Pricing our work can be an artist’s biggest struggle, and it’s no surprise. We’ve often got complicated thoughts and feelings about our work, how to put a value on it, and whether we should be selling it at all.
Is it really good enough?
Can I really charge this?
What if they think it’s too expensive?
What if I’m selling out?
But here’s the harsh truth: you HAVE to get pricing right, if you want to have a successful business from your artwork.
Get it wrong and you’re not just devaluing your work. You could also be looking at burning out, not being able to consistently pay yourself, and falling out of love with your business.
Commissions are arguably even more difficult to price than your regular work. There’s a lot to consider, and more potential to forget something or get caught up in revisions that mean you make little to no profit.
In this post, we’ll dive deep into the art of pricing your commissions properly.
We’ll cover everything from calculating your actual costs, to the importance of adding a well-deserved profit margin. You’ll learn to ditch the “feels fair” mentality and replace it with a pricing strategy that values your time, skills, and artistic vision.
By the end, you’ll be armed with the knowledge to calculate what to charge for your commissions, and the confidence to ask for it, without doubt or apology.
Let’s get started, shall we?
How to calculate prices for commissions
There are a few different methods for calculating prices and it’s easy to get confused by the options, but let’s take it right back to basics. If you want your work to be profitable you need to calculate ALL of the costs involved in making it, and then add a profit, a markup, or both.
This is the simplest way to work out what to charge for any product, and it’s a good starting point for pricing commissions too.
Of course it all starts with ACCURATELY calculating your costs. And it is this calculation, right at the beginning, where things often start to go wrong.
1. Know Your Costs
You cannot put a price tag on your art without knowing what it actually costs you to create AND sell it.
Missing the less obvious costs of making your work, lowballing your hourly rate, giving discounts no one asked for, or forgetting to include your marketing expenses can all lead to unprofitable prices that leave you out of pocket when everything is taken into account.
Remember, for any cost that your business incurs, if a customer isn’t paying for it, it’s coming out of your pay.
So let’s take a look at all of the costs you might have to consider when it comes to pricing your commissions.
Materials Costs
This one’s a no-brainer. Every commission you take on requires certain materials and supplies.
Whether it’s canvas and paint, or yarn, or clay, or precious metals, you need to accurately account for the cost of all the supplies you will use to create the piece.
That means doing the work to check suppliers and gather together pricing information for every component of your work.
A common problem that comes up at this stage is “what if I’m just starting out and I have to buy my supplies in small quantities, and that makes them really expensive?”
Don’t worry too much about that at this stage. Gather a range of prices so that you know what the price would be when you can buy in bulk, but for your calculations you have to use the figures for the quantities you can reasonably afford to purchase right now.
Don’t be tempted to buy huge amounts of supplies to get lower prices, as that can really damage your cashflow and often leads to debt.
However tempting, it’s no use pricing for a business that you wish you had, because doing that may mean that you don’t survive long enough to get there.
And don’t forget about items that are consumed over the course of making more than one product, such as brushes, spatulas, trays etc.
You’ll need to add something to your prices for these items so that you can afford to replace them when necessary.
Labour Costs
This is where many artists and makers tend to sell themselves short. Your time is valuable, and you deserve to be compensated fairly for the hours (or days, or weeks) you pour into a commission.
Sit down and honestly calculate how long a typical commission piece takes you, from the initial concept to the final touches. This will give you a good baseline to work from, even if other commissions are different.
Start timing yourself as you work, right from the beginning, because the more often you do this, the easier it will get for you to calculate how long a commission piece will take, with reasonable accuracy.
Standardisation really is your friend here. Anything you can standardise is more easily predicted and makes it much easier to be accurate with your estimates for the time involved in future pieces.
So think about what you could standardise in your process, your techniques and the variations of the products you offer.
It might also be worth adding in some extra wiggle room to cushion you in those times where you do underestimate the time involved. This could be an extra few hours, or adding an extra percentage to the time just to account for errors.
Once you’ve got your time estimate, you’ll need to set an hourly rate that reflects your skills and experience.
