Worried about pricing... :S

Hey guys,

I kinda have a dilemma going on right now... basically, up until a week and a half ago, I charged $4 per face for birthday parties. I'd just keep a tally while I painted and gave the total afterwards.

However, after lurking around the forum a bit, I decided to try upping my price a bit and changing to an hourly rate to make things easier. First I tried $60 per hour (doing about 10 faces per hour), and posted local ads online like crazy... lots of visitors to my site, no bookings. So a few days ago I lowered it to $50 per hour... once again, visitors but no bookings. I have ZERO bookings for November now and I usually have at least one every weekend (WITHOUT advertising!!)!

So I'm getting kind of worried. I'm not sure if I'm just being impatient, or if I should just go back to doing $4 per face. Maybe 50-60 bucks per hour is too expensive for my area?

Won't be of any help, but I will totally be watching this thread and hope you get some good answers. I'm kind of going through the same thing, debating whether to charge per face or an hourly rate, and what prices are reasonable for my area.

p.s. Shannon Fennell has a really good article on pricing on her resource page.

Yes, go read all of Shannon's stuff, it is essential that you don't keep lowering your prices. It will come.

I am toying with the idea of going perface at birthday parties, but much higher than $4 as each child should get a great face at a party, and I am tired of the calls where they want to have me for an hour to econemise, but have 20 kids coming to the party. That is not the kind of work I want to do.

Value yourself, and let it go for a while, it will pay off in the long run. Read what Shannon says. She is really right about everything, and you cannot go wrong following her advice.

Our prices are hourly plus number of kids and if they want more kids it's so much a head. In rural areas like I'm in this economy has put a stop on a lot of big elaborate birthday party's so look for more group and corporate events to do because they understand the pricing.

Thanks for the info everybody! Where can I find Shannon's articles?

I linked her resource page in my other post, but you can also get there by following the link in her signature.

HazyDaze wrote:I linked her resource page in my other post, but you can also get there by following the link in her signature.

Oh, I totally missed that link! Haha. Thanks a lot, it looks like there's a lot of great information there!

My birthday rate works out to $10/face... if anyone does the math and additional faces are $10 each.

And the links are in my signature.

PerfectlyPaintedFaces wrote:Hey guys,
I have ZERO bookings for November now and I usually have at least one every weekend (WITHOUT advertising!!)!

Is November usually a booking-each-weekend month for you? Summers for sure are for most of us, but after Halloween, the season can die down a little bit and then picks back up in December and slows again in January. Just trying to make sure you're comparing apples to apples...

TheGildedCat wrote:

PerfectlyPaintedFaces wrote:Hey guys,
I have ZERO bookings for November now and I usually have at least one every weekend (WITHOUT advertising!!)!

Is November usually a booking-each-weekend month for you? Summers for sure are for most of us, but after Halloween, the season can die down a little bit and then picks back up in December and slows again in January. Just trying to make sure you're comparing apples to apples...

That's true... I was mostly just comparing the most recent months (which happen to be summer!). I haven't actually been painting at birthday parties for that long (probably less than a year), so I don't have much to compare to last November. But yeah, now that I think about I was most busy during summer and October. So hopefully it'll pick back up around Christmas!

November is the start of Christmas parties, I find there are not so many birthday parties.

I'm booked for a Gala (blinging up adults), two company Christmas parties, booked to teach theatre make-up at a high school, have a show opening in a couple weeks, and some individual make-up sessions.

There are ebbs and flows in FP... it can be busy or super quiet.

Wow, I've never even considered doing per-face at birthday parties. Seems like they pay me for my time and I do as much as I can do. I have found that people don't generally book based on your website. It's all word of mouth and personal experience. I would book someone based on experience I have had before using a website. For me personally, I have 4 parties set for November already and it's because I got a LOT of business cards out at my last ppf event. As you do more, you'll get more referrals.

FacesForFun wrote:Wow, I've never even considered doing per-face at birthday parties. Seems like they pay me for my time and I do as much as I can do. I have found that people don't generally book based on your website. It's all word of mouth and personal experience. I would book someone based on experience I have had before using a website. For me personally, I have 4 parties set for November already and it's because I got a LOT of business cards out at my last ppf event. As you do more, you'll get more referrals.

That's a good point... I just recently made some business cards, so I should make a better effort to get them out there!

Usually when you hit one year it's time to bump up your prices anyway- you have some experience under your belt by that time, got your name out, and are probably leaps and bounds faster than when you started. If you have been charging$4 per face and do 10 in an hour, then that's essentially $40 per hour. A $10 increase isn't really that much to make or break a booking. Now, have you been doing a lot of small parties? I think that is why I wouldn't like to charge per face- a party with 4 or 5 kids would be more trouble than it's worth at that price. Whenever I have gotten inquiries about it, I make my per face charge really high so I don't feel my time has been wasted. I would pick an hourly rate and stick with it- then give the option of Per face pricing at slightly higher- So $50 per hour OR $6 per face. That way there is more incentive for them to go with your hourly rate.

