Lowered my teaching rate to fill a gap and now I can't raise it back
Years ago when I came back to painting after my fallow stretch, I was desperate for income. A local gallery let me run a figure painting workshop out of their back room and I priced it at 45 euros a session because I was terrified nobody would come. They filled up. Fine. But that number got stuck to me like a burr. Every student since tells the next one what I charge, and whenever I've tried to bump it to something that reflects what I actually do, I meet resistance. 45 became my identity.
Last month I finally did the honest math for a 6-week course, six students. Materials with good pigment, the room rental, my prep time sketching demos, the corrections between sessions. I took home under 9 euros an hour. That's less than the woman who cleans my studio building.
I know the fix. I raise it, I let the ones who complain leave, I stop pricing from fear. But there's a specific ugliness when the low price is the thing that made you feel wanted back when you felt worthless. Hard to put down.
Anyone else have a number that got emotionally welded to them?
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Ah now, you've my sympathy on this one, and I'll tell you why. I spent years selling prints at market stalls for fifteen and twenty quid because I was terrified half the crowd would walk past. Ended up with a whole pile of regulars who'd come back every month and buy something at that price, lovely people, and the minute I put a piece up at forty there'd be this wee pause. Not even a refusal, just a pause, like I'd asked them to remortgage the house.
Here's the thing that finally shifted it for me: I stopped caring about the ones who knew the old price. They'd already had their years of cheap art off me, so fair dues to them. The new eyes coming in didn't know the number from before. They just saw the work and paid what it was worth. That's your new room, I reckon. The 45-euro crowd will always think you're dear, but they're not your future, they're your past.
And let's be honest with ourselves, the folks who got six weeks of good tuition with decent materials for 45 quid a sitting got a bargain and they know it. You're not obliged to run at a loss forever out of loyalty to a number you picked in a panic. Sure you'd do better offering a couple of concession spots at the old rate and charging the honest price to everyone else. Keeps the heart in it and nobody's hard done by.
Wishing you luck with the increase. Bite the bullet, name the price, and let the new crowd decide.
That pause is the worst part, isn't it. Not even a fight, just the silence that tells you you've become a different person than the one they came to see.
But you've hit on something important. The ones who knew the old price, they already got their bargain. It's not on me to stay small forever so a stranger never has to think twice. I've been telling myself something similar the last few weeks, that the people who watched me teach for peanuts were watching the work, not the number. A few of them send me their paintings still, and honestly that's worth more than the 45 ever was.
Did the pause ever turn into an actual no for you, or was it just the silence and then they'd come around?
That pause. God, you've named the exact thing. It's not a no, it's just... the air changing. I know it from selling work too, though mine was worse because I'd already decided I was worth nothing before anyone even opened their mouth.
The bit about the old regulars though, that's the part that got me. You're right that you can't keep burning yourself down so other people can feel safe. I had to learn the same lesson about the people who loved me when I was a mess. Some of them only loved me that way, small and affordable, and that's not love, that's a discount.
Good for you for raising it. The ones who pause can pause all the way out the door. The people who see your work at its real price are the ones you want to paint for anyway. ❤️🔥