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Free Illustration Pricing Calculator

pricing

I developed a pricing calculator for illustrators, and it can help you learn how to price your art.

It’s free to use, you can try the illustration pricing calculator here

I’m an illustration agent, so I price up a lot of illustration projects, as you can imagine. The truth is, getting a good sense of pricing comes with experience, but as you’re working on gaining that experience, this pricing calculator can help guide you.

There are so many variables to consider with pricing illustration projects that a calculator like this one can only take you so far, but used in combination with other resources, it can help you find the right price range for your projects.

 


If you want to seriously get to grips with pricing illustration work you can try my course, which is a comprehensive guide to pricing, licensing and increasing your value as an illustrator.

Check out: Master Illustration Pricing


 

Here’s how the pricing calculator works: 

 

Step 1. 

Add in your monthly business expenses.

(You can change the currency to EUR, GBP or USD)

  •  Studio Rent
  •  Utilities
  •  Materials
  •  Anything else that you pay for in your freelance business

Like this:

 

Step 2. 

Add in how many hours you will work on the project per day. Chances are, it’s not going to be a full 8 hours most of the time, but sometimes it might be more!

Add in how many holiday days you take in a year and how many days you work per week.

Then, add your desired hourly rate.

Your time has a value. If you’re fairly new to the industry, your hourly rate may be quite low, but it will go up as you gain more experience.

  

Step 3. 

The expenses in Step 1 and your time in Step 2 are to work out your costs.

Here’s an example of a project that takes 10 days and you work on it 5 hours per day:

Daily expenses: ÂŁ10

Hourly rate: ÂŁ30 (x 5 hours)

Total for 10 days: ÂŁ1600

This is what it costs you to do the job. If you charge the client ÂŁ1600, you are only breaking even.

So we need to add a markup (as a percentage) to those costs so you make a profit.

Using the example above with a 25% margin, you’d get £2000

We add a markup to our costs so if the client decides not to use your work once you’ve delivered it and doesn’t pay you a usage fee, you still make a profit.

 

Step 4.

Here, you add how many days you estimate the project will take (and hours too, if needed)

You can also add a multiplier for usage. Usage is always going to be complicated to work out because there are so many possibilities, but you can experiment with this and see what feels right. For smaller usage projects, you’ll be using the lower multipliers, for larger usages and buyouts, you’ll be using the higher multipliers.

Then you have two options:

  • Need to calculate a price - if the client has asked you for a quote
  • Client has given me a budget - The client tells you what they want to spend and you want to work out if it’s profitable or not.

 

 

Step 5. Results

Depending on what option you choose, you’ll see different results

if you need to give the client a quote, you’ll get a breakdown of your costs, markup and usage fees, with a total price to give your client

 

If your client gives you a budget, in this example, the results tell you the budget is too low. you are eating into your costs and not making a profit. So you have a couple of options. spend less time on it, or negotiate a higher price with the client

 

Here you can see, by spending a bit less time on the project, the project becomes profitable again

 

I hope this helps you become a bit more confident with pricing your illustrations. This is version 1 of the calculator, and if you’d like to give me some feedback for version 2, there’s a feedback link on the calculator page.

Try the illustration pricing calculator here

Have fun! 

James

 

Here are some other resources on pricing your illustrations

My comprehensive course: Master Illustration Pricing

The Association of Illustrators

Litebox.info

The Graphic Artist’s Guild Handbook

 

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