Pricing Ones Artwork

Ah, pricing, quite possibly the hardest thing for an artist to decide.

The reality is that pricing really doesn't have a huge affect on sales here unless you are priced well outside the bell curve on either end. I would go so far as to say pricing too low can be as damaging as pricing too high.

The more likely culprit causing a lack of sales is getting your art seen by potential buyers. Your pricing seems to be right in the middle of the bell curve so I would say that is not an issue. Another potential culprit on the black and white drawings anyway could be that they appear darker than they should, to me anyway.

A better question to ask in your case would be how do I get my work seen?

All right. Then perhaps you may have some tops on that question then?
On a side note, could I bother you to casually look over my work and let me know if the clarity seems up to pat.
Seems good here but, am still skeptical.
Thank you very much!

Keith,

Images are very good, but the copying isn't up to the artwork. Seems dark and the "exposure" seems all over the place. The hornbill seems to have a bit of glare from the lights?

As far as pricing, seems low to me and should be higher. Look at JC's pricing and mine. Also, look at the "recent sales" page and see what's seling and for how much.

Here are the 2 groups I admin:

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/photo-critique-one-on-one-.html

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/raw-critique.html

Rich

Rich is hands down the king when it comes to showing people how to copy one's artwork to sell.

I think you need to get better photos or scans of your work, then figure out where you want to price it.

Rich is definitely the guy to help you learn how to do that. I think he had posted a tutorial or two somewhere here in the forum.

I like your work a lot. Digitizing in a way that represents it better will be well worth the trouble.

Thank you one an all.
Rich I will make sure to check your links and Andrew, I will have to check the Glare on my hornbill.

I do all my works quite primitive. No computer (least not as of yet) just me and the canvas / stock. Heck, my photos are takin by phone when I gage the sun to be just right. Lol

Anyways, thank you all. I have been in a designing state of mind and just want my material at least seen.
Humbly
Keith...

JC,Andrew,

Thanks! Checks in the mail!

Keith,

Here's a start, have much more and you can email me privately, with any questions, but would rather have you post them here, for others to see.

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2764654

Rich

Is there someplace to look at common pricing practices? I would rather sell more for less than one occasionally...I can't even figure out what fineartamerica's costs are so to judge accordingly. Is there a chart.....colorful oil paintings

there is no real chart, its just how much you want. i'd start low, see if there is a market for the work, then move up. generally the price doesn't scare the customer, the shipping does. but you have no control over that. don't worry too much about what they charge. generally higher priced items sell better because they feel more substantial when you spend more. and it helps balance the shipping. if the item retails at a $100. and shipping is also another $100, the customer may feel ripped off. if that same item was $500, and the shipping was another $100, it some how doesn't feel that bad.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Sally,

Welcome! Wonderful work and I think priced low,especially at the larger sizes. Take a look at my pricing and I feel you should be there, AT LEAST! Here, pricing rarely decides the purchase, more that the buyer see's your stuff and likes it, works for their home or room. Visit the "Recently Sold" page and find other artists that are at your level and then research how they price their work and go from there.



Let me know if you have other questions and you can, as others do, just email me privately, but best to share here,where others can learn too!

Rich

Pricing - I think if someone really wants it, they pay the price. Price is less important than marketing and finding the right buyer. Some images have multiple buyers, some perhaps one.

If you find that one special person who will buy it, you don't want to let it go for nothing.

Thanks: So if I pretend to order one of my own...the price I see is the base price.......then from there I can compare the same size of another artist similar to mine and take that price and subract it from my base price and see what their mark up is....

you have to log out to see what they pay. otherwise you see the base price, the site assumes your buying stuff for yourself. though there is a pdf, you can also download to get most of the sizes.

the mark up is harder to figure out because the site also takes a percentage. i think its $5 for anything below i think $50 (your mark up), and $5 and 10% for anything above. i think i have that min number wrong. so adding them up may be tricky. but you can get a ball park for it. still its more related to how well you market. like i sell pretty well, my prices are not low. and someone using my prices may not sell, only because their work may not find the same kinds of people. usually its best to look at the sales page, and then find people that have work kind of like yours in theme and method. taking it from anyone may not work out well.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

There's some very helpful information here regarding pricing, so thanks for posting it all. I've only been here a few weeks so don't have much uploaded yet. I've been adjusting my prices after reading this and other threads on the subject, and hope I'm doing a fair job of getting them right.

For now I've settled on 2 different pricing structures, one for my best images and lower prices for the rest.

This is an example of an image set with higher prices...
https://fineartamerica.com/products/floating-beauty-geoff-smith-art-print.html

This is one with lower prices...
https://fineartamerica.com/products/eurasian-jackdaw-geoff-smith-art-print.html

If anyone has any tips or suggestions on how I could do a better job with pricing (or anything else!) I'd be grateful. :)

i keep it all one price because everything you send here should already be your best stuff. more so, if you wanted to change prices down the line you would have to sort it all out, and that's simply a drag. just keep the prices consistent, not much reason to keep things different.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Geoff,

Welcome!

I wouldn't have 2 different price structures, might confuse buyers and honestly, not a great difference in "quality" of images. Prices seem a bit high to me, but here doesn't matter too much, more what people like and just buy. I would also suggest adding time with keywords, as an example, your nice shot of "Morning light", you have the river name in the title, but not in the keywords. Any nicknames, cities, etc. will help with your images getting found.

On my monitor, images also seem a bit bright, so I would check your monitor and see if it's a bit darkish. Here's a tool I use:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/monitor-calibration.htm

Hope this helps,

Rich

Thank you for the replies and the welcome Mike and Rich.

I'll take your advice and stick to one pricing structure in future. I'm still not too sure what those prices should be, but I'll keep looking into that.