Don’t undersell yourself here. So many makers use the minimum wage but remember that minimum wage is generally for unskilled jobs that people can do with little to no training.
That’s not you! You have very real practical and technical abilities which have taken time and money to develop, but you also have artistic vision – something which is rare and extremely valuable.
In commission work, your customers may be hiring you just as much for your ideas and your vision as for your technical skills so you can and should set a higher hourly rate than you would for your regular work.
Overhead Costs
Running an art or maker business comes with recurring costs that you have to pay. Things like:
- Studio space
- Utilities
- Accounting
- Insurance
- Any recurring software charges – such as Adobe Creative Cloud or Canva
These bills have to be paid whether you are selling anything or not, and that can make it tricky to figure out how to include them in your prices.
But remember, if a customer isn’t paying for it in the price of the products and services (such as commissions) they buy from you, then you’re paying for it out of your own pocket.
So you need to add up all of these expenses and then allocate a portion of them to each commission.
If all of your time is spent on commissions, and most of your commissions are quite similar, a really simple way to do this is to think about how many commissions you would complete in a year and split the amount between them.
So if your overheads cost you £1000 a year and you would normally complete 12 commissions in a year, then you would need to include £83.33 in the pricing for each commission so that all of the overheads are covered.
If your commissions are more varied, in terms of sizes, prices and time to complete the work, then you would need to adjust this. Same goes for if you have a mix of commission and non-commission work. In that case, you can have the non-commission work absorb some of the overhead cost too.
Try not to get too befuddled with all of the what-ifs involved in working this out. It is always going to be a “best guess” situation to begin with, so just do your best and then monitor the profitability of your business over time.
If you’re not making enough profit on your business overall, then it might be a good time to take another look at whether you’re covering all of your overheads.
Equipment Costs
Similar to overheads, the cost to buy and maintain the equipment used in your work (including commissions), is something that needs to be spread over the number of commissions or orders you generally sell.
This might be equipment that you use for making your work itself, like a kiln or a sewing machine, or it could be equipment that you use for running the business, such as your office furniture, computer and phone.
Equipment purchases tend to be less frequent, maybe only every few years, and repair and maintenance costs might also be quite infrequent.
But again, if the customer isn’t paying for them, they’re coming out of your pay.
The good news is that these are often small amounts. Splitting the cost of a sewing machine over all of the items you could make and sell from it in say 5 years, is probably going to give you quite a low amount per item.
So it can be reasonable to just add on a small amount per sale, knowing that it will cover the costs. Just make sure you are keeping track of your repair costs and the replacement schedule for your equipment so that you can be sure you’re covering it all.
And of course, you’ll need to be saving this money somewhere so that it is available when your trusty kiln finally breaks down.
Phew, that’s a lot to consider, isn’t it? But trust me, accurately calculating your costs is the first (and most crucial) step towards pricing your commissions fairly. It’s the foundation upon which your entire pricing strategy will be built.
Now let’s look at some things you might not have thought about including in your prices.
2. Add Profit and Selling Costs
Okay you’ve got all of your costs together, but we’re not done yet.
If you want to turn your art into a sustainable business, you also need to factor in two crucial elements: profit and selling costs.
Profit Margin
A lot of people confuse profit with labour costs, and it’s easy to see why. If you’re a sole trader, your business profit is what you get taxed on. So the government is treating it like your income for tax purposese.
We’ve already added our labour costs to our prices, so do we need to add profit as well? Yes, we do.
Profit pays the business owner. Labour costs pay the worker.
And in your business, you are both the worker and the business owner. But that may not always be the case.
Your prices need to have the space to compensate you for all areas of your work, as well as possibly allowing the business to hire other people to help with some areas of the production of your work.
How much profit you should aim for is really up to you and your goals. It’s fine to start fairly low, if it’s just you working in your business right now, and then make increases as you grow.
But remember, the pricing model we’ve followed so far only really accounts for the cost of producing your work. There is a value to your work, especially commissions, that goes far beyond costs.
You’re offering a unique opportunity to commission something completely unique, that can provide a really meaningful experience for the person commissioning you, and anyone they might be gifting this piece to. That has value beyond just the cost to create and sell the piece.
