How much… Wat kost… Quanta costa…?
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Besides accounting and sales, I find pricing one of the hardest things about entrepreneurship. Of course we all want to get what we deserve. The creative profession is often undervalued; a bit of fun drawing, or pressing a button here and there and it’s done. If only it were that simple. The creative profession is hard work, your creative mind never stops running. You can’t turn off creativity—until you have a deadline, and then suddenly, everything stops just when you need bright ideas the most.
So when I get another DM with just the direct question: ‘How much do you charge for…?’, I start sighing. A lot of time, blood, sweat and tears, I quietly mumble to myself, ‘That’s what it costs.’ I love my job, I really do, just not the business part. Maybe that’s why my dad always jokingly said: “You don’t have a business, you have a hobby!” To which I always replied that my ‘hobby’ still paid the rent and put bread on the table. With hagelslag!
Sometimes, I just want to tell them to pay me whatever they think it’s worth, just to skip the haggling over price. But that also feels very uncomfortable. I experienced that myself recently. Because I still had a lot of neck and head pain after the car accident, I booked an appointment with a friend with a massage practice. Even though she was my friend, I genuinely wanted to pay her, despite always keeping her website up to date as a favor whenever she needed help. After the massage I asked how much I had to pay her. “Just pay what you think it’s worth,” she said. I probably had a very confused look on my face because she continued, ‘Not paying anything is okay too!’ she shouted when I was already at the end of the street. Because I felt uncomfortable about it for a long time, I wouldn’t ask her for another massage anytime soon. It was an eye-opener because I still do far too much work for clients without sending an invoice. There are clients who also feel very uncomfortable about this and therefore are afraid to ask me to do small changes on, for example, their websites.
However, let’s go back to the original question, how much does something like that cost? People often ask for my hourly rate. “75 euros excluding VAT” I politely say, but what can you do with that information? How many hours does it take to create a logo, a book, a website or an illustration?
Let’s use an illustration as an example. I charge $195 for a children’s book illustration. That doesn’t sound like much, right? But when you need an average of sixteen illustrations, you end up with an amount of 3120 dollars. That suddenly sounds like a lot. A quick way to get rich. Let’s be real here, how much time does that actually cost me?
Let’s stick to averages. When I’m asked to illustrate a book, I naturally start by reading the manuscript (which takes time). The author often has some ideas about style (during the meeting, which takes time), so I use that information to make sketches. The sketching process can take one to two weeks on average. I send the sketches, combined with the text, to the author for review. Sometimes there are corrections, which takes extra time. Once the sketches are approved, I start creating the actual illustration in colour. That takes one to two days on average, or eight to sixteen hours. All in all, I spend at least 10-20 hours on each illustration…for 195 euros…that’s 9.75 per hour…Just think about that for a moment.
I love my job. Really. But pricing? It remains a hassle!