Whether you’re just starting out or you’re a seasoned professional, understanding how to price your services or products can be a daunting task for any creative professional. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes freelancers make is underselling themselves because they either don’t take into consideration all the proper factors or underestimate the value their experience brings.

Recently, we tackled art commissions and best practices for ensuring they run smoothly, which touched on pricing to a degree. Here, we’ll go further in depth about the steps you can take to set your prices and make sure they are on target for your market. Photographers, designers, and makers all need to have a good grasp on pricing if they want to create a successful, long-term career. And while we won’t discuss fine art pricing, which is a separate argument, The Value of Art is a great book to begin understanding the contemporary art market.

Here are some considerations to help you better understand how to price your creative services or goods in order to stay competitive, but keep your business running successfully.

Hourly Rate or Flat Fee?

This is a common dilemma for anyone offering creative services. While a flat rate can seem like a straightforward, easy way to go, if not considered carefully it can have some downsides. There can be such a wide range of needs within any given service, that you might find yourself setting a low price to get people in the door, and then spending considerably more time than you’d like on the given project.

So, while a doing well-priced flyer designs, for example, might be a good way to get your graphic design business off the ground, you may find yourself pouring too many hours into a project that, when broken down hourly, pays peanuts. Conversely, setting a high flat rate squeezes out a lot of potential clients who simply can’t afford the large number. If their projects are actually straightforward, from a time standpoint, you could be missing out on easy money. So, if you go the flat rate route, make sure you take into consideration these different aspects to come to a happy medium that you—and your clients—will be pleased with.

For service-based creatives, use a calculator to help you figure out your hourly rate.

There are a large number of factors when thinking about pricing, and the amount of time you are physically performing the task at hand is only one thing to consider. Aside from expenses, one of the first questions you want to ask yourself is, “How much do I want to earn in a year?” and “How many hours a week do I want to work in order to achieve that goal?” And, of course, you’ll want to make sure you get paid for all the intangibles of a business that aren’t directly connected to a specific project, whether that be hours spent doing market research or time brainstorming new creative concepts for your brand.

If this all sound daunting, there are a number of online calculators that will take you through the process, step-by-step. BeeWits and the NPPA have comprehensive hourly rate calculators for any freelance business, while Sprouting Photographer has a number of rate calculators specifically for photographers.

If you’re producing handmade items, there are tools for you, too!

Maybe you aren’t selling a creative service, but rather producing artistically crafted items to sell, whether that be online or in person. There are different considerations when thinking about products aside from production hours, but you will still want to factor things like the costs of marketing or research for your new line. And some of the issues you’ll face are different, including whether or not you want to wholesale items and transaction fees or commissions from services like PayPal or Etsy. Remember, most artisans have a markup of at least 50% in order to account for eventual ventures in wholesaling and to have enough of a profit margin to be able to reinvest in the business.

Craftsybase has a simple and efficient calculator for pricing out Etsy products, while Creative Hive Co has a comprehensive guide to pricing handmade goods, as well as a free downloadable calculator for setting prices.

Understand Who’s in Your Market—and What They Can Afford

Of course, calculators are great for crunching numbers, but as any successful entrepreneur will tell you, math is only part of the story. One of the most important reasons to find your artistic niche is that once you know who your customer is, you’ll be able to think about what they can realistically afford.

This will require you to do some market research to discover if the pricing you are calculating is competitive in the marketplace or is completely out of synch. Sometimes this will be based on location. If you are a wedding photographer, there will be a particular radius you work in, and doing research to find out what other photographers in the area are charging will be key. Of course, when comparing your prices to others, also think about what makes your work comprable—or not. Maybe you have more years of experience or have had your work exhibited by important institutions. These are all reasons to justify a higher rate. Conversely, if you are just starting out and looking to cultivate a client base to grow your business, pricing competitively will help you do so until you have enough experience to raise your rates.

If you are selling goods online, a quick search for comparable items on Etsy and Amazon will help you see if you are under or overpricing yourself. It’s also helpful to look at Google Adwords and the search volume for the type of item you are selling. If a lot of people are searching for the product, that’s good news for you—thought you’ll want to think about what makes your work unique in order to market it successfully. But if the volume is very low and you aren’t able to find many comparable items online or locally, you’ll want to think about whether or not there is a market for what you want to sell.

Remember, selling—whether it’s a service or a physical item—is all about supply and demand. If you have a market for your work, but your clients can’t afford what you are selling, you’ll need to get creative in thinking about how to get them what they want without compromising your business. This may mean creatively sourcing less expensive materials or starting out part time until you can grow enough to support yourself fully.

Related Articles:

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Food presentation has a long history, with records dating back to ancient Roman and Medieval times. In addition to enhancing aesthetic appeal, elaborate food presentation was thought to be a symbol of wealth, power, and cultural taste. More than 2,000 years later, food preparation has arguably evolved into a global food art movement. No longer reserved for high society banquets, 2017 has seen artists elevate day-to-day food and drink to a new level, crafting clever cuisine that’s almost too good to eat.

We’ve seen some ingenious, highly expressive approaches emerge over the last year—exemplified by Dinara Kasko’s precise architectural cakes—as well as more traditional methods, but executed with a contemporary aesthetic, like Gothic black wedding cakes and frosted succulent-topped desserts. There’s also been a resurgence of time-honored techniques applied to the humble pie and cake—from Karin Pfeiff Boschek’s perfect pastry crusts to Maggie Austin’s floral sugar flowers.