Remember you deserve to be compensated for the value you provide and the creative vision you bring.
Selling Costs
Have you ever sold your products via wholesale or sale or return? If you have, you’ll know that the retailer generally takes anywhere from 30-50% of the sale price.
For wholesale, they buy the pieces from you at a wholesale price, and then they add a markup to come to a retail price. When they sell the piece to a customer, the markup is the portion of the price that they get to keep.
Similarly, when a retailer sells your work on sales or return (also known as consignment) they pay you the retail price, minus a commission.
In both cases, you are paying the retailer for the service of selling your work. They need to pay their overheads, their staff costs, and the cost of marketing their businesses to get customers.
But when there is no retailer involved, the work of selling still has to get done. It’s just you doing it instead.
The point is that there is ALWAYS a cost involved in selling a piece of work.
And I’m going to say it again. If any cost is not paid by the customer, it’s being paid by you, out of your pay.
So, whether you sell through retailers or not, you still need to include the cost of selling in your product prices.
Is it the same for commissions? You are the only source for commissions, so you’re not competing with your retailers for customers and there’s no chance of upsetting anyone by undercutting them.
But there is still considerable work that needs to go in to promoting your commission work. A portion of your regular marketing, such as email and social media will need to be devoted to promoting your commission slots.
Plus you’ll need to account for the time you spend putting together prices and proposals for customers who decide not to go ahead. That’s a cost of selling too.
So, yes, you still need to account for the cost of selling in your commission prices.
So how much should you charge? The easiest thing to do is probably to follow the retail model and add a markup or an extra percentage to your prices, once you’ve calculated your base price.
Again, you can start small and then watch your overall profitability to double check that you’re covering everything. If you can easily afford the cost of advertising and your own salary then that’s a sign that you’re in a good place.
Other things to consider when pricing your commissions
Don’t Forget to Account for Revisions
However great you are at what you do, when you’re working with humans there will always be times when you need to make some revisions.
People aren’t sure what they want. They’re not good at visualising it. It looks different from how they expected. They’ve changed their mind. They had another idea.
Revisions are inevitable and also an important way of helping your customers feel happy that they’re getting exactly what they want.
That’s why you need to be very intentional about your revisions policy and pricing, so that you can maintain the profitability of your work, and avoid pulling your hair out.
What’s Your Revision Policy?
The first step? Establish a clear revision policy and make sure your clients understand it from the get-go. A common approach is to include a set number of revisions (let’s say, two or three) in your base price.
This way, you’re ensuring the customer is happy, but you’re also setting boundaries and managing expectations. Everyone wins.
You should also decide whether you’ll let the customer see the piece at any stage before it’s finished so that they can request revisions at that point.
On the plus side, you get either a thumbs up from them, or the opportunity to make some changes earlier and save time.
On the down side, your customer might not have the vision to understand what the finished piece will look like and feel worried about it, potentially leading to more revisions or more back and forth with them.
You can also choose based on what is more convenient or feels better for you. It’s your business and your rules.
Extra Requests and additional charges
So, what happens when a client wants to go beyond the included revisions? That’s when your additional charges would apply.
Decide on a fair hourly rate or flat fee for any revisions that exceed the agreed-upon limit. This not only compensates you for your time but also serves as a gentle deterrent against those clients who might be tempted to request changes for the sake of it.
Pro Tip: When presenting your revision policy, frame it in a positive light. Something like, “I’m happy to make revisions to ensure you’re completely satisfied with the final product. The first three rounds of revisions are included in the quoted price, and any additional revisions will be billed at £X per hour.”
By being upfront about your revision process (and the costs involved), you’re establishing yourself as a professional with boundaries and standards. Plus, you’ll avoid those awkward “just one more tiny change?” conversations that can quickly spiral out of control.
Remember, when you are working to commission you are literally selling your time. It’s up to you to get your prices right, but you also have the right to protect your profitability.
Rush orders and Priority Pricing
We’ve all had the email from a frantic partner who has forgotten their significant other’s birthday, their anniversary, or even Christmas!
