Am I undercharging on commissions?

[BlueB]

I always worry about the price of my work, and would like some honest feedback on what I should be charging, or if I should be charging at all. Here are some examples of my work.

And here's my commission page on Lemma Soft: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 62&t=32781

I charge 12 USD for a full body sprite, and 20 USD for a full background CG. Is this too much? Too little? If there's any way I can improve on my commissioning process, please let me know. I want to be fair to my potential customers.

[SundownKid]

Personally, I think your current prices are fine. Your work is certainly good enough that you are not overcharging.

As for making it higher, well, that should probably be more of a decision based on your demand. Naturally you want to keep a balance between a decent price and still having high demand. That's where a good portfolio and marketing skills come into play.

[BlueB]

Thank you for your feedback! Are there any ways to make my commissions more appealing? Other than natural improvement.

[Laiska]

Honestly, I would charge at least $30-35 for something like the last pic, if I were you. How long does it take you to make something like that? If it's more than 3 hours definitely don't charge any less than that.

[BlueB]

I work rather fast, and complete something like the last piece in 3-4 hours. I'm relatively new to the commission scene, and while I don't want to be taken advantage of, I also don't feel confident in my pricing ability.

[Laiska]

There is a long and kind of rambly post on commission pricing theory you can read here, but in general, you should value your time! Your work is good, and if you're putting in your full effort, you shouldn't value yourself at less than $10/hr, as a base. So I'd say something like $30-35 is good for the last piece, if you want to keep it on the lower end. I've certainly seen people charge much more for that.

[BlueB]

Thanks a lot for the boost in confidence! I'll probably start charging more eventually, but I want at least a few more commissions under my belt first, to make sure I know I can get the work at a higher price. But again, I really appreciate your advice!

[Tempus]

Some things to be aware of:

• As a general rule, the higher you charge the more pleasant and organised your clients tend to be.
• The cheaper something is priced, the less it's valued. You may think charging less will attract more people but there have been cases where someone has raised the price of their art and landed more clients (or better clients as above).
• It is better to land one high-paying commission than several lower-paying ones. Never be afraid to turn offers down because they're paying too little. There'll be more so don't be afraid to wait it out if you can.
• There are a lot of people who will see you advertising your services. Remember that only about 1-5% of those people are the ones saying, "you're too expensive" or "I can't afford you."
• Be prepared to stand your ground when people negotiate with you. It's very easy to agree to something which short-changes you when you're put on the spot with an unexpected offer such as this: "we need 5 sprites with 3 poses each in 2 weeks and we're going to choose our artist tomorrow. It's $10 per sprite, are you interested?" (Say "no"!!! They've given you one day's notice and offered you less than your asking price!)
• If you have low self-esteem or anything which might affect your perception of what you're worth remember to compensate for it.

Thank you for your feedback! Are there any ways to make my commissions more appealing? Other than natural improvement.

As for this, I wrote a short thing on advertising your services a while back. About the only point on that I no longer agree with is sharing everything upfront. Yes, it's important to share your work, what you can/can't do, contact details, etc. But I don't think you have to share your pricing publicly if you don't want to. Remember that the EVN world is a very, very limited subset of what's out there. It's actually the norm outside of it for freelances to not share rates publicly. The EVN world is bizarro world, in many respects...

[SundownKid]

Personally, I think not sharing pricing info only makes sense when your work is very expensive and clearly looks the part, so it's more of a "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" kind of thing. When your work is in the lower or middle level, you want the pricing to be out there to avoid missing out on jobs because the person might assume they can't afford it, or to avoid wasting time from people who really can't afford it.

[noeinan]

When I was doing pricing, I found the guide posted by Laiska to be very helpful.

Something I did when I was trying to figure out prices was look through all the other artist commission pages here, find someone who you think makes art comparable to your own, and use their prices as a guideline.

[Noyemi K]

It's nice to think "heh, I'm not charging enough!" but being real here, $10/hour is a really idealistic pricing outlook that doesn't reflect the reality—nobody cares about your effort and you'd probably wind up pricing yourself out of the market.

[ffocal]

I'd say your prices are right for the time being- I think you can raise your single-character price to 30 once you fully grasp human anatomy and maybe 60 after you can handle 3D space, foreshortening, lighting etc etc. And then after that you can start looking at professional prices.

[BlueB]

There seems to be a lot of conflicting opinions on this, but art is subjective. I won't change my prices for now, and I appreciate everyone's comments. To ffocal: I don't think you need to fully grasp every art subject to be considered a professional. Professionals can't grasp every single aspect of art. Otherwise, they'd be gods, not artists. I think "professional" is when you can make a living off of your art. I obviously can't do that, so I don't charge professional prices. Thanks again everyone for giving your input.

[Laiska]

It's nice to think "heh, I'm not charging enough!" but being real here, $10/hour is a really idealistic pricing outlook that doesn't reflect the reality—nobody cares about your effort and you'd probably wind up pricing yourself out of the market.

You wouldn't want to go too high just because you're a slow worker, but you need to know the value of your own time to an extent. And you don't want cheap clients who won't value that.

If you charge low it should be because you want to, not because a few cheapskates won't buy your art.

[ffocal]

There seems to be a lot of conflicting opinions on this, but art is subjective. I won't change my prices for now, and I appreciate everyone's comments. To ffocal: I don't think you need to fully grasp every art subject to be considered a professional. Professionals can't grasp every single aspect of art. Otherwise, they'd be gods, not artists. I think "professional" is when you can make a living off of your art. I obviously can't do that, so I don't charge professional prices. Thanks again everyone for giving your input.

Uh, all the things I mentioned are musts for an artist/illustrator... just like writers should know nouns, verbs, adjectives, grammar, tense, where to put apostrophes etc etc.
You can't go - I'm a writer but I never learned how to use adjectives, but come on, if I knew all of those I'd be some kind of god. That's a very unprofessional attitude to have.