When you’re starting out as an artist, one of the early struggles is how to price your work. No one seems to be able to give you the right formula, there’s a muddle of ‘how tos’ online, it seems everyone has an unhelpful opinion. Sadly, it means many incredibly talented people under charge.  

My name is Melle Smith-Haimona. I’m a Ngunnawal woman, mother of two and have been working as an artist professionally for about seven years.  

Like a lot of young artists, pricing my work was a huge struggle. With kids and life in the mix I could never pin down my time to build an hourly rate like Google told me I needed to do. Family and friends who’ve never worked in the industry told me my prices were too high. Some works took weeks to complete and others I could knock out in a day, but one wasn’t necessarily ‘better’ than the other and in the end, I was still completely lost.  

How I find my ‘gut number’  

So, my gift to you today is to help you to try and find your ‘gut’ number. You don’t need an hourly rate, but it is helpful to keep in mind things like materials, roughly how long it took, how many years it took you to become this skilled or fast and the story or cultural knowledge that you’re sharing in this work.  

To find your gut number, there are three simple things you may wish to do. First, think what is the least you would accept for it? This is the lowest number you would take before you felt uncomfortable about letting it go. Then, what is the most you would take for it? Again, the highest number you would accept before you started to feel uncomfortable. Now, I believe your gut number is a number somewhere in the middle of those two. Seven years into my career this is still how I price my work today.  

It’s a way of pricing for me that’s more than just hours and materials. It’s made up of my life experience, my story and skill, how I got here and most importantly, what this piece of art means to my soul. 

Using this method when I started out made it all feel a lot easier and while the learning curve on everything is really high for us creatives, knowing your worth and charging accordingly shouldn’t be. 

As with every article on TomorrowMoney, this article is not personal financial advice.