What's a fair price?

[AJLA]

We have been approached by an art student in the hope that we may be able to offer her a part time position with our t shirt business as we intend to change the direction of this and make new designs more appealing to a younger market. Along with another range my father has come up with.

Unfortunatley there are various factors which make it not viable for us to take on this young lady, the main one being distance.
She is very talented and spent quite some time preparing drawings of her ideas which we could introduce to our new range (all of which we did not expect) some which we were very impressed with and would love to produce for the coming season.

Having made the decision that it just wouldn't work out for us to employ her my next train of thought was that perhaps we could buy some of her designs from her, then she could doodle along at her own pace and if and when she had some inspirational Cornish themed ideas which we like we would buy them from her.
They may sell they may flop.

How do we put a price on something like this?
As a student what would you expect?
How long is a peice of string?

[jennywren]

I have brought other people artwork in, this is diffcult but its like buying a house, go lower than you want to pay, and wait for the reponse, you can generally tell from the moment, the one thing I would say is that if she agrees put a clause in saying that she can't go on to sell that design with a say100 miles raduis. This also depends if you want to be the only one with her designs, do you want a contract, I'm sure you're you know most of the pros and cons with buying a design. Or the simple thing is you could offer her two weeks ( or what ever you want ) with the agreement the design are for you and its a new ball game. I have used that option and it has work well for me, it will depend on the personality of that person, its not being how much do you pay a student, but how much do you value her work, don't envy you making choices, sometimes to does'nt pay to think and go for, I find that the best, then I leave it up to the lap of the gods, but at least the stress time is shoter wondering what to do. Its making your mind up is the hardest, once done you then go on to the next stage how will I use it.

[JSR]

Perhaps you could look at how microstock sites handle this.

They tend to have several different price levels depending on what you want to use the image for. Using a non-exclusive image for standard stuff costs just a few quid. Using it for a set number of prints to mugs/mousemats etc, costs a good few quid. Exclusivity costs a lot of quids. Buying the rights costs a bundle of quids.

Perhaps by looking at their prices, you can find the right ballpark.

[AJLA]

Unfortunately jennywren I don't know a thing about buying other peoples work, to be truthfull :redface: i've never thought of it before.

I just thought there's a young girl looking for a bit of part time work to earn a bit of cash and although shes very creative, nice personality etc etc she doesn't have the printing knowledge that we would require to take someone on board plus she lives a loong way away so really hardly worth it. Maybe this would be a way she could earn some cash.

I would absolutely want exlclusivity of any design created with us in mind, the difficult thing is of course that I don't want to pay the earth for something "I" like that might flop.

I haven't heard of a microstock site before JSR:redface: so it sounds like thats the place I should start. I really have no idea how you put a price on something.

[djhutton]

How about a 'commision' on every one sold? that way if they sell them everyones's a winner. If they don't then its a bit of a downer for her but part of the learning curve

DJ

[AdamB]

How about a 'commision' on every one sold? that way if they sell them everyones's a winner. If they don't then its a bit of a downer for her but part of the learning curve

DJ

That's what I was going to suggest aswell.

Sign some paperwork for say a six month trial basis giving you exclusive rights and then work out a selling price and also what she takes as commision.

The only negative thing about this is that if they become VERY POPULAR then buying the design would be very expensive and also re-newing the contract may go up a little in price. But, if they are selling well - everyone's a winner!

[JSR]

I haven't heard of a microstock site before JSR:redface: so it sounds like thats the place I should start. I really have no idea how you put a price on something.

I started using one recently (http://www.dreamstime.com/) when looking for photos/designs/images for book covers. I've read their smallprint quite carefully, so that I know how the images are allowed to be used.

They have a regular license which allows anyone to buy the image and use it for standard things, and then several Extended licenses for if you want to use the images specifically for "print" (up to 10,000 copies - you pay again if you want to do more), for the "web", or if you want exclusivity (for 1 or 3 years), or if you want to buy the rights.

You could recommend such a site to the art student for any designs that you don't buy from her. It's a way that she could make money from her designs.

[AJLA]

I've found a few sites JSR which are very interesting so i will spend some time having a look at those.
It may be more complex than I thought.

There are quite a few that ask for designs where there is a prize (cash) for the winning design if used, we also thought of doing that but haven't got around to it.

Going to have a look at dreamstime now.

[photoscape]

why not offer her a position in a way,

would it not work to say i will pay you say £100 a month to design x amount of designs for us and i will pay you a commission of x amount on every one we sell that way you get new designs she gets some cash and you should make it work