New year and my blood pressure already rise...

[stevesideas]

@rohallorah

In principle I agree that you need to hold your value as best you can, but one thing I don’t hear a lot of is respecting the market demand. Rates are a balance of what we think our time is worth, and what the market is willing to pay - regardless of our opinion of the value. My feeling is that sometimes you actually need to lower your rates if you are priced out of the market, and rates are falling for most of our type of services. It is not a temporary blip IMO - and that illusion or misperception can be lethal to your career.

If you do not keep your rates in check with the market you will soon find yourself without any work.

I’m not saying Luke should have taken that job -there are limits of course! - but to say that one should just ‘advertise’ and find better clients is a bit naive. It can be true in a limited way but it’s no magic bullet. I know people who are literally world class artists that do work for the biggest budget clients (multi-national clients and global campaigns) and it is not unusual for them to be working at lower rates these day, sometimes much lower.

/b

I have to agree. Keeping check on costs is something you should do on a regular basis. If you have 5 jobs come in and you don’t get any of them I think you definitely need to lower your costs…even if it is whilst you build up your work. Keeping your costs high because of pride isn’t going to do you any favours and in the scheme of things and I’d rather lower my costs for some jobs to get the money coming in than not because of pride or “lowering the appreciation” of 3d artists. At the end of the day I love my work but I also need to make money. Also, maybe targeting an audience in different areas may be an idea. UK and USA are good places for sure. There is still plenty of work around and I would say payments are still good when compared to some other countries where you might be getting enquires from.