career, i followed a lead to an outdoor art market in vancouver, bc. without doing much research, i organized a very expensive trip to the market and was surprised to find that other artists were selling their work for less than half of what i was charging. it never occurred to me to ask what kind of work was being sold there. to me, it seemed like a great reason to take a trip. amongst outdoor vendors selling leather jackets and crafts i was very much out of place. needless to say, a lot of people looked at my work that weekend, but didn’t buy."

Question of the Week on Money

Q: Dear Slash,

With the economy the way it is, do you think it’s ok for me to lower the prices on my artwork? I have bills to pay and my husband says I should do what I need to do to bring home the bacon.

Thanks,

Tara

A: I’ll have to disagree with your husband. I recommend that artists just starting out find out their appropriate range, price their work accordingly, and then stick to it. If you want to go high end and target a smaller segment of the population, you shouldn’t suddenly lower your prices because you have some bills to pay. Also, if you set your price with the going rate, you shouldn’t price one piece based on how attached you are to a particular piece. These fluctuations will ultimately hurt your business.

If you have a soft spot for some of your more financially challenged consumers and you truly feel that art should be available and affordable to everyone, there are ways around it, that won’t affect the price scheme that you’ve established.

Remember, most people who buy your work are looking at it as an investment. If they find out you sold a piece like the one they purchased for a much lower price, there’s a very good chance you’ll lose them as a patron. Here’s what I recommend:

• Offer “Special rates for a limited time”
• Have a “Scratch and Dent” sale
• Create some smaller items, products or services with extremely low prices
• Have a “I’m Cleaning out my Studio” sale
• Offer Package Deals
• Have a sliding scale
• Have artist-only fees

Artist Speak on Pricing

"When I perform, I occasionally let the locale dictate the price of my tickets. For instance, for certain community events where I don’t want the price to be prohibitive, say for families at a Children’s Hospital show or in very rural areas, it makes sense to sell tickets for $8. For all other venues my price range is $15 - $25, but I always ask the venue the going rate for their patrons. After all, they know their own customers best.

It helps if you know who you’re trying to reach with your artwork. If you sell paintings in the $25 - $125 range, it makes complete sense to do a show at a small café near a university. But if you sell paintings in the $2,000 - $3,000 range should you really expect to sell many at the same cafe?"

Artist Myth #3: Money is the Root of All Evil

Pricing Appropriately

The best way to find an appropriate price for your work is to compare your own work to others whose work is similar to yours. Once I began researching the market for my whimsical body of visual art, I learned immediately where my art fell within the price range. I was also surprised to discover that I was limited in how much I could ask others to pay, despite the size of a particular piece or where I was in my career. One of the artists who I was constantly compared to at the time was Brain Andreas. When I visited his website it was obvious that whimsical work just doesn’t have the same perceived value as more serious work. In reality, there is only so much someone will pay for a painting of a very cartoon-like dog sitting at a table in Starbucks drinking a cup of coffee. 

The easiest way to begin your search for an appropriate price range is on-line. No matter what your medium is, you’ll be able to get a sense of what others are charging for similar work. As you browse, begin to shape the formula for your prices not only on your artistic credentials, but also all of the following:

·        Size or length of item/production/service

·        Cost of item/production/service

·        Time involved to create item/production/service

·        Previous Sales History

·        The cost of similar item/production/service

·        The location of the venue where the item/production/service is sold

·        Fees involved in running your business, rent, utilities, etc. 

Artist Myth #3: Money is the Root of All Evil.

Actually this is one of the most misquoted biblical quotes of all time. Mistaken for the words of Jesus, it actually comes from Paul the Apostle in his letter to Timothy in which he said, “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

With this correction in place, I’m more inclined to believe that money isn’t the root of all evil, lack of money is the root of all evil. Think about all the desperate poor people out in the world doing illogical things - to make ends meet, to feel love, to feel connected to the world, to feed their family.

How many times have you sold a painting for far less than it was worth in order to pay a bill? How many times have you put yourself in a compromising position as an artist because you lacked the financial resources to do otherwise?

A lot of artists seem to lose themselves when they achieve success. In fact, it seems to be rather stereotypical these days that with money and success also come addictions and career crashes.  Though success is challenging for any number of reasons, this doesn’t make money evil, it just makes the artist’s quest that much more sacred.

I’ve heard it said that most people that win the lottery blow it all within 5-8 years. Why? Because the lottery doesn’t come with money management classes. 

If you were “discovered” today and didn’t have to be concerned with money, would it influence your artwork? Probably. Would you stop doing it? It’s a good question to ask. Would you find it a challenge to keep creating if your financial struggle suddenly disappeared? That’s something to look at too.

Artist Myth #9d: Artists are Flakes

Myth Nine: Artists are flakes
My first business plan consisted of one-sentence scribbled on a napkin from the bagel shop where I had just quit. With that napkin, I set off to make my living as a painter at the Portland Saturday market (the country’s largest outdoor art market).

My decision to “go for it” had come in the middle of the night during an anxiety-filled-sweat-soaked panic when I suddenly seemed to realize how shallow my life had become. For eight hours a day, my life consisted of little more than listening to a buzzer and watching a red light flash on and off instructing me to put trays of round bread in an oven and then take them back out. When I reached through the darkness for the napkin and a pen, my focus was simply to make enough money each month from my artwork to never have to work a 9 to 5 job again.

My straightforward mission would not fail me because I had left myself with little room to fail - The napkin said so. A year later, I found myself with more money, more freedom, and more happiness than I had ever had in my life.

Moral: Those things which constitute flakiness – not being on time, not being organized, not having a focus, not following a plan - never need to exist on such a black and white palette in order to work. Sometimes the way that will work best for you is a watered down version of what works for everyone else.