April 2011
Pricing your work may be one of the hardest things about your business for many of you. You're not alone. Below, Carolyn Edlund talks about problems with both overpricing and underpricing your work.
Have you listed any items in the FNO Marketplace yet? Now you can sell your artwork online through FNO! It's free to list your items, complete fee information is listed here.
As always, if you have any particular topics you'd like to see covered here, or if you'd like to contribute an article to the FNO newsletters - drop me a line!
Happy crafting!
Carrie
FNO Newsletter Editor
Are Your Prices Unrealistic?
by Carolyn Edlund
Overpricing
Many years ago, a certain art professor showed his portfolio slides to a class I attended, as a sample of how to put together a body of work for presentation. His beautiful ceramic perfume bottles were quite impressive and skillfully made. Along with the images were prices for each item, which averaged in the range of $600 each, which was his example of pricing to the class.
Not long ago, I happened to speak with an artist who by chance got the same talk from the same art professor with the same slides. She, however, had the presence of mind to raise her hand and ask "How many of these perfume bottles have you sold?" The answer: Zero.
Underpricing
In contrast, I once exhibited at a retail fair where the craftswoman in an adjacent booth was selling handmade jewelry using polymer material. Customers were swarming her booth, snapping up unbelievable deals on handmade work. Her prices were too good to be true, and it was baffling whether she was sneaking into a craft fair with imported buy/sell merchandise or just didn't know how to price.
Curious, I befriended her and asked her frankly how she could afford to sell her work at such low prices. She confessed she wanted so badly to sell her jewelry that she charged almost nothing for her time. Read more
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