Pricing yourself is one of the biggest hurdles every creative professional must overcome.
Why is money so scary? Is it because we don’t like it? Don’t be silly, of course we like money.
It’s because we don’t know our value.
What’s your income?
To come up with a price, look at what the market will pay you based on your education, experience, and skill set. If you don’t know, you can find the median salary within your industry and city at indeed.com/salary.
Here are some examples:
• Architectural Illustrator in NYC: $68,000
• Graphic Designer in Houston: $57,000
• Photographer in San Francisco: $30,000
Let’s say we’re the Architectural Illustrator in NYC making $68,000 per year.
Architectural Illustrator: $68,000 per year. He simply needs to slice off the last 3 zeros from his salary. If you could make $68,000 per year, just pitch $68 per hour as a freelancer. Again, this is a simple starting point, so you can just throw out a price off the top of your head. Always be prepared to negotiate.
As freelancers and creative professionals, we constantly have to negotiate our price. If you learn how to master the art of negotiation…it’ll help you in business and in life. Nothing is written in stone. Your “price” is not pre-determined by the Greek gods. You can pitch the high day rate first, which is $680. If they try to negotiate a lower price, now you know how low you are willing to go: $544. We’ll round up to $545. Don’t be afraid to ask for more.
“In business as in life, you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate””
Remember to have fun! Believe it or not, negotiating gets to be a lot of fun with practice.
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