Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:32:13 -0500
From: Andrew <puppetvision-AT-gmail.com>
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] pricing your work


Undercharging is I think the bane of the experienced puppet builder's
existence and can lead to problems if you're not careful. When I was 22 my
ex-wife (who was a puppet builder) and I were newly married and out of work.
We got offered a puppet building gig from someone in South Africa, one job
led to another and for awhile we were insanely busy building puppets for
people all over the world. What I could never understand was why we didn't
seem to get ahead financially and of course the problem was our pricing
seemed good to us at the time, but didn't take in to account the true cost
of doing business.

As we got busier and busier we got nailed by what the financial-types call
"the start up squeeze" and money starting going out the door faster than it
was coming in despite being insanely busy and we ended up going out of
business and it was very ugly. After that awful ordeal I ended up doing an
11 month small business program with a small business incubator and it was
one of the best things I've ever done (if anyone has business related
questions I really recommend investigating any small business or business
mentoring programs that exist in your area).

Also, Freelance Switch is a great website for freelancers. They have an
hourly rate calculator that is a very useful tool -
http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/ (I promise I'll stop posting these cost
calculators soon lol).

- Andrew


On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 12:00 PM, <puptcrit-request-AT-puptcrit.org> wrote:

> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:18:57 EST
> From: WojtalJr-AT-aol.com
> Subject: [Puptcrit] pricing your work
> To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
> Message-ID: <c1d.31af96dc.34ed2e61-AT-aol.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
> "BTW I don't know anything about doing puppetry for a living.  Puppetry
> > for me is a way to make art, and it pays for itself in  fun,
> > satisfaction, whatever you want to call it. I've always made art  in
> > some way or another and at the moment the puppet show is the  medium.
> > I try to put on a good show, but I'll never have the chops of  the
> > pros out there."
>
>
> This is simply a observation on my part, and by no means an attack on any
> one in particular, But the above statement is something does make life
> more
> difficult for people like myself who do make their living thru puppetry,
> puppet
> building to be specific,
>
> Their are so many Hobbyists out their who under sell themselves and their
> work that it makes it more and more difficult to educate clients about how
> much
> it really costs to use professional  quality                         (i.e.
> Film,Theatre,and TV quality), the less you value your time, and skills,
>  the
> less you are going to be paid, and it continues the perception among
>  potential
> clients that puppets are cheap to produce.
>
> Puppets are not cheap to produce.they are in effect Kinetic sculptures,
> object that can with a killed hand come to life, and express ideas, and
>  emotions,
> and convey messages that a painting .illustration, and sculpture never
>  will,
> the work we puppet builders do is worth just as much as any illustrator or
> sculpture, and we should be compensated as such, no hand crafted high
> quality
> puppet is worth just $500.00, and we should not be ashamed to ask for what
> our
>  work is really worth.
>
> just my opinion, and again, i was just using that statement as a template
> since it accurately reflects many of the things that part time builders
> have
> said to me.
>
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