This year’s list makes an excellent case for why you should always play with your food.

Check out our top 20 food art masterpieces from 2017.

Avocado Pit Carvings by Jan Campbell

Jan Campbell hand-carves intricate, fantastical figurines out of avocado pits. Her ongoing series of handheld totems and pendants all started when she accidentally scraped the surface of an avocado stone with her nail, and “a beautiful deep orange pigment surfaced.”

 

Sugar Flowers by Maggie Austin

Ballerina-turned-pastry chef Maggie Austin uses various techniques to create delicate, super-realistic flowers made out of sugar. Arranged atop of multi-tiered cakes, they look far too beautiful to eat.

 

Psychedelic Smoothie Bowls by Rachel Lorton

Using all-natural ingredients and a toothpick, Rachel Lorton produces smoothie bowls in colorful, vibrant patterns. They not only look amazing, but they’re healthy, too. Lorton’s ingredients include raw beetroot, turmeric, hemp heart, pea flower, and more.

 

Chocolate City Maps by Nisnas Industries

Nisnas Industries partnered with Tamtik Chocolate to create a series of chocolate blocks in the shape of city maps from across the globe. Each design takes inspiration from mashrabiya, a traditional geometric Arabic pattern, typically found in architecture.

 

Math-Inspired Cakes by Dinara Kasko

Architect-turned-pastry chef Dinara Kasko designs a diverse collection of sculptural desserts, rendered using algorithmic tools and complex diagramming techniques.

 

Smoothie Bowl Paintings by Hazel Zakariya

Hazel Zakariya uses smoothie bowls as her canvas, and natural ingredients—like turmeric, blue matcha, and activated charcoal—as her “paint.” Her culinary creations depict adorable animals and characters from popular culture.

 

Rainbow-Colored Pasta by Linda Miller Nicholson

Dubbed the “Lady Gaga of Food,” Linda Miller Nicholson has a reputation for making avant-garde edibles. Her homemade, naturally-dyed pasta comes in an amazing array of rainbow colors, shapes, and designs.

 

3D Latte Art by Daphne Tan

17-year-old Singapore-based latte artist Daphne Tan uses a foamy mix of carob powder, soy milk, and water to create thick, sculpted foam characters that pop out of the mug.

 

Colorful Cake Pops by Raymond Tan

Self-taught baker Raymond Tan produces delectable cakes pops that really pop with color and festive design. His creations range from elegant and abstract patterns to super cute characters.

 

Patterned Pie Crust Designs by Karin Pfeiff Boschek

This food artist creates perfectly patterned pies from her home-made pastry. From geometric patterns, to nature-inspired motifs, her pre- and-post-oven images on Instagram are a masterclass in pastry decoration.

 

Toast Art by Eiko Mori

Using a toothpick, a spoon, and a miniature piping bag made from parchment paper as her tools, Eiko Mori creates charming patterned motifs on shoku-pan, a Japanese-style milk bread.

 

Black Weddings Cakes

2017 saw many non-traditionalist couples favoring gothic wedding cakes for their special day. Dark icing acts as a dramatic backdrop for eye-catching accents like delicate sugar flowers and hand-painted gold designs.

 

Brushstroke Cakes by Kalabasa

This Moscow-based bakery creates edible artworks that feature one of art’s most fundamental elements: the brushstroke. The painterly chocolate strips are airbrushed in a range of colors, and artistically arranged on the cakes.

 

Mini Tower Cakes by Rachel Dyke

Rachel Dyke merges food art and miniaturization to create tiny cake towers that can fit in the palm of your hand. But don’t be too quick to bite—the creations are made of an inedible polymer clay.

 

Succulent Cakes by Ivenoven

Jakarta-based Ivenoven uses her perfect piping techniques to create gorgeous, mouth-watering succulent cakes sculpted with frosting, butter, and food coloring.

 

Illustrated Cookies by Holly Fox

Los Angeles-based artist Holly Fox‘s colorful cookies are baked in a range of quirky motifs and colors, from vintage sewing machines and nail polish bottles to unicorns and seahorses.

 

Rubik’s Cube Cakes by Cédric Grolet

Culinary artist Cédric Grolet transforms the famous hand-held puzzle into a cube-shaped assortment of 27 individual pastries.

 

Animal Macarons by Melly Eats World

Food artist Melly Eats World takes minimalist French macarons in a whole new direction with her adorable animal versions. Featuring pandas, pigs, monkeys, and cats, if you flip the pastries over you’ll find their tails.

 

Laser-Cut Seaweed by I & S BBDO and Umino Seaweed

In a collaboration between International ad agency I & S BBDO and the Umino Seaweed, the Design Nori collection of laser-cut seaweed comes in five designs. Each features a different motif from Japanese history or symbology.

 

Colored Latte Art by Kangbin Lee

This barista uses latte foam to create what he calls cremart. Kangbin Lee delicately adds a variety of drinkable, colored pigments to the foam to create portraits of Disney characters, flowers, and animals, as well as recreations of famous masterpieces such as Van Gogh‘s Starry Night.

 

Blooming Flower Cakes

Another big trend we noticed this year was floral cakes. Made mostly from sweet buttercream, creations range from spectacular bouquets to minimalist arrangements set atop cakes and cupcakes.

 

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