They usually come with a hefty dose of pressure and a pull on the emotions.
And we can find it really tough to say no, especially when we could do it, if we worked a late night or two.
Instead of feeling frustrated to receive these requests, begrudgingly burning the midnight oil, and probably not even getting a thank you for it, why not get properly compensated instead?
The Value of Your Time
Have you ever bought a fast track pass so that you can skip through airport security? Or maybe you’ve had a parcel delivered with next day shipping, instead of the usual 3-4 working days.
Did you pay for that? Probably.
It’s unlikely that a heart tugging email about how you really need that dress for your cousin’s wedding on Saturday, but you forgot to order it last week, would have got you a rush order for free.
There’s an option to get it in a rush, but that’s not free because it costs the business you’re buying from.
It’s the same for you. Your time is valuable. Any time a customer asks you to move their commission to the front of the line, they’re not just asking for the piece itself – they’re asking for you to rearrange your schedule to fit them in.
You might have to sacrifice personal or family time, you might have to work late nights or weekends. You might have to rearrange everything in your schedule.
That’s a big ask, and it deserves to be compensated accordingly.
Setting Your Rush Fees
So, how much should you charge for an expedited service? A common starting point is to add on an extra 50% to your regular commission price. This premium fee reflects the value of your time, as well as the inconvenience and stress of rearranging your commitments on short notice.
But if completing this commission will mean you need to work extra hours, maybe sacrificing evenings or weekends with family and friends, then it’s absolutely reasonable to add on more – say another 50% on top of the original rush fee.
Example: Let’s say your standard rate for a commission of this type would be £500. For a rush order, you’d initially charge £750 (50% premium). But if completing that rush job requires you to work over the weekend, you could justifiably bump the total price up to £1,125 (an additional 50% on top of the rush fee).
Communicating Your Policy
The key to making this pricing strategy work is clear communication from the very start. Include your rush order policy and associated fees prominently on your website or in your commission information packet. That way, clients know exactly what they’re signing up for when they request an expedited timeline.
At the end of the day, rushing a commission requires a significant investment of your time, energy, and sanity.
By establishing a fair pricing structure, you don’t just get fairly compensated for your work – you’re also ensuring that you don’t end up working in your free time and feeling resentful about it.
Watch out for sneaky money mindset issues
Alright, we’ve covered the nuts and bolts of calculating your costs, adding profit margins, and accounting for revisions. But we also need to address something far more insidious: your pricing mindset.
Because as artists, we’ve been conditioned to undervalue our work from day one. We’ve been told that our passion should be enough, that asking for fair compensation is somehow greedy or entitled.
That means a few money mindset issues might sneak up on you and make you feel like you need to discount your prices.
Don’t Base Prices on what “Feels Fair”
We’ve already worked through a series of really complex and intricate calculations to determine our prices and one thing’s for sure – it’s way more complicated that just what “feels fair”
But a lot of us calculate our prices and they come out to a level that freaks us out. We have a price level in our head that “feels fair” and if our calculations put us above that level, we start to get a little wobbly.
But where does the “feels fair” number come from? Usually from something we have seen, or bought or experienced ourselves.
Maybe you’ve seen other people offering commissions at a specific price and so that is what “feels fair” – because it’s familiar.
Or maybe you’ve seen non-commissioned artwork priced at a certain level and then that is also part of your “feels fair” number
Or maybe you’ve bought something yourself and the price of that item is also part of your “feels fair” number.
However, it’s also likely that some of that conditioning about art and money also plays in to the number. Worrying about being seen as greedy or arrogant for pricing higher than other people.
But the important thing to remember is that the prices we calculate are what we need to charge to make a profit. We’ve worked everything out to ensure that we don’t end up not getting paid, or even losing money.
And remember that what feels fair to you, is entirely different to what feels fair to your customers. Some may want to compare your prices with mass produced generic artwork. Some may compare you with other extremely high end custom products bought for their home.
Your clients have their own financial situations and priorities – perspectives that may be worlds apart from your own.
