Make More Money as a Graphic Designer or Artist with This One Easy Step
Vol. 063
Make More Money as a Graphic Designer or Artist with This One Easy Step.
Seems like click bait, but it’s not — this one easy change will allow you to make more on your next project.
A quick bite:
As self employed graphic designers, artists and creative entrepreneurs, pricing our work is difficult. However, there is one small thing that you can start doing that can have huge implications for the amount of money you make… you ready? You need to ask for more money. Yup. That’s it.
Continue reading below…
Do you wish you were making more money as a freelance graphic designer or creative entrepreneur?
I can relate!
I struggled for a while to land projects that were a few hundred dollars. Then, I got there!
I then struggled to get projects for a few thousand dollars. But, eventually, I prevailed!
Then, there’s the infamous 5-figure project. It felt literally impossible! But, with time, I hit it!.. And I’m here to say that you can absolutely do the same through simply changing a few small things in how you price or present yourself.
The main reason you’re not making $1,000’s (or $1,000’s more) for your creative work is almost certainly one of two reasons:
You’re simply not asking for the money (often because of your own imposter syndrome or due to a lack of understanding of the value you’re creating).
You have yet to prove your value to your prospect.
A few ways to make more money as a self employed creative:
Ask for more money
Know what other creatives are charging
Position yourself as an expert
Show the work
Be professional
Master your own process
Goldilocks pricing method
Ask for more money.
It’s as simple as that — you just need to be charging more and asking for more.
You can’t expect your clients to come to you and pay that magic number that you want to be making. You need to confidently state your rate, and if they can’t afford you, they either try to negotiate (common) or they straight up walk away (less common).
For years I struggled to land projects for more than $2,000. Almost everything that came through had a budget that was under $1,000 — which is great, but my ambitions to do more strategic and impactful work far surpassed these budgets.
At some point I realized an ugly truth — I wasn’t making more than $1,000 or projects because I wasn’t asking for it. Simple as that. Most of my prospects were coming to me for logo design, simple branding packages or small hand lettering projects, and when I’d ask what their budget was they’d either give me a figure less than $1,000 (and I’d accept) or they’d say “well, we’re not sure how much branding work costs — how much do you charge.” And I’d say something like “My logo design packages are between $800–$2000 depending on what you want.” I suggested that the most premium version of my offering was the rate I wanted. In reality, I should have used $2,000 as my LOW rate if that’s what I wanted to make.
How much more should you be charging as a graphic designer or artist?
This is slightly complicated, as that depends on a handful of factors: where you live, what your skill set is, how much experience you have, etc. I wrote an article about charging your worth as well as hourly pricing vs project pricing.
If you’re trying to make more money for your creative work, I consider trying the simple stair step method when you’re sending out proposals. This is the incremental price increase with each project. For example, if you’re currently charging $500 for a logo design, go for $750 or even $1,000 next time. If you land it, go for $2,000 or $3,500 next time!
When quoting higher, be sure there is associated value with your work. I.e., if you’re 1 year out of school, you probably shouldn’t be trying to charge $20,000 for branding projects.
Additionally, be sure to confidently state what the services you’re offering are, why they cost what they cost, and be sure you can reference other projects with a similar scope of work (doesn’t matter if was free work, lower paid work, or personal work — your client just wants to feel confident that you can deliver enough value).
Increase your prices until you start to get some no’s. At that point in time, you have the opportunity to negotiate your rate, walk away, or (the best option in my opinion) adjust your deliverables or scope of work to cater to their budget. I.e., less work for their lesser budget.
Four-ish years ago I was charging ~$2,500 for logo design packages. On a project I just asked for $7,500 because it was a project I didn’t want to do — they said yes. My head almost exploded. I literally just had to ask…
Resource:
There are plenty of resources: blogs, books, people on instagram, youtube, etc. where you can see what the creative industry is charging. Knowing what people above and below you charge is hugely helpful — you can use their rates to establish your own and be sure you’re moving in the right direction. Graphic Artists Guild Handbook to Pricing & Ethical Guidelines is a great starting resource for pricing all things creative. I’ve used this book to help me price logo design and branding packages, typeface design, magazine cover illustration, packaging design and so much more.
Sometimes you need to prove why you're worth the extra money you're asking for. Let's talk about how we can do that...
Prove you’re an expert and worth the rates you want to charge.
Candidly, proving your value or worth takes time. You simply need experience in your profession to look (and, oftentimes, to offer) valuable. However, here’s still some pretty straight forward steps you can take towards establishing your value prior to ever interacting with your client.
An expert is someone with a comprehensive or authoritative knowledge on a particular topic. You may not feel like you’re “an expert” graphic designer, but YOU DO have experiences, perspectives and views that others do not. Start talking about them!
Everyone in this industry is at a different point along their journey, and it’s very likely that understanding your experiences would be helpful to another. Simply posting/interacting with others on Instagram or interacting/commenting in facebook groups/posts is a great starting point.
Offer your value, give your insight, ask questions. Doing this helps you gain confidence, gets better at talking about creative work and with this you will slowly begin assert to yourself as a prominent voice — even an expert — in your industry.
Experts get paid more, get more referrals, and are trusted for what they do. Become an expert and get paid more.
Show your client that you can do the work.
This is kinda a no brainer. If you want to charge $10,000 for branding, you need to have a case study or portfolio piece for a project that has (or looks like it has) a $10,000 value.
Haven’t done a big project like this yet? Take an older project that you’ve already completed (or create a passion project), build it out as a robust case study and talk about your process. Show all of what you would show in a project that you’d charge $10k for.
Yall know that I feel sometimes we need to prove our worth before we get the work.
Be professional.
If you want to be charging thousands of dollars for creative work, you need to have your shit together. Learn to speak the business talk — when someone asks for a scope of work, you better know what that means. If a client wants to understand what your process is, you better have a dialed process and response for them.
Spending time reading blogs, books, listening to podcasts, and googling on a semi-regular basis will help you with this. You’ll learn more about the business of creativity… This newsletter is here for exactly this purpose!
Be a master of your own creative process.
Learn how long your projects take you. This is huge. Use a free service like Toggl to track your time for everything you do. This way, when someone comes to you asking “How much is a logo?” you can reference past projects to understand exactly how long it takes you, and give a rate accordingly.
Time is money. We’ve all heard it. The better you are with understanding how you spend your time and how long things take, the more money you’ll be able to make.
The goldilocks method for creative pricing
When pricing, allow for your ideal price to fall in the middle of a range that you propose. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right.
Let’s say you want to make $3,000 for a logo project. When you quote your client, give a 3-tier range: a $2,500 option, a $3,000 option, and a $4,500 option.
In this particular example, the low and middle are so close in price, that it would be silly of them to not pay a proportionally small amount more to land the middle tier. The high tier is 33% more than the middle, so it will likely push them easily into that middle $3,000 option. And, if they take the high road, (that’s a huge win!) and you know that you should raise your rates.
Buyers generally don’t want “the cheapest” or the “most expensive.” Simply putting a lower and higher number around your ideal number will make your client more likely to purchase. Read more about the Goldilocks Pricing Method.
Tip:
When talking about pricing, confidence is everything. Think of the cliche of the hot cheerleader or quarterback that everyone wanted to date in highschool...why are they so desirable? A lot of that desire is directly tied to their confidence. They seemed like they didn’t need you, and that was part of the allure!
Your clients will want to work with you more if you’re confident about your work and how your price your work.
Honestly, pricing and money are annoying. It’s scary, it’s seemingly uncharted, and people don’t really talk about it. I’m hopeful that this article makes this process bit more approachable and manageable for ya — let me know if you learned anything new here!
