STOP UNDERCHARGING! how to raise your art fees + talk about money with confidence (an advice rant)
NO MORE EXPOSURE BASED COMPENSATION
Friends, comrades, strangers on the Internet... I come to you with one very serious plea. Stop under charging for your art! Just stop it! Your work is worth so much more. It really is.
Hi, my name is Sophia Mitropoulos, I am an artist and this is an advice rant where I give collective advice but also I'm ranting at the same time. If you clicked on this article you probably are interested in pricing your work or raising your rates or figuring out how to talk to clients about money, and I've been there, and I still kind of am there, but I wanted to make this because I think there is a huge problem in the art industry where people are severely under valuing their work.
Now you may be thinking, 'Sophia, why are you so invested in how much other people are charging?'
Well, I am firm believer that cheap work cheapens everybody else's work. So when you do a project at half the rate of everybody else, yes, you are getting a client that maybe you wouldn't have gotten otherwise, but whenever an individual lowers their price, it makes it harder for the entire industry to get appropriately compensated.
This is such a difficult thing when you're a creator and you're making stuff on commission, or you're making stuff for your friends, especially because a lot of people maybe don't understand the full value of art, or the full value of your creative work, but I'm here to say that you have to advocate for yourself. There is nobody else that's gonna do it for you, and if you are too afraid to talk about money with your clients then that's gonna lead you to making less money.
You deserve to be making more money!
So you might be thinking 'why should I raise my rates?' Well, there's a number of reasons, for one, you deserve to be making more money. Straight up. You're probably under charging for your tasks.
Sometimes there's kind of the culture in the creative world where 'oh I won't tell you my prices because you might undercut me and you know, people will go to you for your work because it's cheaper' but honestly, the thing is, I have talked to so many creatives who are not making the amount of money that they deserve for their level of skill. Now of course, you should be pricing your work based on your skill set. If you are brand new to creative work and you have never done commissions before, you shouldn't be charging $500 an illustration. That being said you definitely shouldn't be charging $15 for commissions. I know there's a lot of Instagram accounts like this where you can get like a character animation for $15, and if you're building your portfolio that is an awesome way to start, but if you've been doing this for a while, your intellectual content is worth more than that.
Make your rates known
I'm going to talk about my prices because it would be hypocritical if I made this video talking about price transparency and didn't talk about my own prices. Most of my commission work is illustration work. So, for the sake of an illustration, my first couple commissions were for my friends and I think I charged them at most $80 for those pieces. At that point, I had just gotten out of college and I hadn't worked with clients before so I didn't have my systems in place and my portfolio wasn't particularly impressive so I was helping out my friend with their work, and they were helping me out by giving me a small fee. Very quickly you learn that your prices will rise. If you are one of those people that's charging $80 right now, don't worry because down the line you'll be able to charge $150. These days I don't take on any work that is less than $500. If you want rights to my work, it starts at $500. If you want me to make something for you, it starts at $500. That is my rate and I think it's really important to make your rate known. Now, of course there's exceptions. I could be working on smaller projects that take me less than an hour, and of course I would adjust prices based on that, but for the most part, if somebody's looking to use it in a commercial fashion especially, $500 is still pretty cheap.
Radical Price Transparency
A really cool resource that I recently found is called litebox.info and it is promoting price transparency in commercial illustration. So if you go onto that website and you click on the rate finder, you can see how much people were getting paid for certain projects. For example, how much does Apple pay their illustrators? How much does The Nib pay their cartoonists? And you can see, in spaces like that especially, companies like Apple are paying thousands of dollars for creative work that they're only going to use for a short campaign. Now of course Apple is a huge brand and their campaigns are run globally so it's essential to make sure that your pricing based on where things are going, but as a general rule of thumb you should probably charge more. So when it comes to talking about money with clients, this is where so many people get stuck. Myself included. This was a huge hurdle for me to get over and to figure out how to get through. Now this isn't to say everybody doesn't value art, but people will argue to the death to say that your work isn't worth the value, and that exposure is just enough payment. And that's not true and not acceptable. It's not okay, okay? There's even a Twitter account dedicated to this called "For Exposure" and it is such a cringe-worthy experience.
Set your prices based on your skillset
There's a couple ways that you can become more comfortable with talking about money with your clients. First, you have to stop seeing money as this intangible thing that you have to grovel for. You have to go into this conversation knowing that you are worth the money that you are asking for. Your prices have been set based on your skill set, based on how long it's gonna take you, based on the use of everything, and being confident about your prices is so important.