But if after all of the calculations, you’re concerned that your prices are too high for your audience, then you can choose to make changes to your costs, or your process, or the profit you take. That way you’re still working off the numbers, and not just a feeling.
Don’t Subsidise Costs
Every single cost associated with creating your art needs to be factored into your prices. Ignoring or forgetting to include certain things to make your prices look better is a slippery slope.
And it’s you that gets hurt. By ignoring some of the costs of running your business, you are subsidising your clients’ commissions out of your own pocket.
And there’s a name for paying to do something you enjoy – a hobby.
We don’t usually let our hobbies get us into significant debt, but many artists and makers end up subsidising their businesses by going more and more into debt – until the whole thing collapses.
Don’t let that be you. If you want this to be a business, you have to make the numbers work.
Don’t Match Underpriced Competitors
Lots of us look to the other makers that we know and the ones we see on social media to gut check our prices. And disappointingly, we often find that they are pricing their work at a level that we just can’t match.
The temptation can be to just cut your prices to match, but it’s a mistake to do that.
If you can’t figure out how they’re making money from selling at that price – maybe they’re not! It’s more common than you think.
Instead of matching unsustainable prices, focus on highlighting the unique value you bring to the table – your distinct style, your attention to detail, your fantastic customer service.
These are the things that set you apart and make people want to work with you (even at a higher price)
Don’t offer discounts nobody asked for
Discounts are always problematic when it comes to commissions because commission work represents an exchange of your time (and of course your artistic vision) for a fee.
And your time is a finite resource. You can’t get or make more of it, so it should not be offered at a discount unless there is a really good reason.
Many of us want to offer discounts to repeat customers, to thank them for commissioning us again, or to those ordering more than one piece.
But remember, we’ve carefully calculated our prices so any discount is going to have to come out of our pay packet.
Think about it this way: if you charged £500 for a commission, but then offered a 20% discount to a repeat client, you’ve just lost £100 worth of income. That’s £100 less for your bills, your supplies, your savings – and that could tip you into under earning and lead to difficulties with cashflow.
Of course you can show appreciation for your loyal clients in many other ways.
For example:
- Offer a small freebie or bonus item with their commission
- Bump them to the front of the queue with no fees
- First dibs on new commissions slots opening up.
- Simply saying “thank you” and expressing your gratitude through fantastic customer service.
Discounts should serve a very clear and specific purpose in your business, such as encouraging people to buy or book today, or to place a larger order than they might otherwise.
They are to motivate behaviour that is helpful for your business.
If you’re giving discounts to repeat customers, who don’t care about them, then you may be discounting purely to reduce the discomfort you feel around selling your work, or selling your work at a specific price.
That’s normal and understandable but it needs to be addressed with internal work, not by using unstrategic discounts to make yourself poorer.
Don’t discount because you live in a low cost of living area
What if you’ve got a far lower cost of living that your clients? Maybe you live in a different country or region to them?
Maybe you’re selling to customers in the USA but you live a country where your rent and bills cost a little less. Does that mean you have to charge less than American makers living and selling in the same area as their customers?
Or maybe you live in a rural area and you’re selling to city buyers with much higher disposable income. Do you have to charge less because your costs are less?
I don’t think so. Although this may give you a little more flexibility with your pricing, it’s up to you to choose what to do with the difference in price expectations.
If you happen to reside in an area with lower living expenses, that’s a benefit you’ve earned through the choices you’ve made in your life – not something you should be penalised for, or that you have to give away to the customer.
It’s your choice.
Don’t discount because you’ve streamlined your workflow
What about when you’ve streamlined your process and can complete commissions faster than you could before?
Because we’re basing our commissions on an hourly rate for labour, does that mean we should charge less?
Absolutely not. That increased efficiency is the result of your hard work, experience, and investment in your craft. You’ve earned the right to keep those time-saving benefits for yourself.
Notice if whenever you get a reduction in costs, your first instinct is to pass it on to the customer, rather then keeping it for yourself. This is a sign that mindset is at play.
What if you need to bring your prices down to stimulate sales?
So what if, after crunching all the numbers, your commission prices still seem like they’re too high for you to make sales?
