New! Improved! Insta-Art-O-Matic!

[Salesmonkey]

Have you considered raising you rates? Right now I've got a quote off to a client whom I frankly despise. He's a horrible person and a pain to work with, but quoting him three times my usual rates helps me get over my rage, fear, hatred and loathing.

[spark]

The problem with raising my rates, is that it results in my getting exactly zero commissions. Zip, zilch, nada. The fantasy art drawing world is VERY over-saturated. There are thousands and thousands of people out there who are as good as I, and probably several thousand who are much better, and many of the ones at my skill level are already criminally cheap, half my prices or even less! So already I don't get much business.

And going around and telling everybody I'm taking commissions, come get some art, and hearing crickets is really frigging depressing to me. So it's either have low prices and get some, or just give up the game, pretty much. I HAD high prices for about four years and I got exactly one drawing commission during that period. I eventually gave up and lowered them, but at this point I'm probably just going to quit altogether. I'd rather be getting none because I'm not taking any than getting none because despite constant advertising nobody wants any. :P They amount to the same thing, but my ego doesn't deal well with the second.

[Ironclad Alibi]

I will sometimes quote a much higher rate to potential clients. These are clients that I do not want to do business with, but since they seem to be on the edge of sanity, I don't want to flat out refuse them. So I quote a higher rate to get them to go elsewhere. If any of them actually accepted the higher rate, I'll be getting paid for the extra difficulty involved. So far, none of them have wanted to pay the higher rate.

[spark]

Given that this, and most of my problem customers, only revealed themselves as problems after I'd not only quoted rates, but gotten payments... dunno that that would cut down on the issue at all.

[Solumina]

Perhaps you may want to start telling people who commission sketches that while you will try to get to their piece as soon as possible you do have other pieces ahead of them. Seems silly to me that you would have to resort to telling them something that should be common sense but we all know how uncommon that can be.

[hinakiba777]

I really hate people who do that to commission artists. I have a lot of friends who are great artists who either A) Charge painfully high fees or B) Will decapitate you if you ever ask for a time line.

This is mostly because they had people as for original piece for 5 dollars, or bug them every 12 hours about progress. Which really sucks for me, who pays upfront and only bugs them monthly. And I feel BAD about bothering them monthly, because obviously they have real work and other commissions.

It makes me sad how people think they can just snap their fingers and find a perfectly drawn, inked, and coloured piece of artwork in their mailbox.

[Little Retail Rabbit]

I need to somehow make people actually PAY me for the drawings I do -_- I don't have anything set up online or anything, but from time to time people ask me to design something for them. As I am, basically, an amateur, I don't charge people, I say "I'll knock something up, if you like it, you can decide what's fair" or something like that. I never seem to either get completed (because of lack of communication) or they somehow never get round to paying me. The last time was when a colleague of mine asked for a tattoo design, and she DID say "I'll pay you of course". I said to her she could decide the price depending on what she thought of the design- which she loved and did have inked. Then she left the company. honestly don't think she intended to stiff me but I guess most people think I'm doing them a good turn or something (with the exception of my musician friend, who took me out to dinner, on her, as her payment for a CD cover ). I guess its my own fault really for trying to be "fair" and informal about it.

I'm considering setting prices now, and I'm even thinking of making wee lil cards just to make things look official. As the Joker said "If you're good at something, never do it for free".

[Kogarashi]

I need to somehow make people actually PAY me for the drawings I do -_- I don't have anything set up online or anything, but from time to time people ask me to design something for them. As I am, basically, an amateur, I don't charge people, I say "I'll knock something up, if you like it, you can decide what's fair" or something like that. I never seem to either get completed (because of lack of communication) or they somehow never get round to paying me. The last time was when a colleague of mine asked for a tattoo design, and she DID say "I'll pay you of course". I said to her she could decide the price depending on what she thought of the design- which she loved and did have inked. Then she left the company. honestly don't think she intended to stiff me but I guess most people think I'm doing them a good turn or something (with the exception of my musician friend, who took me out to dinner, on her, as her payment for a CD cover ). I guess its my own fault really for trying to be "fair" and informal about it.