Geekophile wrote:Usually when you hit one year it's time to bump up your prices anyway- you have some experience under your belt by that time, got your name out, and are probably leaps and bounds faster than when you started. If you have been charging$4 per face and do 10 in an hour, then that's essentially $40 per hour. A $10 increase isn't really that much to make or break a booking. Now, have you been doing a lot of small parties? I think that is why I wouldn't like to charge per face- a party with 4 or 5 kids would be more trouble than it's worth at that price. Whenever I have gotten inquiries about it, I make my per face charge really high so I don't feel my time has been wasted. I would pick an hourly rate and stick with it- then give the option of Per face pricing at slightly higher- So $50 per hour OR $6 per face. That way there is more incentive for them to go with your hourly rate.

Yeah, it can definitely be more trouble than it's worth sometimes with PFP. Yesterday I did a party (it was my boyfriend's cousin, I'll let it slide but still...) where I painted 4 kids. I was there for an hour, because they took forever to set up a table for me (and what I got was a tiny kid's picnic table... terrible!). So... spending an hour there only to make $20 bucks wasn't great. So charging per hour is something I'm definitely going to try sticking with.

Aaaand I just got a booking for the 12th with my $60.00 charge! Yippeee! I feel better!

Are you the only painter in the area? I am in Ottawa, I took a quick search and only found you... thinking of ways to help you market.

Gamezgirl wrote:Are you the only painter in the area? I am in Ottawa, I took a quick search and only found you... thinking of ways to help you market.

There's only one other serious face painter in town and she's the lady who actually got me started in face painting when I was a young kid! Haha. I think she only does community events, so I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who does birthday parties/small events. I've done a few community events, but only because I knew the people running them. So getting into corporate/community events would probably be a good idea for me.

I notice that face painters and balloon twisters generally charge by the hour. But as an entertainer I was taught to charge by the event. For example, the answer to a phone call requesting pricing would go: I will perform an amazing and magical puppets show at your event for $175.00. This fun and comical show will keep the children laughing with lots of participation and funny puppets for 45 minutes. This sounds so much better than I charge $200 per hour yet equals out to basically the same thing. When you say you charge $$$ per hour, clients can instantly equate that to what they are making per hour and if their work is harder for a lot less money per hour, they may think your work is a lot easier and you shouldn't get paid more. Just a thought and best wishes to a successful business.

Mee mee, that is exactly what I do! Sounds so much better, and also, doesn't leave it open ended. The client knows exactly what their fee will be (unless they have extra guests, then they know there will be an extra charge) I would be afraid to hire someone who says "My fee is $125/hr" Ok...and what if they take 3 hours?????!!! I prefer when someone says " I can do what you are asking for $125, the only extra charge would be if you go over 12 guests, then there is a $10/per person charge" Or whatever their rates are. That way, if I have a good day and paint quickly, I am done in 45 minutes, if for some reason I am not on my best, then the customer is not penalized for my lack of speed. When I have back to back bookings, they are always informed that I will need to leave by X time, so we need to keep the kids focused so that no one misses out. Never had a problem yet!!

MeeMee, that is such a good point. Thank you for taking the time to put that out there.

So as an example, say someone calls to book face painting for a party (I only do face painting right now), I could first ask how many kids they plan on having; then I could quickly calculate in my head about how much time it would take me to paint that many kids and then convert my charge-per-hour to to that amount of kids and say to the client something like, "I can paint each child at your party in colorful full-faces for $X amount." And then add that there will be a per-face fee for each extra child?

I'm so new to the business aspect of this and I still feel embarrassed when someone asks how much I would charge for whatever party they're planning. (Sounds silly, I know, but there it is...) This way will be much easier to communicate, I think.

Meemee, that makes so much sense. The hourly rate helps penny pinchers see it in terms of how many can I squeeze in...I am going to think on this concept and see how it can work for me! Thanks!

MeeMee wrote:I notice that face painters and balloon twisters generally charge by the hour. But as an entertainer I was taught to charge by the event. For example, the answer to a phone call requesting pricing would go: I will perform an amazing and magical puppets show at your event for $175.00. This fun and comical show will keep the children laughing with lots of participation and funny puppets for 45 minutes. This sounds so much better than I charge $200 per hour yet equals out to basically the same thing. When you say you charge $$$ per hour, clients can instantly equate that to what they are making per hour and if their work is harder for a lot less money per hour, they may think your work is a lot easier and you shouldn't get paid more. Just a thought and best wishes to a successful business.

That's a good point as well! I think that's another reason why it's easy to underpay yourself as a face painter... because I think something like "Hmm, if I was at my job, getting paid $20 per hour would be pretty good". So when people encourage you to charge $100 per hour (or whatever price) it seems like way too much! But yeah... remembering to factor in supply costs, travel costs, clean-up time... it is important to give yourself a fair wage. And of course, people who employ you won't be thinking about those extra costs. So concentrating more on the entertainment value rather than amount of time sounds very wise.

I always charge by hour, to charge by face you know sometimes there is that kind of parents than they say "but that one was a just the cheek, I can't pay you the same as a full face one" so charging by hour you just avoid that happens, sometimes to paint judt the cheek it take the same or more time than a full face, and don't low your prices when the people notice that they think you are desperate, and then don't take serious your work, don't worrie about november it is kind of low I wish you good luck!!

Good points.