Hi Zoe, I hope I'm not bothering you! I have a question and I had really no idea who to ask, but you are an amazing artist and I was hoping you could help me out. I'm about to open my commissions for the first time and I have NO IDEA how to go with it... I have no idea how to price my work, how to make a sheet or how to promote myself (I don't have that many followers so I was unsure which sites to use) and I'm also fairly young so I'm a bit scared of being tricked. How did you do it?
Hey, no bother at all! I’m not super experienced, but this is how I went about it:
First - Decide what you’re going to offer. Are you going to divide up the cost by how much of a character is shown? Bust/½ Body/ Full? Are you going to divide it by how much detail involved? Do you offer Chibis vs realism? Figure out how you’re going to sell your art. And if backgrounds or additional characters take you more time, make sure to put a price on adding those elements.
Second - Look at other artist’s commissions pages. This can help you figure out what’s the clearest way to get your information out (the layout makes it clear what people are getting and for what price) and it can help you make your page unique by seeing the differences between how different artists do their layout. AND it can help you get an idea for how much is reasonable to charge someone.
Third - Establish your rules. Make it clear what you’re willing to take on and what you’re not. For example, I absolutely will take on OCs! But I refuse to do NSFW.
For your layout, make sure you have examples. People want an idea of what they’re going to get but may not always be familiar with your work. This gives them a cheat sheet to see quickly what they can expect.
Now, the actual Commission process can differ from person to person, but this is what I do:
First, you get a message from a Buyer explaining what they want (size, character, amount of detail). For any commission detail above sketch, I will do a rough sketch of what is asked to get the pose and expression down.
Once the Buyer has approved of the pose/face/sketch, I will send an invoice through Paypal. All commission work will stop until I am fully paid.
When the commission is paid for, then I move onto digital work, giving updates to make sure the Buyer likes the linework/color direction.
Upon completion, I send them the finished image and finish out the transaction on Paypal.
(The exception is a Sketch which will require upfront payment)
You don’t have to use this method, but I personally feel this is most fair to both parties: I don’t waste time on artwork without getting paid and the Buyer doesn’t spend money on something they don’t know whether or not I’m working on.
ONE MORE thing. Prices can vary a lot between commissioners and can get a little confusing. My sketches are cheaper than most but my digital artwork can be a little more. This is because it’s very simple for me to do a sketch but digital work takes me a lot more time and effort. So when assigning prices, think about what takes more time and more focus for you. Remember, when you’re taking the time to do artwork for someone else, that’s time you’re NOT spending on doing something else (working, hobbies, sleeping, etc). Your time is WORTH something so try to price yourself fairly.
GETTING THE WORD OUT is another thing I struggle with a bit. A huge help is when fellow artists signal boost for you, but it helps to expand outside of just one website. My sister takes commissions but found she gets a lot more traffic on instagram than on tumblr. I am the opposite. So try lots of avenues and don’t be afraid to ask for a signal boost on your commission page.
Best of luck to you and I hope this was a little helpful! If anyone has any additional advice, please add onto this post!
andulkaphoto
dailybridgerton
areudirty
tangentwithtanner
vaporwave
ellievsbear