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Business Decisions Are Hard Without A Crystal Ball

Maybe they are hard with one too.

I’ve been getting the message from several sources that my prices are too low.

My subject matter is Tulare County, and most of my customers are here. Because we are poor, fat, undereducated, breathing bad air, and accustomed to frugality, I price my art work accordingly.

Common art marketing wisdom says that if your prices are too low, people will not value your work.

Common sense says that if your prices are too low, you will stay poor.

Contradictory common sense says that if your prices are low, you’ll sell more and more people will buy your work and then you will raise your prices and have a following who are willing to pay your new prices.

Common sense is uncommonly confusing.

(“Too many cooks spoil the stew” or “Many hands make light work”? “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” or “Out of sight, out of mind”? See what I mean?)

This little 6×6″ painting of Sawtooth is $50 plus tax. It is an original oil painting that took me about 2 hours to make. (First I had to buy the canvas, brushes, turpentine, linseed oil and paints.) When it sells at the Silver City Store, they keep a percentage, of course. That means I am earning a sorry hourly wage, particularly when you take the giant self-employed bite out of it.

Does this matter?

Not to me. I paint Mineral King because I love Mineral King.

However, I do need to earn a living.

I just looked up other oil painters. For 6×6 oil paintings, they charge $26, $65, $80, $100,  $125, $150, $175, $190, and $325.

Holy Cow. Excuse me, I need to go do some more thinking. Might need to knit a few rows to calm down, have a hit of chocolate, pace, rock back and forth while banging my head on the back of the chair, perhaps even put my thumb in my mouth and curl into a little ball.

4 Comments

  1. Nice painting Jana! Alaska is quite interesting to visit. I haven’t been able to see it from a ship view, yet. Not sure I’ll get my husband to travel that way.
    Your pictures are beautiful!

    Someday, I need to find a place to hang my paintings. I’m working on 2 commissions of Yosemite Falls.
    I miss the class.
    Ann

    • Ann, nice to hear from you! And congratulations on your two commissions! Those will be beautiful, of course. Miss you too. . . but, I don’t think you need drawing lessons because you do beautiful work.

  2. Bambi, thank you for chiming in and welcome to my blog!

    Your experience is the exact reason I have not raised my prices to match those of the rest of the world. Maybe I will a little bit next year, and you are right about the larger pieces with higher prices. I took several up the hill last week. They may just decorate the store, or perhaps they will sell. . .

    More will be revealed in the fullness of time. . .

  3. As your newest collector, I’ll chime in on this one. I believe it depends on your intended market, established art collectors or art virgins. Pricing your works at a reasonable amount tempts art newbies such a myself, who may have never purchased art before, to take the plunge. Were you to raise your prices, you would certainly get the occasional collector. However, you’d likely price out the average visitor who is looking for a gorgeous, unique momento of Mineral King, yet isn’t mentally prepared to pay the higher prices that art often fetches.

    Perhaps the best strategy, as you mentioned, is to raise prices over time as your following increases – works for me, as it means my little investment will be worth millions someday! Or perhaps continue to keep the little canvases at a lower price as “starter art,” and offer some of your larger works in the store at rates more befitting your talent, skill and time?


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