The start is to never hand over the finished product in a usable form until you've been paid. Even when I was charging super-low for commissions because I was still pretty bad at it, the most the customer got was a low-res .jpg with a copyright symbol splashed across the front until they paid me for it. That way they couldn't do anything with the picture without notifying people of how cheap they were that they'd rip off a commissioned artist. But once I got the money, they got their higher-res usable copy to do with as they pleased (within the terms of the sale). So for a tattoo, I'd give a grainy, low-quality copy with a huge watermark so that any respectable tattoo artist would realize that the artist hasn't given proper permission for that to be used.

[Little Retail Rabbit]

The start is to never hand over the finished product in a usable form until you've been paid. Even when I was charging super-low for commissions because I was still pretty bad at it, the most the customer got was a low-res .jpg with a copyright symbol splashed across the front until they paid me for it. That way they couldn't do anything with the picture without notifying people of how cheap they were that they'd rip off a commissioned artist. But once I got the money, they got their higher-res usable copy to do with as they pleased (within the terms of the sale). So for a tattoo, I'd give a grainy, low-quality copy with a huge watermark so that any respectable tattoo artist would realize that the artist hasn't given proper permission for that to be used.

Thank you for that. I don't actually tend to do this sort of thing online...with the case of the colleague, I actually handed her the physical drawing in person, while we were at work. I don't even have a scanner but I suppose that could actually work in my favour in a way- sell the physical copy, but if they wanna see it, before payment, it'll have to be a photograph of the drawing (the only way I've ever been able to share my stuff on DA XD). Thanks

[Kogarashi]

Thank you for that. I don't actually tend to do this sort of thing online...with the case of the colleague, I actually handed her the physical drawing in person, while we were at work. I don't even have a scanner but I suppose that could actually work in my favour in a way- sell the physical copy, but if they wanna see it, before payment, it'll have to be a photograph of the drawing (the only way I've ever been able to share my stuff on DA XD). Thanks

Oh, no problem. It works just as much for in-person sales. Go for a smaller, grainier printout (with watermark if you've got Photoshop or similar) until you get paid. When I do commissions at conventions, if I didn't get the money up front, then the customer is shown the piece but not given it until the money is handed over. I don't feel like playing Chase-the-Scammer through the convention center if I end up with a bad egg, and none of my awesome customers seem to have minded at all.

And hey, if you do it right, a digital photo can be a pretty decent low-res substitute for a scanner. You have to have a super-awesome camera to get close to print-quality, but you can still get some decent shots that look like they were done with a scanner.

[Little Retail Rabbit]

Oh, no problem. It works just as much for in-person sales. Go for a smaller, grainier printout (with watermark if you've got Photoshop or similar) until you get paid. When I do commissions at conventions, if I didn't get the money up front, then the customer is shown the piece but not given it until the money is handed over. I don't feel like playing Chase-the-Scammer through the convention center if I end up with a bad egg, and none of my awesome customers seem to have minded at all.

And hey, if you do it right, a digital photo can be a pretty decent low-res substitute for a scanner. You have to have a super-awesome camera to get close to print-quality, but you can still get some decent shots that look like they were done with a scanner.

My digital camera actually does a pretty good picture, so I have found photos of my artwork normally get by (I do artwork for an online magazine that I write for, and while the editor has admitted to tinkering with the light a little, it always seems to work out!) so what I might do is use my cell-phone camera instead Once again, pretty good camera for a cell-phone, but its just a phone- it's only so good!

[Seraph]

I once tried to get into commissions, back when I still drew. Very, VERY first order placed was an absolute twit, and I promptly said screw it, not doing this.

You have my absolute respect for what you do. /salute

[Mytical]

Spark, from what I have seen of your work..I want to meet some of the people you profess to be better then you. You are amazing, I can only imagine what they might be capable of.

[spark]

Try here: http://nambroth.deviantart.com/ (Probably my fav. fantasy artist, she is AMAZING.)