I have only been uploading my best work, but I think some of it stands out as being the best of the best, so those are the ones I've priced higher. I'm not honestly happy with a few of them though so I shall delete those shortly.

I'm experienced with selling via a stock agency so keywords are something I'm used to, but I wasn't sure if it works the same here as elsewhere. Titles at the agency I use are also searchable so I don't need to put them in keywords too, but on FAA I guess I need to. My later uploads are keyworded more thoroughly but I'll go through the first ones and do a better job.

Regarding the brightness of my monitor - I'm surprised they seem light on your monitor Rich, as I use a hardware calibrated monitor and haven't been told the same before. It could be that my newer images where I've re-processed them using HDR has made them appear a little too bright? I'm intentionally making them stand out more than my stock images. I'll keep that in mind anyway.

Thanks again for the advice.

start low, see if you sell. if you sell well, increase the prices.

as a general practice, only have the best of the best. if you don't think they are the best, others may be able to spot it as well. don't erase the old, but try to be choosy as you edit new stuff.

stock keywords are different than art keywords. you can have more related to the trade words, but less isolation words. like in stock you might have the term - no people in it. but people looking for people here, will be annoyed to see there are none. if its a tractor you can say farmer, even if there isn't one in there. because its for a farmer. titles can be added, just as they don't add spam to it. like if the title was - i left my heart in san francisco - and the image is of new york, then both the terms heart and san franciso would be spam.

the images are bright. not over exposed so much, but they are stark. not all calibrators are the same. like when i set mine, i don't let it adjust for room brightness and i keep my room bright. your screen might be too dark, or dying and darkening naturally. the brightness is usually around 20 and contrast around 70, at least on my screen.

HDR is a photomethod, its not a filter, and it won't help the image. you can use tone mappers, but if you set things too high, it will flatten the highlight and shadow too much and make it look flat.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Thanks for all the tips and advice Mike, I'll look at my pricing tonight and go through my keywords again. I will also remove a few images but will keep most of them there.

HDR does help my images sometimes when the image has a lot of difference between the highs and lows. Usually Lightroom's shadows and highlights options on a RAW file are enough, but occasionally HDR processing helps a little more and gives an overall more pleasing effect. When I've done basic HDR processing for that purpose, it isn't obvious to anyone that I've done so. However, with FAA I've been experimenting with using HDR to give more of a painterly effect, just to see how I get on with that. It's nice to be able to experiment with my creativity, which is something I can't really do with stock images.

Earlier I darkened 3 of my images and re-uploaded them, to replace the ones I had that I agree were too bright. The rest look fine to me and I've had no complaints in all the years I've been licensing my images professionally. I re-check calibration sometimes to take account of the fact that monitors darken over time. Like yourself, I don't let my software adjust things for room brightness as I don't agree it gets it right! :) It is close to what the software wants though, and the resulting images look perfect when adjusting using the histogram.

Having said all that, I will look into the brightness again just to make sure, and I'll do some comparisons of my images with some from other people that I know have been processed well.

Geoff.

Geoff,

Thanks for the info.

As far as selling stock images and what goes to the "printer' here at FAA, quite a difference. Stock houses will "fix" images before they go to the user, size,color correct,etc. Not so FAA.

First, what they get is what they print or more correctly, won't print. Examples typically are paintings sent, copies of paintings that show a bit of frame or border. They won't print that, if sold. Not sure why they can't fix it, but supposedly, they don't. But also applies to exposure and if they receive a dark or too bright image, won't fix it, just cancel the order or in some cases, let FAA's Tech support know and they tech support will call the artist. Hasn't happened to me, but once I sold an image and a much larger print was ordered and they were kind enough to let me "fix" the image and the sale went through......

I have both Lightroom and Photoshop and have yet had a reason to use the LR package. Most of my work is shot as individual images and not 500 shots all in the same light conditions, like the commercial work I used to do, so LR is gathering dust.....

Rich

Hi Rich,

I would adjust my images if I thought they were wrong, but I've yet to double-check with known "correct" images (I can't from the PC I'm using to type this as it's a poor quality uncalibrated monitor that I don't use for processing). I get my own prints of my own work that are not adjusted by the printers, and they come out exactly as they look on my monitor. Some of my stock sales have been printed and others are put directly on various websites, with no obvious adjustments. The stock agency I use don't do any adjusting themselves, they do nothing to the images at all.

I use LR for all my processing as it's quick and easy to use, but if I'm doing something more complex I'll use PS. I do lots of concepts for stock that wouldn't be suitable for FAA, and many of them take hours to prepare and use several layers in PS.

I'm currently working on pricing and will soon update all my images with the same prices. I've looked through my images again too and have only deleted one of them.

Back to more uploads and promoting after this. :)
Geoff.

[Edit] I just wanted to point out that the images I've darkened and re-uploaded haven't changed on FAA yet, so it probably takes a while for the system to update. [/edit]

Thanks for the reply....
Rich

I am wondering the same thing, Because I really can't afford $30 a year fees, when I don't even make any sales. I noticed today that 16,570 people have viewed my photos, and I only had 4 sales!!! Getting ready to delete my account IF something does NOT change SOON! Have you had any success since you started this discussion???

you have to advertise yourself. 16,000 views since 2012 is very very low.

post things you would buy yourself if you saw it in a store. make sure its not blurry, add more keywords. keep in mind, that if your images are out of focus - they probably won't print it. and you must have keywords. you have an image of a spider, and don't mention spider in the keywords.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

I think the norm here for most people is to sell one occasionally than to sell frequently. Since most will sell one occasionally it's better to price higher than lower. I've not found that lower prices increase volume of sales at all. In fact pricing seems to have exactly zero effect on sales.