Money is an exchange for your energy
So there's a couple of tips that I have learned. One is that you have to reframe money to be an exchange for your energy. If you're spending energy on this, if you have spent energy on this, it is worth money. Point Blank. Period, the end. It's also really important to never assume your clients budget or finances.
Never assume your client’s budget or finances
Just because it's more expensive than you think they think it's gonna be, does not mean that you don't deserve to be paid, and that they don't have the money. The biggest disservice you can do to yourself is assuming that your client doesn't have the funds to pay you your full price, that's not the case. If it really is something like that, maybe you can negotiate with a client.
Rights to your work also costs money
Another really important thing about talking about money is that rights to your work is also worth money. Even if it's something that you've made in the past and somebody is asking to use for their company, that still costs money. Just because you've made it and just because it exists already doesn't mean that they have free rein to it. Especially if somebody's asking to use it for a logo for example, that's something that represents a brand. Logos can cost thousands of dollars and if somebody's gonna say "Hey, I know you made this thing already, but can we use it? we'll shout you out." That's unacceptable behavior. This happens over and over and over again. My platform is so public that I believe that artists should be paid for their work, and yet I consistently, consistently get approached to do work for really cheap prices or for nothing, and honestly I usually say no.
Full price or FREE (no discounts ever)
Even if it's a piece you're making for your portfolio, just because you're working on it for your portfolio does not mean that you don't deserve to be compensated. Now I have a policy, it's called full price or free and that means I either do something for the absolute full price or I will do it for free. And in the instance that I do it for free, I will write up an invoice that says how much it would have cost and at the bottom it will be discounted for the entire price and it will say $0 that way even when I am doing free work for somebody, they know how much my rates are, and when other people approach them they're in the know about how much it actually costs to hire me.
Now some exceptions to this rule that I have heard are for example in the mural industry, a lot of people will do their first mural for free, I have heard that. And I think that kind of thing makes sense because a mural especially is the kind of thing that you can't necessarily make on your own without that first client. You could always do a mock-up and put that on your website, but but it definitely helps to have that first initial client to get you in the door. That being said, if that is the approach that you're doing, again you would invoice those people a null invoice. And usually you would work out a system with them where you say "Hey, I want to do this for free for you for my portfolio, but I would really appreciate if people approached you about it, you don't tell them that I did it for free." That way they can promote your business and you can promote theirs. It's a it's a win-win for everybody I think.
It’s business. Don’t take it personally.
Another really important tip is that it's business. Don't take it personally and don't deliver it personally, and don't let them bully you. This is such a hard thing to grasp for artists and creators because I think so many of us have so much impostor syndrome and we feel like it's not worth it, but so many artists and creators have been working for years before they start their commissions, for years. And and I think ultimately it is worth remembering that part of what you're being paid for is all the years it took you to learn how to do it, all the money you spent on classes, all the money you spent on software, all the time you continue to spend practicing in your free time.
Now, when I get projects where people tell me that their budget is really low, I make a couple of considerations. First of all, how long is this project gonna take me and is it reasonable within my hourly wage? And the second thing that I take into consideration is: for this amount of money, would I rather just not do it? Now this one's especially easy if somebody's asking you to do something for free. If for $0 you could just not do it, would you not do it? It's like usually yeah. Now again, this advice is for professional creators, but that being said even college students are professional creators. If you're a majoring in art, if you have an art background, you're in there baby, you should be charging more and I mean that. I fucking mean it. Raise your rates! Come on! Just get what you're worth!
Contracts, Contracts, Contracts. Get it in writing baby!
If you're doing work for clients, everything should be in paperwork. For me, when I get a client, I have an intake packet that I send to them and that includes how long it's going to take for me to get them drafts, it includes my pricing policy which tells them how I'm pricing things, so for example, is it hourly? Is it a package fee? Is it a package fee until a certain hour, and then it goes to hourly beyond that? How many revisions do they get? Things like that. As far as contracts go, I get the bulk of my contracts from this beautiful book. Business and Legal Forms for Illustrators: The dullest book you will ever see that will save you so much money. For example, sometimes you work on a project and the client ghosts you. Guess what? If it's written into the contract, they still owe you money and you can still get it even if you didn't have to finish the job. That's happened to me a couple times, that's awesome. Write it into your contract make them sign it, don't start working until they've paid you the first 50% and they've signed their paperwork. It's amazing. The law, sometimes, chef's kiss! Amazing. Most of the time? Justice is uhh... needs a little work.
