So You Want to Take Commissions
Things I wish someone had told me
As an artist, I have some experience with offering and accepting commissions. These are things I wish someone had told me when I started.
Set a Reasonable Timetable
While it’s great to get a lot of commissions, without a schedule, you can find yourself overwhelmed and with unhappy customers. Add extra time to each project, including breaks for other things going on in your life. You should include this in your contracts, which we’ll talk about below.
Contracts
Create a contract for every commission. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it should lay out what you’re offering and what is expected of the customer.
Pricing Your Work
Rate
Your rate should be determined by a base rate x time x materials. Color is expected to be more expensive, but details matter. Super detailed work--like line art--should be priced higher.
For example, I did a 12x16 acrylic paint pen canvas that I priced and sold at $100. But a 9x12 multimedia page art of an octopus with different thicknesses of Micron ink pens--so a million lines--sold for $200.
Painting? Upcharge. Larger canvas? Upcharge. Full body vs head vs bust? Upcharge. Multiple sizes of the commissioned image? Upcharge.I think you get the picture.
Don’t undersell yourself, because people say you’re charging too much.
Discounts
Do not discount your work when you first start doing commissions. By offering them first, people will expect a discount every time. You can always drop prices later, like for a sale, but you will run into issues when you try to raise the prices to better match your skill level and labor. This only really works when you expand your offerings, like a change of medium, offering prints, cards and other merchandise.
This also goes for family and friends. If they can’t pay your asking price, they aren’t supporting you.
Deposits
Always include a deposit. Too often people will change their minds after you’ve already started the work, and a deposit will at least provide some monetary value for you. Most of us charge 50% upfront before we start. This will be included as part of the contract, so there’s no confusion about what’s expected and when.
Licensing
When you do commissions, you need to think about licensing or how your work can be used. Here are some of the most used options:
Personal License
This means the customer can only use the end product for personal use, like hanging it on their wall or, if it’s digital, that they can print it once for personal use. They cannot sell the image or put it on merchandise for their own personal gain.
Commercial License
If the customer intends to use the final product for their own profitable gain, then you need a commercial license, as you are signing over all the rights to the image and cannot use it for your for-profit gain. This licensing option will be more expensive for those customers and should include the ability to display it in your portfolio for garnering additional commercial commissions.
Using a personal license for commercial purposes is a breach of contract. This should be clearly mentioned in the contract.
Tattoo Tickets
If someone wants to use their commission as a tattoo, they need to pay for that option. I charge an additional $50 per piece (and in general, if they want to use any of your art as a tattoo). This option should include a hi-res digital image with an allowance to print once for personal use, not to mention a signed document that lets the tattoo artist know they aren’t stealing art.
How to Get Paid
Two of the best ways to get paid are Paypal and Stripe. Both places allow you to create invoices for commissions and provide protection against issues. You can include the contract as an attachment for them to sign and return (something you should include as a requirement). Understand that you will be charged a fee for every transaction, but if your art is considered a business, you can claim these costs as a tax deduction.
Never pay anyone with Zelle or any other option that has a friends and family tied to it. If something goes wrong, you cannot get your money back.
Building Your Audience
The easiest (albeit slow) way to build your audience is social media. There is no reason to be on all the platforms, as long as you invest in whatever platforms you choose.
For me, Threads has one of the best, most welcoming art communities, especially as a new artist who cannot necessarily funnel an audience from a different social media platform. I have sold the most art (and books) through there, not to mention members for my sticker club. You can find me on all the big platforms as @studioim.art.
Keep your style consistent, especially for your commissions. It’s easier to price your work when you’re doing something consistently. This will build your brand, and let your customer base have a real idea of what they should expect when they hire you.
And you can always grow once you are doing a steady schedule of commissions.
Scams
Unfortunately, when you’re an artist, there are a lot of people out there who want to take advantage of you. These are some of the most prevalent ones from the last few years:
I love your work, do you have a store?
I found your account and love your style. Do you do NFTs?
I would love to make a mural of your art.
I want you to draw a picture of my son and his [insert pet type].
I’m building a gallery of art and would like to include you.
Here’s how you know that they’re scams:
They’ve never interacted with your account aside from going to your profile to message you.
They never have an idea which of your pieces they’re interested in, and worse, when you push back, they tend to post the images of your last three posts.
They refuse to buy art from your store, even if what they say they like is available in your store.
On their account, you see ‘art collector’ or the name of an actual artist/art collector, but if you google the name, you’ll see that they aren’t collectors at all. If they have a social media presence, their username matches their actual name and not some variation of their name with numbers after it. Also, the vast majority of their photos will be dated the same day.
They don’t want to sign a contract or use a payment option like Paypal, where you’ll have options to get your money back when they show their hand.
They do not answer your questions in your DMs. Instead they just paste the next line in their script.
There are some other things, but these are the biggest red flags.
I hope this was helpful!
You’ve got this!
Have any questions or something I missed, let me know!