Money talk

If there is one thing freelance illustrators constantly struggle with, it’s talking about money. Most of us love our work to bits but find it very hard to quote clients properly. That’s the thing when you do what you love, it feels harder to ask for money. But we should absolutely get paid properly for our skills, our talent, our time and our expertise. We pay our bills with our illustration work and we need to stop feeling shy when we quote for projects. We need to be bold and confident in what we bring to the table.

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Don’t be afraid of making money

The first hurdle to get past is that you might feel like you can’t ask for a lot of money…just because you’re doing what you love. You might have this thought stuck in your head that we can’t have it all. That we can’t do what we love AND earn a fair amount of money. The thing is, you can and you should. Let me put it simply, the more you love what you do, the better you will be at it…which means your worth will go up and you’ll get paid more and more. Don’t be scared to ask for what you’re worth. Being paid properly is key to doing a good job too, because it means clients respect you and your work. Us illustrators need this trust and respect to feel great and do our best work. I don’t know about you, but I personally never do a great job if I feel like I’m being taken advantage of. So you need to believe in your abilities and trust your instincts when it comes to money. Although I’d advise you to always ask for more money than you think you should. After all, you are getting commercial work here and clients hiring you will make money thanks to your illustration work. You need your fair share of the pie too!

Set the right price

There are a lot of things you need to take into consideration when quoting for new projects. Let’s say you’ve been commissioned by a client to create a set of illustrations for greeting cards. You’ll have to split your quote in two parts: the illustration work to be done and the licensing of the artworks. Sometimes, clients may chose to license work you’ve already done, which means that it’ll be cheaper for them as they’ll just have to pay for using your illustrations.

Let’s come back to quoting for our illustration project.

I don’t like to work with a day rate when it comes to illustration work, so I will never share a day rate with clients (except if I’m doing design work, but that’s another story). I will, however, think about how many days the work could take me and that will be my starting point for the quote. The first thing you need to do is come up with a day rate for yourself. How do you decide on a day rate? Well, a few things come into consideration…

Your work experience
Your skills and ideas
Your previous clients and illustration projects
Your identity and vision as an illustrator
Your audience on social media.

For example, my day rate is £450. I recently put it up. I’ve been freelancing over 7 years, I have developed my skills and ideas along the way, I’ve worked with big and small clients like Adobe, Anthropologie, Hachette, Danone, Pureology, Squarespace…ect. I’ve made a point of spreading awareness for the Planet and developed a lot of personal projects about this. I’ve also built a large audience on social media along the way. All these things come into play when you decide on a day rate. It’s important to get it right (and usually put it up rather than down) because it’s your base when it comes to quoting. You can also re-assess your day rate every year or every other year and put it up, as you’ll very probably be gaining experience and popularity.

Imagine you’ve decided that creating the illustrations for greeting cards will take you 3 days (and you’ve decided your day rate is £250), then you already know the cost for the illustration work will be £750.

Now you need to figure out the licensing. That’s when it comes in handy to ask your client for more information about the usage of your work. Where will they use your illustrations? Only on greeting cards or also in marketing materials? Where will they sell the greeting cards? In Europe or Worldwide? How long do they want to sell the greeting cards for? 1 year, 2 years, 3 years?

Once you have this information, you can figure out how much the licensing will be. Deciding on a cost for the licensing is a bit more obscure than for the illustration work. Obviously, the longer they want to use your work, the more expensive it will be. It will be more expensive for them if they wish to use your illustrations for 3 years, worldwide and use your artworks for marketing materials as well. You also have to take into consideration how much money THEY will make by selling your products. Will it be relatively cheap or quite expensive? Try to set a price for each artwork and then multiple it depending on how many they want. For instance, you could say it will be £100 per greeting card for a year sold in Europe only. If they want 5 greeting cards designs, it will be £500 for licensing. You don’t need to detail the licensing fee, just tell clients the cost for the licensing in total.

In conclusion, you’ll have a quote that tells the client the illustration work will be £750 and the licensing of the artworks £500, which means £1250 in total. To help clients understand the cost, I’ll usually write down what is included in the price, so for instance…

Illustration work: The cost includes research, concept, moodboard, sketches (various options to choose from), coloured illustrations (various options) and 2-3 rounds of feedback and amends. Any additional rework will be charged an hourly fee. Final illustrations will be sent as print-ready files.
Licensing of the artworks: Detail the specific usage for your illustrations here, to remind the client and make sure it’s in writing within the quote.

If you are struggling to find your day rate, try checking out the AOI’s website (good if you’re in the UK) or Lisa Maltby’s illustration pricing survey to have an idea of what other illustrators are doing. But remember, you and only you knows your work and value better than anyone else. Believe in yourself and put your prices up!

Important: You are only selling a licence for use of your artwork, not the artwork itself. The copyright belongs to you too. Most clients will be aware of these facts, but some still make rash assumptions. Make sure your terms are very clear on that.

Be flexible

No matter what you’re quoting your clients, remember to say flexible. Most clients will come back to you and either say they’re up for it or they will try to get your prices down. Listen to what they have to say and what their budget is and see how you feel about it. If your client is a big brand and you feel like they want to take advantage of you, you don’t have to say yes. You could say you’re not willing to budge too much and hope they can find a budget for you. It’s normal to try and negotiate, everybody does it. You can also decide to go for it and work for less if it’s a smaller brand and they genuinely love you and your work. Make sure you give yourself time to think about it and make the right decision for you. If you decide to work with your client for less money than you usually would, make sure to tell them that you’re making an exception for them, so they’ll keep that in mind.

Master the nitty gritty

Once you’ve agreed on a fee with the client, you’ll need to make sure an agreement is being created for you and the client to sign. In most cases, especially with bigger clients, they will provide a contract for you to look over and sign. Make sure to read it thoroughly and don’t hesitate to ask questions if some things aren’t clear or seem unfair to you. If it’s a smaller business or an individual, they might not have a contract for you to look over. In this case, you need to be the one to provide one. I know, it sounds daunting but it’s very important for you to be protected when you work with clients. And contracts do that…they’re protecting you in case something goes wrong but also make sure you and the client are on the same page, literally. If your client doesn’t provide a contract, you can create your own project agreement which you’ll be able to use for any project in the future. It doesn’t have to be long or complicated and it will certainly not look like the contract big brands would send you…BUT it will need to have all the essential information regarding the project and it will have to be signed by both parties. Here’s the essential information that needs to be in your project agreement:

The names and addresses of both parties and their roles
The scope of work
The agreed fee
The deadline
The detailed schedule for the project
The terms of license to be granted (exclusive, non-exclusive, territory, license duration, usage…)
Terms & Conditions
A place for client and illustrator to agree and sign the agreement.

One last thing, always try to ask for a downpayment for your work. I ask for a 30% downpayment for all my projects unless they’re quite small or very speedy. The ones that are bigger and take longer absolutely need a downpayment. You can’t be waiting 3 months to get paid when you finished the job ages ago! Also, don’t forget to put the terms of payment in your contracts, which should always be a maximum of 30 days. Some clients might ask for 60 days but that’s quite rare and you can try and negotiate it.

Note: This is the type of agreement (see example below) I make my clients sign when they don’t have something “better” and it helps structure things and makes me feel a bit more protected than if I had nothing to make them sign BUT I am not sure of its value if things were to get heated and end up in the court of law. Do ask a lawyer (if you know one) to check your agreement and terms and conditions for you.

Download invoice example

Download project agreement example