Before you start second-guessing yourself and giving up some of your profitability to lower prices, let’s look for some places where we may be able to reduce the cost of producing a piece so that we can lower the price without compromising our financial wellbeing.
Perfectionism
You probably didn’t think I was going there for the first place to cut costs but as artists and makers, we can sometimes spend more hours on piece than is really required, obsessing over the details on something that was probably already pretty amazing.
If you have any of those nasty intrusive thoughts about whether you’re good enough and whether this piece is good enough, then you might think that spending more and more time on it is going to make sure it’s JUST RIGHT.
While that level of dedication is admirable, it can also be a huge time-suck – and as we’ve established, time is money when it comes to commissions.
In reality, you’re probably adding more labour cost to your pieces, just to try and make yourself feel less uncomfortable. That will either inflate your prices (if you’re including it) or come out of your pocket (if you’re not)
Reducing the amount of time it takes to complete a commission can be a really good way to reduce the cost, and the end price to the customer, so be really honest with yourself about how long you really need.
Finding Efficiencies
Finding efficiencies is usually code for job cuts, but in your business it just means anything that can help you to streamline your process and cut your costs.
It could be as simple as introducing some standardisation into your commissions, perhaps offering set sizes so that you can buy materials in greater amounts and have them ready to go.
This, of course, also saves time involved in packing and shipping an order and researching courier services as you get familiar with the boxes you need, the services to book, and what to include on the shipping forms.
You can also standardise your designs, offering customisation and personalisation of a product that can be easily adapted. This could be used for clothing ranges where the pattern on the fabric is customisable, but the overall design of the piece is the same each time.
Or it could be setting up checklists and instructions to follow, so that you don’t even have to engage your brain to get the work done, and you have everything you need at your fingertips.
The goal is to ensure that there is no work for work’s sake in your creative process. That improves your workload and stress levels and it can also lead to a nice reduction in cost that you can pass on to the customer if you’re worried that your prices are a little out of reach.
Annual Price Increases + Raising your Hourly Rate
Okay, so we’ve sorted your pricing strategy, we’ve factored in all the costs, and we’ve dug out all of the places where pesky mindset issues might be causing you to set your prices lower than you should.
But unfortunately the discomfort isn’t done. Pricing isn’t a one time job.
In fact, you’ll need to adjust your prices regularly so the uneasiness around all of this is going to be part of your experience for quite some time.
Your suppliers will probably increase their prices at least once a year, to account for inflation. That’s a good opportunity for you to revisit your pricing. In most cases, the right choice will be to pass those increases on to customers, or sometimes you may choose to absorb them temporarily.
But increasing materials costs are not the only reason for a price increase. Remember, that the labour element of your pricing is based around an hourly rate for your time.
Over time your skills and experience will develop and that hourly rate will no longer appropriately reflect what you can do. It’s only fair that as you become more skilful, your prices reflect that growth.
Pro Tip: Instead of making sporadic, random price increases, establish a consistent schedule for reevaluating your rates. Maybe it’s once a year, or every six months – whatever works for you. This not only keeps you accountable but also allows you to give your clients a heads-up about any impending changes.
Be Brave and Get the Rewards
Well we’ve covered a lot of ground in this post. From ensuring you include ALL of your costs and adding in a fair profit margin, to negotiating rush orders and revisions, you’ve now got a comprehensive pricing strategy ready to apply to your commissions.
Using these guidelines will help you to set prices for your commissions that truly value your time, talents and artistic vision.
But even when you have a system to set prices, and you know what to do, it’s not easy to overcome the resistance to charging a price that feels uncomfortable.
You’ll be tempted to believe that no one will pay what you’re asking because it’s just too high.
But the truth is that until you charge what you need to charge to make a living, you will never really know whether people will pay it or not.
If you stay small, subsidising your business, or under paying yourself, you will never truly know whether a different future is possible for you. You’ll never know whether there are clients who won’t comment on your prices, or try to negotiate you down.
So, be brave. Ask for what you need and what you deserve and then find ways to connect with the right people and to present your work in a way that communicates its value, so that price is never a problem.
