Hi Everyone!

This is a very common question between artists "how much should I charge my client?". I heard it so many times and I always have the same answer, let's take a look to it.

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If you are a freelance artist and you didn't have enough experience yet, you will probably feel that as an artist, you the money that you feel is right is too much and they will say no, or you just have to reduce the money that we ask in order to preserve the job.

Let me give you few reasons to not do this:

• You are an artist, you are not less than any other professional worker.

I don't really know who came up first with this concept that arts are not a serious profession. But dude, come on, are you kidding me? We artist develop our skills from ZERO, every day working in practices and new theory and concepts to apply in our artworks. There's no such thing as art schools that are worth of it, just few teachers around the globe that just lately been giving their knowledge more massively (thanks internet). So we don't only have to work our asses off without a schedule (because we are the whole frikin' day practicing), but also we don't have that precious leisure time that most of people have. Because it's a waste of time that I could be drawing.

There is not such thing as being born talented. So stop talking about that and inspiration. Good artist weren't born with a brush in their hands but with a lot of will and passion, and they worked their ass off for getting there.

• Your time is worth of something

-Can you make it for free?... Come on, you are an artist! Do it for the love to the arts!
-I will pay with recognition and will talk marvelous things about your work!
-Can you do a logo for my baby toys brand? I can pay you with some products of my brand!

Please stop that sh!t attitude. Let's say you are a lawyer, a business man, a doctor or a builder. Would you do your work for any of these?... Thought so.

Then why an artist should?

• They are not only buying your time but all the experience, frustrations, quitting rage and all the struggle to find the right the right study material since you started this f&%king nightmare beautiful path.

See, being an artist is not only hard because of the lack of resources and misconceptions about the profession itself. Nono, that is just the basics my man. Arts is a very emotional path, full of frustrations that almost no other profession has.

Let's just say that in EVERY SINGLE artwork you do (until you stop giving f$çks caring so much about your work), you experience the same frustration and anxiety than a student during and after an exam.

Many times and friends of mine come to drop their feelings, telling me that they got this amazing opportunity of working somewhere, but suddenly they feel so frustrated and feel that they cannot do anything. They block themselves. This is the frustration at its maximum, and happens very often.

So when a client is buying your time (if you are an artist) they are buying all what you learned thanks to get over your emotions and get good enough to offer them a product of quality.

Value yourself.

Basically what I am trying to say here is that the whole point is about understanding your value. Which is extremely important when defending yourself from these people that want to charge you less than you are worth. But...

...how do I get a number for that??

It's pretty easy calculation, and we will see it in the Part two of this post because it already got too long.

Yes, I am trying to listen to my stemians' advices ;)

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Thank you all and see ya later in the next post !

Bye !