Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Contact the Artist for Pricing Information


Bright Spot, 10.5 x 10.x", $50.00

Why?

Is it a secret? Are you embarrassed to be asking so much? Or so little? Do you think it is rude to put a price on your work? Are you going to ask a higher price of someone? “Say, I don’t know you or like you, so I’m going to have you pay, um, let’s see, um, 50% more than someone I know and/or like”.

Suppose other businesses did this.

Say I want to buy some shipping envelopes. I get online and find what I want and discover I have to contact the company to get a price. What would you do? I would probably search for another company. Why would this be much different for artists?

Sure, your work is unique and I (probably) won’t find anything else like it. But, what if I contact you and find out that I could buy a SUV for the same price. I would be a little embarrassed. Would you really want to embarrass those who bother to contact you? If I think, just by your not posting your prices, that I would not be able to afford your work, I’m probably going to surf on and look at other art. I might want to come back to your site, but by now I’ve looked at so many other sites, I cannot remember your name.

Oh well.

There is so much artwork crowding the internet these days. Why wouldn’t you want to give prospective buyers all of the information they could want?

And just maybe your art IS affordable. But so is the artwork of the next artist whose work I fall in love with. You’ve made me contact you for pricing. Maybe I did attempt to contact you but have not heard from you yet. This other artist did not make me contact them. I like both artists equally well. Guess whose work I will probably purchase.

5 comments:

jason said...

thank you! Exactly how I feel too.

This is true for everything with me....antique stores...garage sales...grocery stores with things not priced... stores with prices not labeled clearly.
They lose my sale every time.

p said...

i'm with you on this.
i do have some pieces with no price (my furniture), but no one wants it so who cares.

Blue Sky Dreaming said...

Good point and well said. I began with putting on my prices but after seeing others without prices, I felt I was possibly too pushy yet now I'm rethinking my original idea, especially now that I'm working towards a website...enough, the work needs prices. Thank you for this post.

jason said...

oh, and p.s.:
happy belated birthday!
yeay!

Francesca said...

I agree, it annoys me too and I can't see any good reason for it.

Love that little fish quilt, all my favourite colours!