any good ways to advertise, ways to price, products to offer, and any other tips you have would be greatly appreciated!!! 🩵
hi, xany! thank you for reaching out, opening commissions for the first time can be very anxiety-inducing, so good on you for wanting to try it out!
some things do come to mind. for ways to advertise, i've only ever shared commission posts on tumblr and insta, so i'm only familiar with those sites. a good commissions post goes a long way. it goes hand in hand with what products to offer: don't copy what others do, offer what You do. show pictures of your best pieces as long as they're something you Want and Can do for others. you must be able to maintain your quality across anything you offer. if that's fully rendered pieces, offer that. if it's busts, do busts. if it's sketches, if it's icons, and so on. the clearer a commissions post is, the better -too much information can be overwhelming and muddy the waters of what is it exactly that you're saying you can do. the sample piece and price should be easily visible, and so should your rules. common rules that most people want to know is when you take payment, what method of payment, whether you accept ocs, nsfw, selfships, etc. those are all different niches and you have to work with what you're comfortable.
pricing is difficult, the big two ways of doing it are fixed prices or hourly rates. personally i use fixed because hourly has never been my style, and i've always sort of just felt around for the prices. i compare them to jobs i've had and also have a good estimate of how long each piece or style takes, so i go from there. it also depends on whether this is going to serve as your job or if you're doing it more recreationally. sometimes you need a few commissions to make a salary, sometimes you just want to buy something nice. for your time alone i personally think anything less than $20usd is far too cheap, though i've seen sketches go for less.
the most important thing for me is something that doesn't fly for everyone, and it's about changes. some artists state upfront that they don't accept changes and they deliver a piece that's set in stone. personally i don't like that, so i offer updates regularly at the end of every stage (sketch, ink, color, etc) to have a back and forth with the client and get what they really want. it's normal to not be fully aligned right off the bat, plus some clients really know what they want and some are happy to try different things out. i also specify each time that after a certain stage changes become less flexible. if, for example, with the sketch you decide the pose of the character, it stands to reason that if it's approved by the client, then no more changes can be done to the pose as you move onto the inking, which is more definitive and more time-consuming to fix. it all comes down to saving time, yours and the client. plus last minute changes really take a toll on a piece, and it's very easy to tell when something has been patched up too much.
the last thing i can think of is to not get yourself down if you don't get too many the first time around. it happens a lot, we all have to discover our prices, our posts, our audience. don't forget that art is something you love outside of commission work. something that goes together with that is that your process will become more streamlined the more you do it. it'll show in your confidence offering your work, and in your pieces. asking for tips is a great idea. we all need feedback from others.
i hope you don't mind, but i'm answering this one publicly so maybe others can chip in, or take a look at your work. you can ask again if something wasn't too clear!
good luck!
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