Charged a flat ₹6,000 for an old-house sketch series and then counting the hours made me wince
Sold a set of three watercolour sketches of houses off MG Road to a regular client last month. Flat ₹6,000 for the set, which felt fair at the time because it's a nice round number and I priced it on the spot without thinking. Then I tallied up the actual drawing time, not even counting the two mornings I went back because the light was wrong.
Twenty-one hours. That's ₹285 an hour before paper, paint, and the frames I threw in as a "goodwill" gesture because they're a repeat buyer. I keep telling myself the goodwill matters, the relationship matters, the next commission matters. And it does. But I did the same maths my old architecture firm used to do on billable hours and I winced.
The worst part is I know exactly why I did it. Round numbers feel easier to say out loud. I'm still scared that if I quote ₹9,000 or ₹10,000 for a set, someone will just go "okay, no thanks" and I'll have lost it. But honestly, the client who haggles over ₹3,000 is not the client I want anyway.
Still haven't raised my price for the next set. Working up to it.
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The ₹285 an hour before materials really is painful to look at. But I think the trap is that we always price what feels "fair" to the client instead of what covers us, and then we do the math afterward and it's this horrible little gut punch we brought on ourselves.
I did something similar with a portrait last year. Quoted a flat number because it was round and safe, ended up redoing the face twice and putting in maybe 18 hours for what worked out to peanuts. But here's the thing I keep telling myself. The first one is the price you pay for the repeat buyer. The second one, you know better. If you go back to this client next time and name a number that covers your real hours plus your materials plus something for the frames you keep giving away, you'll see whether the relationship actually matters or whether it was just convenient for them.
The goodwill matters, sure. But goodwill that costs you more every time you trade on it stops being goodwill eventually. It's just you subsidising someone.
The round-number trap, yes. I've done it too. You quote something smooth because it rolls off the tongue and the client nods, and then the real calculation happens later, in the studio, alone, and it's always worse than you feared.
But I'll push back on one thing. The repeat buyer argument only holds if you actually build the relationship into the price deliberately. If you're generous on purpose, fine, that's a business decision. But if you're generous by accident because you didn't do the math, then you're not buying goodwill, you're just losing money and calling it strategy. There's a difference.
The real fix, I find, is to quote by the piece, not the hour, and just make the number bigger. Nobody asks for the breakdown. They ask "how much," you say the number, they either say yes or no. The wincing comes from knowing what you're really worth and not daring to say it out loud.
You're right, and I think that's the whole sting of it. Generosity on purpose is one thing, I can defend that with a straight face. But I didn't build the relationship into the price, I built it out of my own discomfort with naming a number that felt awkward. And then I went and called it strategy afterwards to make myself feel better.
The maddening part is the client would probably have paid more. They're a regular, they've never haggled, they said yes within a minute. The flat number cost me nothing on their side and everything on mine.
Next time I'm going to price it in the studio on a bad day, when I'm annoyed, and just sit with the uncomfortable number until it stops feeling rude. That's the number I should open my mouth with.
You've nailed the exact feeling, "a horrible little gut punch we brought on ourselves." That's it precisely. I didn't even have the excuse of a redo like you did, I just rounded down because it felt comfortable.
But "the first one is the price you pay for the repeat buyer, the second one you know better", I'm going to hold on to that. That's a good way to frame it instead of just beating myself up. Did you end up charging properly on the next portrait, or did the same round-number instinct sneak back in? Honestly asking because I think I need to write the new rate down somewhere visible before the next client calls, or I'll do it again. 🙂