The Thriving Christian Artist
The Thriving Christian Artist
420 | 5-Minute Mentoring: How Do I Know When It's Time To Raise My Prices?
“Matt, how do I know when it’s time to raise my prices?”
This is a great question - and one I get all the time.
After all, setting prices for your art involves a lot of different factors that can be hard to juggle - market comparisons, cost of living, your time and effort, and even your own sense of self-worth, to an extent.
To help you take the guesswork out of raising your prices, I’ve come up with three markers for artists to look out for, and I’m spelling them out in this episode of 5-Minute Mentoring. Take a listen, and keep your eyes open for them to come into your life. When you start to recognize these signposts, you’ll know just what to do.
And if you want a deeper dive into how and when to raise your prices, check out my book, “How To Price Your Art: Pricing with Confidence for Sales & Profit,” which is available on Amazon! https://www.amazon.com/How-Price-Your-Art-Confidence/dp/B097XBP733
====================
When you’re ready to stop striving and start thriving, here are 4 other ways I can help:
1️⃣ Get my FREE Guide, “5 Biggest Mistakes Artists Make When Pricing Their Art”
Struggling to price your art in a way that feels authentic to you and your faith - but still makes you money? Make sure you’re not making any of these mistakes! Download here ➡️ https://thrive.matttommeymentoring.com/5-biggest-mistakes-when-pricing-art
2️⃣ Learn a New Framework for Living: Watch this free 60-minute, on-demand workshop I created called “How to Start Thriving as the Artist God Created You to Be,” where I share a simple, Kingdom-based framework for living that anyone can use starting today. Click here for details and to enroll! ➡️ https://matttommeymentoring.mykajabi.com/ew-optin-how-to-start-thriving
3️⃣ Connect with God: Discover how to connect with the Lord and discover His intention for you and your art in His Kingdom in my course, How to Connect with God to Create & Sell Your Art. Get more details here ➡️ https://thrive.matttommeymentoring.com/how-to-connect
4️⃣ Ready to truly thrive? Join the Created to Thrive Artist Mentoring Program to discover how to build your art business and live the abundant life Jesus promised you as an artist in His Kingdom! Click here for details and to enroll! ➡️ https://www.matttommeymentoring.com/artmentor.html
Thanks for listening! You can also watch this podcast on YouTube at youtube.com/matttommeymentoring. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode!
Connect with Matt online: https://thrive.matttommeymentoring.com/stay-connected
Fuel Your Creative Calling with Weekly Encouragement
Join thousands of Christian artists who are growing in faith, creativity, and purpose.
Subscribe to The Thriving Christian Artist Weekly and receive powerful, faith-filled content every week—designed to encourage your heart, spark your creativity, and equip you to walk boldly in your God-given calling as an artist.
👉 Click here. It’s free. It’s faith-filled. And it’s just for you.
If you've been struggling to know when to raise your prices, I'm going to give you three markers today that are going to tell you exactly when to raise your prices here today on 5-Minute Mentoring. Have you ever wanted to have someone in your life who you could ask real questions about your art, your business, and even your walk with the Lord? Well, that's exactly what we do every Friday here on 5-Minute Mentoring, where I answer one question from one of my awesome podcast listeners in order to help you start really thriving as the artist you know God created you to be. Hey my friends, so glad you're with me today on 5-Minute Mentoring. You know, if you are an artist and you're out there in the marketplace, you know that you're always asking, should my prices be higher? Should my prices be lower? I don't know when should I raise them? How much should I raise them by? All the different questions that we're always playing with ourself and with our mind, you know, just being like, I don't know when to do this. Listen, I want to take some of the mystery away today from you when it comes to raising your prices and giving you some real clear markers that you you can begin to recognize signposts, if you will, along the journeys that will tell you, hey, it's time to raise your prices, all right? So get your pencil out. Number one would be if you are way outside of the market norm for where you are in your journey as an artist, your career, and the work that you're doing, the quality of work that you're producing. If other artists that are of the same quality and level and same place in their career, if they are selling their work for much higher or even much lower, but usually they're selling it for much higher. If you're way out of that range, it's time to get into that range. And that may seem like a big step for you. And most of that's probably in your head, all right? It's maybe a confidence issue. But I want to encourage you, you got to be within that market norm, unless you've been successfully selling your work for years and years and years, and you have a reputation such that will allow you to command a higher price. Thankfully, many artists get to that. I got to that in my art career where I could charge more than others were just because of who I was and what I was producing. But most people don't start out that way. So you need to make sure you're in that range of normal. Number two, a really big telltale sign that you need to raise your prices is that you're not able to make enough money to, number one, cover your expenses. Number two, pay yourself a living And number three, have enough to invest back in your business to grow. Those three things are really important. And if you're not charging enough for your work in order for those three things to happen, then either you're way out of range when it comes to what you're charging or you're not making and selling enough work. And both of those can be at play in that. But again, if you're within the normal range of what professional artists are selling their work for in your region, in your area, based on what you're charging, where you are in your career, the quality of work you're doing, all that sort of thing. You should be able to do those things. But if you're not, again, you're not able to pay your bills, meet your expenses, pay yourself, and also have enough to reinvest back in your business, you need to consider raising your prices. Now, thirdly, a really easy telltale sign to know that you need to raise your prices is if your work is selling too quickly. If you're going to shows or sharing your work on social media or on your website, and man, every time you throw something up there, it's just selling like boom, boom, boom. Guaranteed. You're leaving money on the table. Guaranteed, you're not charging enough for your work. If you're getting overwhelmed because you're selling too much work, and I know you might be saying, whoever said that? Said no artist ever? Yeah, people do that all the time. I hear that a lot, actually, from emerging artists who are starting to get some success with their work, starting to build some clientele and followers, and what's happening is they're still charging the prices that they were when they were a beginner, but they're doing a lot better work, and people are really liking it. liking it, connecting. And so, man, they recognize, hey, this guy's not charging. This woman's not charging what she should be. This is a deal. I'm going to get this right now. And so a way to sort of stem the flow, if you will, of too many sales is to raise your prices. It's just basically supply and demand because you always want to have a little bit of pushback from the market. You always want to have those people that say, oh man, I would love your work, but it's so expensive. I might have to save up for that. You want that because that is, you know, increasing the desirability of your work, increasing the perception of your work, all those things. And it's letting you create better work for a higher price, which gives you more time in the studio and gives you more ability to spend time on your work, which we all want to be doing as artists, spend time in the studio. All right. Listen, there's a lot more that I'd love to tell you about how to price your art. I actually wrote a book about it last year called How to Price Your Art. Imagine that. It's a super simple little book, quick read. I've actually got a little course that goes along with it. You can pick the book up on Amazon. You can pick the course up right here in the show notes. And it's a 90 minute ish course that will walk you through the book. Plus a whole lot more. You'll get access to my pricing calculator, which will take all the guesswork out of pricing your work and get you on the way to charging enough where you can not only pay your expenses, but make a living and be able to have enough to invest back in your business to do the thing that God's called you to do. I love you, my friend. Remember until next time you were created to thrive. Bye.