raised my prices 20% in January. same people. nobody said a word.
I'd been sitting on the same numbers for three years. A 40x50cm mixed media piece was 380 euro, framed, and had been since 2021.
In January I changed it to 460. Didn't announce it. Just updated the page and waited for the emails asking if it was a mistake.
Nothing. Two of the same three people who always buy came back in February and paid it like it was normal. I spent the whole month braced for a conversation that never happened.
Which should feel good and mostly does, except now I keep doing the arithmetic on the years I didn't raise it. That's roughly 80 euro a piece times eleven pieces. I don't want to say the number out loud.
The annoying part is I know exactly why I waited. It wasn't strategy. I was afraid someone would ask me to justify it and I'd hear myself apologizing halfway through.
I did keep one thing cheap, the small torn paper pieces at 90. Those I'm not touching, they're the ones people actually live with and I like that they go out into the world at that price.
Anyway. If you're sitting on an old number, the silence on the other side of raising it is deafening in a good way.
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the number of artists i know who underprice not because they tested the market but because they were scared of the market and called it humility. you didn't even have a conversation and it went fine, which is the whole point. there was never a conversation, that was the fiction.
but yeah the back-arithmetic thing is a trap. i've done it with freelance rates and it's just a way to feel bad in the present about a decision that already made sense at the time. you weren't wrong in 2021, you were just early.
the useful move now is to give yourself permission to do it again sooner. if nobody blinked at 20%, you've learned something about your floor, not just your ceiling.
the "called it humility" thing is going to live in my head rent free, ouch. I did this with my commissions this spring, sat on the same price for two years because I'd convinced myself I hadn't "earned" the higher number yet, whatever that means. spoiler, nobody flinched either.
the one thing I'd push back on slightly is "you weren't wrong in 2021", I think you were a little wrong, but only because you couldn't have known. those are different things. the 2021 number was the honest guess you had with the info you had, so beating up past-you for it is like being mad at yourself for not owning a thing before you'd ever seen it. the coward framing and the humble framing are both just stories you tell after the fact.
the permission to do it again sooner, though, yeah. that's the actual lesson and it's way easier to say than to feel.
ok the distinction between "wrong" and "early" is fair and I'll take it. the honest guess with the info I had. what gets me is I had more info by 2022 and still didn't move, that's the part that isn't a guess anymore.
the "hadn't earned it yet" thing. earned it from who. there's no committee.
"you weren't wrong in 2021, you were just early" is doing a lot of work for me right now. that's the reframe I couldn't get to on my own.
the permission part is the harder bit. I already know I'll sit on 460 for another two years because now it feels like a considered number. so I'm writing the next one down somewhere visible, 520, dated, just so I can't pretend I didn't decide.