how to charge a client ?

[bhanu]

I found this pst at drawn.ca , it arose soem questions in my mind. the biggest being how much do you ask for if you are not know in the industry and if you are a newcomer among other questions.
Lets discuss.

[_Mario]

I found this pst at drawn.ca , it arose soem questions in my mind. the biggest being how much do you ask for if you are not know in the industry and if you are a newcomer among other questions.
Lets discuss.Your minimum = what you need to survive, your maximum = as much as you can get
their minimum = nothing at all, their maximum = what they can afford

Now find a balance.

Some tips: You will need materials, you would probably want more than minimum wages on average, you need insurance, money for car or public transportation, an apartment/house, a lot of other things, some extra for saving. Do you ever want to go on a vacation? You need electricity, and you will pay taxes. Do you want to take some fire drawing classes or other further education? In the end your work has to pay for all of this, and other things that I didn't even write down. And you only have a certain number of hours in a day/week.

Now get a piece of paper and a pencil and use your math skills to solve this equation. That should give you a basic hourly rate that you can work with. When you work for them it should not force you into debt.

[Magic Man]

I just posted this in Art Addict's thread, but it applies here too:

I don't particularly like putting a set value on something in a set way, because those averages you see in books like the GAG books and others like it should only be used as a guideline. (This refers to set price ranges in some art business books...)

Truth of the matter is that they are averages of companies who are likely in very different circumstances from you, they probably have a great deal of rent to pay, they might have staff, they might have high overheads, etc etc.

The best way to figure out what to charge is to base it on your hourly and estimate, certainly adding costs depending on the types of rights they want as well as additional costs such as revisions, etc.

Make sure everything is based on something and that is the best way to come up with a justifiable hourly rate. If you're just starting out, your hourly will generally be less unless your work is rediculously outstanding or niche.

Your hourly is dependant on you annual projected income, now I'll give you and example:

Okay, you want to make say $30,000 clear a year (lets not worry about taxes for now just keep it simple), you need to make this amount above your operational costs.

Lets assume your operational costs are about $5000pa.

In all, you need to bill $35,000 pa for your first year.

Split this over however many weeks you intend to work, lets say for easy calculations, 50 weeks. So you need to earn about $700 per week to cover overheads and meet projected take home salary.

Figure out the no. of hours you want per week as billable - this tends to alter with time, and you'll be spending far more time per week in your first year doing promotion and looking for leads. Although this doesn't mean you'll be spending less time on billable - thats right, you're going to work more time to establish yourself.

Anyway, say you figure out you want to spend around 30 hours per week, in order to meet your projecton budget you need to charge a sum of around $23.00 per hour (just remember, we're not bothering about taxes in this example).

So that is a fairly easy example of hour you find your hourly, then, using experience you will need to give your customer a quote for how many hours you need to charge for the work, assuming you include thumbnails approval, revisions, actual production work, etc, it could be any number of hours, just make sure you break down the time for the client - so they know what you're charging for, this is called building value, de-mystifying the process for them and making them understand it is actual work and not just waving a magic wand and suddenly it appears.

If you explain yourself and your final charge in this way, you'll get a lot less balking of the price, and set yourself apart from other illustrators who think that such information is none of the client's business.

Anyway, back to the example, say you figure the hours it will take is 10 hours, well, you should charge 10 x $23.00, so thats $230.00, this is just for the work alone. Then, you decide how much the rights are worth and add a percentage on top of that, making sure you justify the amount as well.

If you think that they will likely use the image another 10 times, and the re-use fee might be say 30% (this can be an arbitrary no. that you feel is reflective of your work - but I NEVER use above 50%) of the original price for construction then the re-use charge per one time is $69.00 (30% of $230.00). Multiply this by 10 = $690 for the rights.

So total price for them to purchase rights would be $690.00 + $230.00 = $920.00

Thats just an example, you'd need to tailor it to your situation, but this is the basis for all my commissions, I've never thought that a flat price is useful, in fact, I think its completely useless because it is baseless and unquantifiable and likely to stop a lot of potential customers in their track if you just give them an unexplicable price.

This is a major thing in the illustration industry, too many people have no idea how to price their work, nor do they have any business strategy and accumen, make no bones about it, if you're doing work for other people, you are a business, and you have a duty to both yourself and your client to proceed in a professional manner - anything less and you're a bad business and bad businesses eventually fail because the market wont support them.

Hope this helps.

m

[Rich Pellegrino]

Great post Magic Man. It is always a dance when it comes to negotiating. Do you ever run into the problem of losing clients? What do you do then? Bend, lower your price, say the hell with it? This is always the hardest part of a commission for me.

[Magic Man]

Great post Magic Man. It is always a dance when it comes to negotiating. Do you ever run into the problem of losing clients? What do you do then? Bend, lower your price, say the hell with it? This is always the hardest part of a commission for me.

Thanks mate.

Knowing when to bend and when to walk away is a client-by-client basis, you need to take into account a lot of factors. For instance, is the client a good person who seems to be a bit scarce on funds? Is the job creatively challenging? Is it not? Do you think that you need a piece like that in your portfolio anyway - if so it might be worth it getting paid something than nothing. Do you think if you charge a good price now, will the client be more inclined to come back for more later?

Ultimately, it depends on the circumstances surrounding the client, knowing when to bend and when to fold is always a skill, but you'll get there in time. Unfortunately, you can't be told when to do what, you'll have to learn that through experience.

m

[bhanu]

wow thanks for the words Magic,
yeah most times you see that an artist has just given you a couple of options to pay them. Like 100 4for a figure ,150$ for a scenery stuff like that. Teh client is not able to figure out how he is pricing somehting. your method , on first sight is kinda difficult , but its definitely clear. It makes an artists work mroe transparent.
aND what about comics? you arer also working on a comic right , so how you charge your client then?

[Magic Man]

I'm charging a flat rate that is lower than what I would normally charged, on the basis that I liked the material, the client's character and that I always wanted to do work for the comic book industry and figure that this is a great way in.

I typically spend a lot more time on the sequentials than required, but I'm also being paid quite a decent amount, so its not too shabby. I balance the lower pay rate with flexibility and a vast amount of art control over the pieces.

m

[Rich Pellegrino]

Magic Man, thanks again for the in depth response. It really helps me out since I'm just beginning to get my feet wet in this industry. You mentioned balancing low pay with flexibility and a big amount of creative control. I always love more flexibility and especially creative control but how would I go about doing this. You can PM me if I'm getting way off topic. Did I mention that cover you did was great? It is and thanks for the progress shots. Great texture on that as well.