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Advice on earning from art commission /custom work.

Moon.cat
Posts: 104 Forumite
Ok so I've just started creating some digital art and have started to upload it onto Instagram. I've gathered quite a following on Instagram and my posts have started to gain 1,000 likes etc to the point where people have been messaging me asking me to make them custom work for album art etc. I thought this might be a good way to make a bit of money on the side and have made known that I am now open to commissions and custom work for a fee of £15 and everyone who asks me about this I make known from the start that I charge £15. Everyone says "oh that's really cheap", and then they tell me what kind of image they want done and I spend hours making and changing the custom work for them after various message exchanges for them asking what they like changed for them to reply and say "ok I'll ponder on it and let you know"and then they don't let me know or no response at all. So I feel like I've spent hours making work that they don't actually even want and that's hours of my day I've done that for free. Anyone else who is an artist experienced this or anyone have advice?
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Comments
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Apart from don't spend hours doing something for £15, I would suggest you either quote a price after ascertaining the client's exact requirements or specify the image(s) you will produce with a price list for any deviations from the standard article.If you are querying your Council Tax band would you please state whether you are in England, Scotland or Wales0
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Someone else advised me to accept a deposit before hand and /or charge extra for every revision / redesign. Also I have put my prices up as in just starting out with this and have been told £15 is too cheap0
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Are you watermarking your art before you send it? They're probably just saving it and not paying you!
Why are you selling so cheaply? Charging less than minimum wage is ridiculous! Also, not charging extra for revisions is pretty silly.
Basically, you're being taken for a ride by people who know you're inexperienced.0 -
Don't worry I have been watermarking my work right in the middle and sending them a low quality preview. With visible grid lines on too. So if they were to save my work they'd need to do a bit of editing on it before it's even use able.0
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You're right! I am inexperienced and very new to this. I only posted my work for a bit of fun and didn't expect people to approach me asking for custom work and didn't really know where or how to take it. I have upped my prices and posted terms on when I expect payment and how much for extra revisions and if people want to use any of my original work too.0
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Many moons ago, before digital art was even a thing, I ran a small art gallery. We would get new artists coming to show us their wares - and the response when asked how much they wanted us to sell them for was invariably the same. Blank looks. Doing the art (for people who can do this sort of thing) is the easy part - running it as a business is the hard part.
As a bare minimum you need to be charging the equivalent of minimum wage for however many hours it takes you to do the work. Otherwise you might as well save yourself the bother and get a job on the tills at Tesco. You also need to be charging enough to cover the cost of your materials - with non-digital art that would be the paint and canvas etc, but with digital art you need to cover the cost of updating your software, paying for licences, website design, hosting etc etc etc. And that's the minimum - that is merely covering your costs, not giving you any profit.
Have a go at putting together a business plan - I know it's just a sideline at the moment, but you never know how things will turn out. It will be a useful exercise for you.
If you have a skill that others don't have, don't give it away. And who wants a cheap work of art anyway??No longer a spouse, or trailing, but MSE won't allow me to change my username...0 -
I do drawing & painting portrait commissions & have done for a few years now. I have to say that £15 wouldn't even cover prelim sketches. I charge according to size & material, with a minimum of £90. With digital art you MUST set out terms, as to how they may use it/ how many times etc. If they use it for several things then you charge more. People could run off thousands of prints of your work & earn a fortune whilst you get peanuts for having the actual talent & creativity. Personally I would charge an upfront fee of maybe £50 for some prelim work which, if they go with it, take that off a final fee.
Check out Arts England for their fee recommendations & even quote this to customers maybe. Whatever you decide to go with, good luck & well done!0 -
Thanks for the responses guys. I have been working out decent pricing / packages etc. And also writing up some terms for rights of use. So it's just helped a lot to right things down. Actually just landed myself a project where I said I won't start without a deposit and they sent me the full price in advanced. So I think even just letting people know you have set rules is a more professional way to go about it. Thanks guys!0
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