I suggest starting with people who have already commissioned you and people you trust well enough to start

thats fair, most of my work now is done in stream so the payment will be the same as always there.

and i dont pick favirots with commissioners, but almost all my out of stream commissions are from repeat customers so that shouldn't be that hard :>

worse case i can scrap the colors and sell it as a ych

what you can also do is not send them the files untill payment received

Ofc c:

hum ... that's sounds dangerous tho :c

Oh boy ... You gonna have a baaaaad time :/

I recomend you to do that with regular customers.

Codeine, I still trust and have faith in yooouuu!! x3
Still trying the best I can to be patient. ^.^;;

But I will honestly say that it may be a bit of a risk if you did the "Finish commission first, then payment later." method.

In my opinion, I'd suggest a bi-annual payment approach. Like initial pay gets the commissioner a sketch and line art wip, that way you have a starting point that you can adjust and continue finishing. Once given the other half of the payment, you can do the remaining refined line art, color and shading stages.
I say this cause I know several artists that end up getting cheated on when they do the entire artwork and never get paid in the end.. D:

I've seen some artists do it, where they begin working on it and show a rough sketch / line sketch and at that point they usually ask for payment so they can colour and add final changes and touches. Kinda like a two-stage process.

I see the problem then is working out some kinda schedule/system so you can't be late on work, rather than band-aiding it by not charging customers. Just my opinion.

Also half upfront half on completion, or payment on sketch are much safer for both parties, second is best for a multitude of reasons, sketch is when you know if any changes need to be made, and it's just one payment rather than multiple.

Also re:sketch, if the customer refuses to pay then you have a ych, I guess.

Or maybe even some personal work c:

That's true

I hope you don't get burned by some sketchy people.

I think....Make them pay half at the start and when its halfway done

Most people I deal with, charge only after a sketch is made. Including changes and other things.

Yeah, payment after sketch is definitely the better option.

Have you considered half up front/after a beginning sketch?

Maybe ask for payment after you've started but before finishing, like after you get the sketch done that way it's started and you don't have to worry about someone not paying you, at least with new people.

Always take payment up front, and don't take on commissions you can't complete reasonably quickly. Taking payment later is just going to cause a whole different set of problems.

That sounds fair to me.

IMHO, I would not take payment after the commission is finished. It's not a very good business tactic to take payment after you've already done all the work. Especially since there are a lot of untrustworthy people out there that just want to waste your time.

I suggest you only take on commissions you know you can finish within 1 week, provide a quote to the commissioner and take payment upfront. (ie. Take 1 (of any type) for each day of the week or 1 for every other day you're available to work on commissions.)

Also, an ETA on the completion time is really nice. (ie. 1st commission in your queue will be finished on ____ day. That kind of thing.)

It takes a bit of organizing, but I think you'd be able to do it.

maybe something like half to start and half when done