Every time I find an artist here that I really enjoy, I check their commission information. Now, I won't necessarily be commissioning anything any time soon, but I like to know what my options are and how much I would want to save out in case I do decide to commission something from them later. Without fail, whenever I see the actual commission rates, my jaw hits the floor. Many people charge less than ten dollars for a sketch, and most are charging between ten and twenty for a fully inked piece... sometimes less than ten bucks for even that! The first time I saw that I thought that perhaps it was a fluke, but I've seen it so many times now that I think it must be the standard here and the higher prices are the anomaly, no?

So my question would be... why the low prices? When I do freelance design work of any sort outside of my own projects, I charge considerably more than that. My reasoning is that this is the monetary value that I assign to drawing (or sewing, or drafting) whatever the client wants me to draw instead of what I would choose to draw on my own time. I'm fairly lazy and therefore try to work my "day" job as little as possible, but when I do work at it, the minimum I generally make is twenty dollars an hour. If I'm going to work on something for somebody else for money I should think I would want at least the same rate, otherwise I may as well just work more at my job for cash and spend my less-profitable time on projects for myself, right?

Are the commission prices here competitively low (so-and-so charges ten, and they're great, so I shouldn't charge more than ten)? Are some of the artists perhaps insecure about their level of skill? If that's the case it's no excuse for low pricing... if someone is commissioning a piece from you it's because they *like* your work the way it is. Do a lot of the artists perhaps not have decently-paying day jobs so that ten dollars for a custom sketch is "at least ten dollars they didn't have before"? Possibly the dream of living off of art is more important than actually making a decent living? I do understand happiness being more important than money... that's why I don't actually work very often, heh.

Personally I am not very likely to ever open myself to commissions here... it's certainly not worth twenty dollars to me to draw a custom piece for somebody else (something that I wouldn't be likely to draw for my own enjoyment) when I could just add an extra hour to my shift at work and make more than that... and then come home and draw whatever I wanted (or watch pr0n, or play video games, or shop for boots, or nap recreationally, etc.). I should think that if I did price it at what it *was* worth to me, with the level of drama running rampant on the internet, I would get a barrage of "do you think you're so much better than so-and-so... what's with the hefty price tag?!".

Any thoughts?