Small experiment I ran over the last two months. On the website I had put "prices on request" for the commissioned location sketches. Then in April I just wrote the number down: ₹4,500 for a full day out, roughly six hours, one finished A3 watercolour and ink, plus a couple of pencil studies I throw in anyway. Enquiries halved. Straight away, within a fortnight. But the ones that came through were completely different people. Earlier I'd get eight messages asking for a "quick sketch" of a wedding venue or a house before demolition, and half of them would vanish the moment I mentioned any money at all. Now it's fewer people, and they turn up knowing what it costs, and we spend the conversation on the actual thing. Which lane the morning light comes in from, whether they want the whole elevation or just the gate and the old neem tree. Real conversation. So the number went down and the work went up in quality. I'm still not sure if halving my enquiries is a win, and I keep second-guessing whether ₹4,500 is too low for a full day plus travel across the city. Anyone else here put a real number up instead of "DM for pricing"? Did it scare off the right people or just everyone?
