Selling Prints & Wall Art
I had someone ask if I would sell them some photos for wall art in their home. So I guess the question is, what is a reasonable profit if I had them made up on MPIX or somewhere like that? Obviously size and materials will make a difference in price, but what is a good percentage to charge on top of my costs?
Quote from mattlinardo on July 11, 2023, 11:22 pmI had someone ask if I would sell them some photos for wall art in their home. So I guess the question is, what is a reasonable profit if I had them made up on MPIX or somewhere like that? Obviously size and materials will make a difference in price, but what is a good percentage to charge on top of my costs?
Ah, the age old pricing question. I don't think there's one answer to that, but I'll add my experience and others can chime in as well.
The first time I did this was with friends and family and I barely charged anything on top of the photo. I felt embarrassed to do any more, and felt like I was really only charging for my time to print them for them. Not taking into account anything else.
Since then I've done more, even with family and friends. I'll charge for my time, but also a little on top for the time originally to take the photo, edit, and camera gear used in it. Obviously just a slice of that which would hopefully aggregate if I scaled up sales. For this I used a rate for my time, and compared similar sized art prints from other sellers. I don't consider myself some big name artist obviously, so I am not talking about those kinds of prints. Just if they were to go to a store to buy something, and then charge a little more than that generic stuff.
All that to say: you can probably charge more than you think, and you probably ought to. It's a service and a piece of art just like other art, so don't cheap yourself out and just sell it for the $25 it cost to make the 16x20. If someone was selling hand lettering (my wife does that stuff) they are going to charge for their time and artistic value.
Hopefully that helps somewhat!
