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Print Sales - Profit Margins?
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Firstly thanks for any advice some members on here have already given, but please comment below to add to this thread for other people hoping to do the same thing. :-D
I have recently had four of my prints made by a friend of a friend. This guy is a photographer and has a professional printer, you know the ones with something like 12 cartridges! He has very kindly printed four of my paintings and I have spend quite some time sat with him trying to colour match everything with numerous test prints for each painting. We obviously needed my originals for this process.
I previously scanned my paintings at home for him and cleaned up the background prior to emailing it. The problem I had was with my work being very much illustrative, the scanned image also scanned the texture of the paper I had done the painting on. This then printed out with the painting. Because I wanted my paintings printed on an A4 size but maintaining the correct size of my work which is around A5. This then placed the print in a box of textured paper that was originally scanned, leaving the extra A4 space clean white paper. So I have spend many hours cleaning up the background with PaintShop Pro which is similar to PhotoShop. I know complicated but that's just me! :-)
It was great to not be charged a setup fee which can be around £50-£70 per painting to be scanned prior to any prints being done. The prints as mentioned are done with excellent lightfast inks on a 250gsm Musco paper so very good quality! This can also make the prints more expensive.
I know it sounds like an excellent situation to be in, however the problem I have is his lack of commitment and speed. He is very unreliable and is never in any hurry to do anything, so for now I intend to get him to do as many prints as possible whilst I have his facilities.
Each A4 print costs £4.50 which is good compared to the price of the top notch paper he is using. However this can increase the sale price.
What I need to know is what kind of mark-up do artist looks for as an average for any prints they have done? Working out a price for them can be very tricky depending on where you will be selling your prints. For example Ebay is a good place for selling prints but you need to allow the charges for Ebay, PayPal and postage fees onto the cost of the print with a reasonable mark-up for yourself.
These fees can seriously knock down the profit you will make.
I've checked other ebay sellers and the average print price is around £10, where for me this would me very little profit on a sale with all the usual charges as mentioned above.
So would you seek a 100% mark-up or a lesser one say making £2-3 per print? Being greedy could render the prints unsaleable so I feel it's best to start high and if they don't sell bring down the price by a pound each time you relist them. This obviously knocks down the profit but a little profit is better than non and the prints sitting in the cupboard at home.
You need to get your work out there and hope you may become a little more well known as a online artist seller.
Anyway, I recommend only getting say four paintings Giclee printed at first with 10 of each print. See how they sell and then this gives you a bit of breathing space for testing the water first.
I am also very new to this part of our painting hobby and have yet to see how it pans out...fingers crossed it will be worth while.
I have also thought about going down the line of cards and other merchandise but I feel one step at a time, adding a little extra as i go along, not just that it costs quite a bit to get everything going in the first place! However you have to spend it to hopefully make it! (lol)
Paul
www.devonartist.co.uk
