Last month, I taught a pricing workshop in Tennessee, and when I asked one of the participants what she used as her hourly rate (translation: what she’s paying herself) she responded with $10.
Now in all my years of teaching pricing, I shouldn’t have been surprised by her answer. It’s so common to see artists and makers undervaluing themselves. (And at least she was paying herself something. I’ve seen too many artists and makers not pay themselves at all!) But something about her number still shocked me.
You see, I’ve been working so hard to get artists and makers to pay themselves a living wage (the MIT Living Wage Calculator is a great tool for that) and I spend so much time in online spaces that talk about what a living wage actually looks like (spoiler alert: $7.25, the federal minimum wage in the US, is not a living wage) that I often forget that not everyone is on the same page as me.
Now, there’s a lot of talk online about seeing the value in our work and paying ourselves what we’re worth. Which is all well and good, but today I want to talk about the value of our labor from a different perspective.
When I hear someone say that they’re paying themselves $10 an hour for their work, I don’t think “someone needs to show her her worth.” Instead, I see it as a form of self-exploitation. And it needs to stop.
What do I mean by self-exploitation?
To look into that, I think it’s helpful to define exploitation. When I talk about exploitation, I’m talking about worker exploitation within a capitalist system. By that, I mean paying workers less than a livable wage and I also mean paying workers significantly less than the value they create.
This is, of course, not the only way that capitalism exploits workers. Worker exploitation runs the gamut from extra-long shifts to lack of bathroom breaks to unpaid (typically) female domestic labor to slavery. The history of capitalism is the history of trying to reduce labor expenses at all costs, which leads to (in some cases extreme) worker exploitation.
But for our purposes, it’s exploitation in the form of underpaying workers that I want to look at here. Because this practice is so insidious in our culture that we carry it within ourselves and use it to set impossibly low wages for ourselves when we price our work.
This is self-exploitation.
In a recent video on Etsy’s fee hike, I mentioned that Etsy was engaged in worker exploitation. Someone commented to say this wasn’t true because they don’t work for Etsy, they sell on Etsy, and therefore Etsy doesn’t exploit their labor. But this misses the point.
Exploitation doesn’t just rely on an employee/employer relationship, it can exist in lots of different circumstances. For example, social media networks rely on what is called “hope labor” in order to be profitable. Hope labor, as defined by Kathleen Kuehn and Thomas F. Corrigan, is when work is completed without payment in the hopes of some sort of future return. Perhaps money, but possibly also things like employment, social currency, or fame.
Hope labor isn’t all bad. This blog post is a form of hope labor. I’m writing this, yes, to help you, but also in the hopes that some people reading this will be moved to purchase a class or join my membership. Hope labor also exists in the form of creating a body of work to apply for a craft show or gallery exhibition. Hope labor is writing a book proposal in the hope that someone will give you an advance. Hope labor is making your art first and hoping someone will buy it later.
Hope labor abounds in the creative industries. Where it becomes a problem is when a platform owner (or owners, in the case of stockholders and executives) gets fabulously rich off of the hope labor of others. This is what happens on social media. And this is what happens on Etsy.
But it isn’t just the promise of future sales that leads to labor exploitation for Etsy sellers. Etsy has done almost nothing to stem the tide of cheap products flooding the site. And here I’m not talking about sales of mass-produced products masquerading as “handmade.” From the beginning, the number that Etsy flaunted to convey success was number of sales. And with that number as the defining metric, many sellers focused on selling as many pieces as possible, regardless of price or whether or not those pieces were profitable or paying them a living wage.
This focus on sales at all costs, and the resulting downward price spiral, have plagued artists and makers ever since, and not just on Etsy. Etsy has influenced consumer perception of price when it comes to art and handmade products. (Most of us have now had some experience of someone saying, “I can get that cheaper on Etsy.) This has perpetuated the notion that to be successful at selling your art or handmade products, you need to keep the price low. (Spoiler alert #2: this is not true at all. For proof, see my current high price hero, Soulstice Ceramics.)
And when it comes to art and handmade products, the most expensive line item in the price will almost always be our labor. (The exception is if you’re working with precious materials.) Which means when we try and keep our prices low, the thing we end up cutting from the price is paying ourselves for our own labor.
This is self-exploitation.
As an artist or maker, you’re probably incredibly aware of the problems of capitalism. In fact, many artists and makers tell me they don’t want to charge more because they don’t want to be perceived as greedy business people.
But paying yourself above a living wage for your work doesn’t make you a greedy capitalist. In reality, it’s a form of resistance against the capitalist forces that have convinced us to willingly exploit our own labor for someone else’s gain.
So the next time you find yourself wanting to pay yourself little or no money for the minutes or hours of labor you’ve put into that piece, I want you to stop and remind yourself that exploiting your own labor isn’t serving you and it isn’t serving your customers. (Because you can’t keep making and selling art if you’re broke and out of business.)
And as a community, I want us to start celebrating artists and makers who are charging more for their work and who are actually committed to paying themselves a living wage. Because in a world hell-bent on our exploitation, paying ourselves well really is a radical act.
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PS. If you could use even more of a pep talk when it comes to money and pricing, join me for a new online workshop, Money Mindset Shifts for Artists and Makers. The live workshop is next Monday (and yes, you will also get access to the recording) but you can save $30 when you sign up by Wednesday. Click here for all the details and to claim your spot!