How Much Is Your Work Worth?

Today I want to talk about the hardest part of being an illustrator: putting a price on your work.

I can’t exactly call myself an expert. I’ve been working as an illustrator for twenty years now, and I still go completely blank when somebody asks,

“So… how much do you charge for an illustration?”

So no, I don’t have a good answer.

What I do have is a few life hacks for answering the impossible question, “What am I worth?” without a thousand hours of therapy, registration and SMS verification.

 

Life hack #1

Ask professionals.

Fifteen years ago, when my very first commission suddenly fell out of the sky — a bunch of mice for a Canadian website about children’s books — I immediately ran to ask my friend Vitya, who’s a translator.

Why?!

Well, he’s a freelancer too. Surely he must know something about mice.

Turns out Vitya didn’t know all that much about mice, but he gave me some advice anyway. Thanks, Vitya.

Later I discovered something infinitely more useful: pricing recommendations from illustrators’ associations.

For years I happily used the average illustration rates from Germany… from 2005… which the wonderful Jana Frank had published on her blog. Bless her.

Now I’m trying, with growing disbelief, to apply the pricing recommendations of the Swedish Illustrators’ Association to my own work.

And somehow I still can’t quite believe that actual living people are willing to pay that kind of money.

Especially now, when there’s an entire ocean of free alternatives.

 

Life hack #2

Ask AI.

As we’ve all noticed by now, that ocean of free alternatives isn’t only useful for making pictures.

You may feel awkward asking people for money.

AI doesn’t, it’s a digital tin can.

I asked ChatGPT about two projects I wasn’t sure how to price.

It suggested charging twice as much as I had planned for one project, and five times as much for the other.

I wrote to both clients.

Both agreed immediately.

Very nice.

That paid ChatGPT subscription earned its keep for the next three years in a single afternoon.

 

Life hack #3

Raise your prices in summer with the brilliant plan of, “Maybe everyone will finally leave me alone and I’ll get some rest.”

For years nobody left me alone.

People just kept ordering and ordering.

Naturally, when autumn came, I never lowered my prices again.

Although I have a feeling this trick has finally stopped working.

Actually, I learned it from a colleague who was also my boss back in my previous previous life, when I worked in a school.

She told me that whenever she really didn’t feel like giving private lessons, she’d simply charge four times her normal rate and announce that the lesson would be twenty minutes instead of forty.

“And they still agree,” she said gloomily.

 

Life hack #4

Talk to a therapist about your money issues.

To be honest, it didn’t help me one bit.

Maybe, as usual, I just wasn’t trying hard enough.

What *did* help a little was realizing that underpricing isn’t just my own problem.

One person who’s happy to draw absolutely anything for pennies can shake up the whole market. Everyone else ends up suffering from their excessive generosity.

For years the Swedish Illustrators’ Association wouldn’t let me join because they thought I was underpricing my work.

Maybe they were right.

Eventually I managed to wear them down and squeeze my way in.

Immediately afterwards, a respectable traditional Swedish publisher got in touch and asked if I’d illustrate a children’s book for free.

Well, hello.

 

Life hack #5

Calculate your prices in something other than money.

For example, one illustrated book is roughly equal to the price of replacing the awning on our balcony after a storm tore it off.

WHAAAAAT?!

Or there was the time somebody owed me around €400.

I was just about ready to let it go.

Then I converted it into fifty kilos of nectarines in my head…

…and suddenly found the strength to fight again.

That’s my top five, Now it’s your turn —

Share your own pricing life hacks! I’m still very, very far from mastering this whole thing, so I’m sure they’ll be useful.

Just this Friday I spent two hours drawing.

During the first hour I made one illustration. The client accepted it immediately and paid me 1,200 Swedish kronor (about $130).

During the second hour I drew several new versions of a raccoon for a Fiverr client. Thirty dollars before Fiverr’s commission.

Of course they didn’t like any of them.

Now they want to jump on Zoom for another hour, no doubt, to polish my imperfect understanding of the assignment.

The funny thing is, getting the price right once doesn’t teach you anything.

It’s hard to believe that the person torturing raccoons for the price of one and a half pizzas is the very same person who, back in 2013, sold the rights to an already existing sheep — a drawing made of exactly three lines — for $1,000.