How to Actually Price Your Art for Artist Alley

Pricing is the thing new vendors agonize over the most and get the least straight advice about. "Charge what you're worth" doesn't tell you a single useful number. Here's an actual method, with real math, instead of a vibe.

Start with your hard costs

Before you think about profit, add up what a piece actually costs you to produce and sell. For a print, that's paper, ink, any sleeve or backing board, and a share of what your printer cost to buy. For an original, factor in materials plus a rough hourly rate for your time, even if that feels uncomfortable at first.

Then add your cost of being at the table at all: booth fee divided by expected units sold, travel, accommodation if it's a multi-day con out of town, and packaging. New vendors almost always forget to fold table fees into individual item prices, and then wonder why a "profitable" day barely covered the drive.

A simple print example

If you sell that print for $15, you're clearing roughly $10.40 per unit before tax. That's a real margin you can look at and decide if it's enough, instead of guessing.

Then check the room, don't copy it blindly

Walk the floor before your own show, or check photos from past cons if you can't get there early. See what similar-quality prints go for nearby. This isn't about racing to the bottom on price, it's about knowing what a customer already expects to pay before they hit your table, so you're not shocking them or underselling yourself relative to your neighbors.

Round to numbers people can actually pay with

$12 is easier for someone to hand you in cash than $11.50. Pricing in clean numbers, or numbers that bundle nicely (two for $20 instead of $11 each), speeds up your line and reduces fumbling for change. This matters more than it sounds like it should when you've got a queue building up.

Originals need a different formula than prints

Prints scale, you can make a hundred copies of the same cost basis. Originals don't. A common approach for one-of-a-kind pieces is materials cost, plus an hourly rate for the actual working time, plus a multiplier for the fact that it's unique and can't be replaced once it sells. There's no single right multiplier. What matters is that you're not pricing an original the same casual way you'd price a $5 sticker, because the math underneath it is completely different.

Don't underprice out of fear

A lot of new vendors price low because they're scared nobody will buy at a "real" price. The problem is underpricing doesn't just cost you money this show, it trains your regular customers to expect rock-bottom prices forever, and it's genuinely hard to raise prices later without pushback from people who got used to the old ones. It's easier to start at a sustainable number than to claw your way up from too low.

Revisit your prices after every few shows

Pricing isn't a one-time decision. If something sells out every single time within the first hour, it's priced too low for the demand. If something sits untouched at three different shows, that's real data too, not necessarily about price, but worth investigating. Keep a simple running list of what sold at what price so you're adjusting off real numbers instead of a hunch six months old.

The bottom line

Pricing well is just arithmetic plus a bit of market awareness. Add up your real costs, check what the room supports, round to clean numbers, and revisit it regularly. It's not a personality test about your self-worth as an artist, it's a spreadsheet problem, and spreadsheet problems are solvable.

Curious what a Shapeshift kit actually looks like in person? Head to the Artist Booths homepage to see the full lineup and find the one that fits your table.