Hourly or Package Pricing?
Another thing to consider when pricing your work is hourly pricing or package pricing. You have to think about it this way, hourly pricing is limiting. So even though if you go into a project and you know that this project is only gonna take you 3 hours if your rate is 50 dollars an hour that's only $150, but does that account for the Adobe programs that you had to use that cost you $50 a month? Does that account for how long it took you to learn those programs? Having a package price can be better for you, the creator, and for the client, because you both know going in what the total is gonna be. For me, I like to write into my contracts that if I go past a certain amount of hours or a certain number of revisions, then I go from the package price that we started with into an hourly rate on top of that. So that way if it takes longer than planned, I'm still compensated for my time and that's also a deterrent for your client to not make too many revisions down the line.
Make sure your pricing considers how the work is to be used
A great example of distribution pricing is apparel. If you're making a design that somebody is going to sell on apparel, that has to be significantly more money than if you were to do a design just for their Instagram story. If they are profiting off the design, it has to be compensating for you. If it's a small company there doesn't necessarily need to be a royalty, but you need to factor into the price the distribution of where this design is going to go. If they're selling it on their own behalf, that's gonna cost more than if they're just using it for promotional purposes. Whatever it is that their business is, if they need you as a creator to make something for their business, you are adding value to their business. With the exception of a 501(c)(3) which is a non-profit, there really are very few instances where you should be giving your work away for free.
A really fantastic resource for learning how to price your work is the Pricing and Ethical Guidelines Handbook. This bad boy is so useful and powerful. This, I believe is the most current version. It is from 2018 and you can go through this book, which I will link down below, these books are awesome resources for if you're trying to figure out how much something would cost. Anytime somebody approaches me asking me for a design project that I've never done something like that before, I always reference the Pricing and Ethical Guidelines Handbook, and usually, most of the time the price that I had in my mind before checking that book is always lower than what it's supposed to be.
Fight for your worth
Listen, I know this is kind of a rant, I know how hard it can be to talk about money with your clients and to advocate for yourself about the price of your work but honestly, it is worth it, and you are worth it ,and your work is worth it. You deserve to make your money, and you deserve to charge what you're worth. It really is that simple and honestly for me, my clients know that my prices go up as often as I need them to.
I would rather have one project to focus on that's paying me $500 than five $100 projects. Every time. I would rather skip out on 4 lowball projects to get one full price project down the line. I really would. And by doing that, that teaches people that can't afford you... that they can't afford you. Because now people know the price of my work, they know the value of my work, I am open and clear about how much I charge for my work, and guess what? It's gonna go up. It will go up because that's what happens, because as I spend more time working on stuff, as I spend more time learning as my skills improve, as my style develops things are gonna be more valuable. And honestly, that has nothing to do with your internet presence. You amount of followers shouldn't dictate how much you're charging. So if I leave you with anything in this advice rant, it is, know worth and fight for your prices. Fight for your worth, be public about your desire for artists to get paid, because that's the only way that we all will get paid together. We gotta help each other up.
No more exposure based compensation
So, a couple years ago there was an organization called "Get Artists Paid" on Instagram but they did create an artist's manifesto that I would like to share with you as parting words. It says as follows:
Creative labor is not free or leisurely.
No more exposure based compensation.
No more validation through corporations and institutions which are two sides of the same coin.
We refuse to build up brands which exploit and marginalize us.
We see success as subversive only when it is collective and inclusive to those who have been historically marginalized.
This must come from a foundation of radical acceptance, accountability, transparency, and solidarity.
We demand an art world which reflects our collective imagination and not the greedy pockets of the wealthy elite.
I hope you found a little bit of motivation in this video to really assess your prices and get more comfortable with asking for what you're worth. I wish you best my comrades. May your pockets be full and your clients be... Not picky.
Please give the video version of this transcript a like on YouTube and subscribe to my channel if you enjoyed it. It really does help out my very brand new channel. And let me know in the comments if you're raising your prices... and when. Go forth and secure your bag!
Thank you so much for being here, my name is Sophia Mitropoulos, I'll see you in the next one, bye!
