I put prices on the website and the studio visits got better
For years I kept prices off my site. Gallery habit, I suppose: you don't discuss money in public, the buyer asks, you reply discreetly, c'est ça. In March I finally put a range on the site, honestly, with a note that the small studies start lower and the large things are not cheap.
What I expected: fewer inquiries.
What happened: the opposite, and better ones. Someone wrote last week that she had assumed everything was out of her reach, saw the range, and bought a 24 by 30 study. I sold three of the small ones in two months. The questions I get now start at "is the light in this one from the window or from the lamp" instead of "how much."
The thing I got wrong was thinking discretion protects the work. It mostly protects the awkwardness of the person asking. People want a number. Give it and you both stop circling.
The part I still dislike: a few painters in my circle think it is vulgar. Maybe. But I spent a decade painting little and talking much, and I prefer this.
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The gallery habit is a real thing, and it costs you. I kept prices off my own site for years for the same reason and it wasn't discretion, it was fear dressed up as manners. What changed it for me was a woman at a market telling me she'd walked past my table three times because she couldn't see anything under a thousand and didn't want to embarrass herself asking. She ended up buying a small panel for less than a nice dinner for four.
One thing I'd watch: the range has to be true. If you put "from X" and then everything a buyer actually likes starts at four times X, you lose them worse than you would have with no price at all. I've had that happen as a customer and it stings.
Also the questions changing is the real win. "Is the light in this one from the..." is a person imagining it on their wall. That's a better conversation than any of the discreet ones.
The market story is the part that gets me, because she did all that work in her own head and you never knew. I had the same thing happen at a fair in Athens, a woman circled my table twice and left, and a friend later told me she'd thought the small smalti pieces were "museum things." They were 40 euro. She never asked.
The true-range warning is the right one though. "From X" is a threat if the X is a lie. I put the real low number and take the hit on looking cheap, because the person who buys the 40 euro piece this year comes back for the 600 one when she trusts you.
40 euro and she still didn't ask. That's the part I can't get over, the price was almost nothing and the silence still did its work. Four years of circling, as someone said below.
You're right about taking the hit on looking cheap. I put the low number for the small studies and braced for people to treat the whole page as a discount bin. Nobody did. They just finally knew where the door was.
And yes, the 40 euro buyer from this year is the 600 buyer in three years. I've watched it happen twice now with the same two women. They start small, they look at the thing on their own wall for eighteen months, they learn to trust their own eye a little, and then they come back for the real painting.
"Fear dressed up as manners" is exactly it and I am stealing that, fair warning.
The market story lands hard. Three times past the table without asking, that's four years of a person deciding on your behalf that she can't afford you. And she was wrong.
Your point about the range being true is the one I'd underline. Mine is honest because I only ever list a floor for the small studies and say plainly that larger work climbs from there. If I had stretched the floor to catch attention I'd deserve whatever came after. A number that isn't real is just another kind of silence.