The new year is approaching fast. School visit invitations are ramping up – but so is your blood pressure. Do you feel as if you are constantly justifying your school visit fees to yourself and others? Do you second guess whether your services are priced to best reflect the content — and motivation — you deliver?
If you’re struggling with the fees you charge for your school visits, read this blog post by Melissa Dinwiddie, “5 Art Pricing Lessons I Learned the Hard Way.” Replace the word “art” with “school visit presentation” and you will have some of the best advice ever about pricing. Be sure to read the comments from readers as they share great advice, too. And when you’re done, leave a comment here to let us know what you think of this.
This guest post appeared “The Abundant Artist” blog by Cory Huff. My thanks to Elizabeth Dulemba for bringing this to my attention.
What a helpful post! I learned the first lesson the hard way and am working on learning the remaining four. Thanks for the encouragement to keep trying!
I loved Melissa Dinwiddie’s advice, too, Carrie: “If you like what I do, this is what I charge. If you don’t want to pay it, you don’t have to buy it.” But for those of us who deliver services rather than a physical product, the following could be our mantra: “I’m confident in what I deliver. This is what I charge. If you don’t want to pay it, you don’t have to hire me.”
Thanks for the link to The Abundant Artist blog!
You’re welcome, Cory. Your blog is terrific!
WHY is it so difficult for artists/authors to “ask” for payment for their services? Perhaps because we’re peace-desiring introverts who don’t like to invite conflicts when we want to please others. I’ve done many more free school visits than paid, but figured it was part of my learning curve. Must get some boldness to go with my confidence that what I offer is awesome.
Hi Sandy – I think the difficulty is that creative people forget to use both sides of the brain — forgetting that there’s a business side to the work we do, and that if we don’t pay attention to this, we won’t have the resources to continue to make art or write books. I see that you’ve written about historic topics. Learning to research a topic, document your sources and shape your discoveries into a readable narrative takes skill. These skills are kids are required to learn in school. These are skills that business expect their employees to apply. Think if it! You know the “secret” of how to use these skill to your advantage.
We artists and writers love our jobs and get great satifaction from what we do. But because we actually enjoy our work is not a reason to not value what we do. It’s about attitude in the end. And the more that creative people give away their services, the less people value those services