I've been wondering that myself @_@ Sorry this isn't a comment with advice, but it is one wishing you luck! lol
Good luck!

LOL thanks xD If I do get any good advice I'll be sure to relay it to you! <3

This doesn't work for everyone but it does help a little.
Try advertising on these groups in dA (if you have one), anthro-commissions and paypal-commissions. Also try and . Freebies--raffles n such--really help, even if it's only a little bit.

I definitely am a part of DA! Thank you for those <3

im not exactly a furry artist success story, but here is some advice that i think would be useful regardless:

be active in the community. post often, and more people will see your work. try to post a few times a week, and experiment with posting at different times if possible. i find that generally when i post a piece or two, i end up with a few more watchers. if you want to take on art for employment, you should already be drawing as much as possible in order to prepare for spending a large part of your time drawing for money. this will not only help to fill out your gallery/portfolio & increase your skills, but also show your watchers that you can produce art on a regular basis. commenting on others work and being more active/friendly helps to build connections/friendships/network which will help you to get business and build up a good reputation.

advertise. there are plenty of communities on livejournal that will allow you to advertise your commissions. posting journals here are helpful and informative, but many people may look over them - so consider posting a graphic into your gallery as well. if you can afford it, and/or if you are able to build up a small queue of commissions where this would be affordable, consider maybe purchasing ad space on FA. i haven't done it myself but i hear it can be quite helpful for the price. also consider posting some stuff on furbuy/furbid/whatever and see what other customer base you may be able to tap into.

price in a way that is fair to you and your customer. if you are offering traditional commissions, be sure you factor in your material cost AS WELL AS your time cost. it is hard when starting out, because so many new artists sell their work for so cheap. it may seem like its too hard to compete, but please don't do this. trust me - i've done it before and i always regret it. you want your work to be affordable, but you also want to be able to afford to continue to create it! make sure you are getting paid for your time. try and time yourself with some different types of "products" and figure out how much you want to be paid per hour. at least make sure you are making more than minimum wage :)

set goals. figure out how much you want to make per month (or per week) and make sure that you are able to create a sort of workload that can reach that without wearing yourself out. set deadlines for pieces and try to stick to an agreed upon turn around time.

good communication. set up a commission TOS, so that your customer is aware of what you will or will not draw, how your commission process works, an explanation of your pricing or services, as well as explaining if/when refunds are available, how people can pay you or anything else about how you handle technical aspects of business.

as for digital vs. traditional, it really seems to be split 50/50. offer what you would prefer to create. traditional is generally more expensive because of the material cost & shipping.

Thank you so much! This is all so helpful.

I think one of my biggest problems (other than getting more customers) is charging too low. Sometimes I feel like I'm really underpaying myself but then again I don't think I have enough demand to set too high of prices.

Although I really like your idea of having cheap commissions & more expensive commissions. I tried doing more of a ladder with my prices (IE $3 increments between sketches, lineart & color) and I'm actually finding out that I'm kind of screwing myself that way. But then again, I'm really stuck between figured out prices because of the lack of demand.

Ah, it can all be so complicated! I suppose the best place to start is adding more to my gallery.

How successful have you been with just selling prints? Have you tried selling prints?

i have the same problem. i charge way too low, but it seems like if i try to price fairly than i don't get any business. i don't know what is worse :(

how is it that you're screwing yourself over with the ladder pricing? is the time still a major factor?
maybe try offering pieces in different sizes to create a price range, rather than a different medium/process part.

i have been successful (as in, i have sold a few) in selling photography prints on etsy, however i have had absolutely no success with selling art prints here. perhaps, however, that is because its something i haven't marketed much & also perhaps its because i do clean art.

Yeah it's definitely time issue with the ladder pricing. For example, if somebody commissions me for a picture to have their character, flat color (no shading) and a full background, it'll cost around $23... But doing that takes about the same time as it would for me to do that same picture but to shade the character, and then I charge $8.00 more for the shading. I'm still so new to the actual "selling" aspect so trying to weigh out where the higher charges should be is still hard. I'm already charging $10 for a background, which I feel is fair... So I'm trying to figure out where else I could change the prices. AND! Trying to keep my prices competitive and attractive to customers since I don't have a high demand yet!

Thank you again for any advice. It's nice to hear from people who have been doing this for a while. Way back in the day when I was super active commissions weren't nearly as big as they are now. Back then it was all about art trades.

also on pricing: have a variety of price points. small, cheap & easy options like badges (these are great, and my most popular form of commission when i do commissions) and icons, as well as larger scale and full color pieces.
consider occasionally having sales or specials where you'll take commissions for ___ theme or ____ size for ____ special price for x amount of time to gain interest & keep your self challenged.

seconding the LJ comment. Try that out, for sure. teenycom, anthrocommissions (I think that's the name...) and others are really helpful.
AND DEFINITELY MAKE A ToS. It'll help you a lot with keeping people from asking you a lot of unnecessary questions and make you look more professional.
Also she didn't mention this, but try out communities that are non-profit too, like art exchange groups and themed groups. dA and LJ are both good for this, but FA has a few too. A new one that I found and like a lot (granted, I haven't gotten commissions from it but it's still publicity) is .

I'm not a success by any means either (really, REALLY not...) but I hope this helps you out.

And agreeing with Gh0st again that when you post your prices, you should aim to have a lot of variety, as much as possible. Also you should try sales and specials too!

I think art exchanges would be a good place to look. I like doing art trades, mostly because it's the only way that I can get art from people because I'm pretty poor after bills, lol.

Thanks again for all the links! I'm definitely going to check them all out. <3

Awesome! That club is really nice and needs more people :P but yeah, clubs do help you get more watches, for sure.

DERP I mean exchanges!

It looks really awesome! I can't wait until they start again. I like the whole idea of you not knowing whose drawing for you. I think that's really neat. And it's nice to have it monitored like that as well.

OH ALSO there's some stuff on the FA forums too where you can advertise too. I've heard sites like FChan can help a little too, they're like....archival forums kinda. They're mostly for pin-up and adult art though.