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I'm in college, and what that means for prices and queue.
10 years ago
Alright.
I'm a very academic person and I like to keep my focus on schooling for the most part, and this is gonna be a lot more important now that I'm in art school. I want to improve my work.
That said, I'm also really going to need to pay off some things. Scholarships and loans haven't fully paid for it yet, and as you guys know, I actually love doing commission work. I'd far rather enjoy drawing your cute characters and ideas than work any other job I can think of. You guys are awesome <3
So really the only choice I have that allows me to spend less time (due to schoolwork) and make more, is to raise my prices again. Be honest with me, how much do you think my work's worth? Do I undercharge to you, and if so, by how much? Or, do I overcharge already? Bear in mind the customer service aspect, too. My pricelist is a mess right now (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/15567774/) and I'm probably gonna cut out some options from the main list. (Not that I won't do them at all, but journal only for simplicity's sake.)
I'm not going to raise prices yet, I'll most likely hold a stream or a sale right before with the old prices as is my tradition, but for now I'm still closed since I need to work through my queue and organize a work schedule that fits with college.
Oh right! The queue! How is that going to work with this?
Well, my expectation is that college will actually speed up my work productivity. I plan to treat both college and artwork like a job, with a full spread of hours to devote to it specifically. (Before, I treated FA more like a serious hobby, without specific hours.)
The job aspect does have some negative consequences, but my policy has always been not to spend any money until the work is finished, and that's still true! Don't worry, all of it is safe. This means that refunds are always available to anyone.
With that said, because I need to make money as fast as possible to appease my university, I'm going to need to put the work with the highest $-to-time ratio up front. That doesn't mean that other art from earlier is going to be ignored, but I have to get to it later, because I don't have the time to devote to it right now. Basically, I'm going to be doing a payment plan with the university, and when I have made enough to breathe for that month, I can then work on less profitable stuff.
I won't be opening for any new LARGE work until I've finished the high profit-to-time ratio things on queue already, to prevent working out of order, and of course I'll be working on the other things in between. Phantom's refs and the final Zordrak are the lower-ratio commissions, so these will be the ones with unsteady work devotion. They've been on queue for a while, though, so if I ever have a block of free time, I will be cracking down on them hard and working to get them out of the way. I am just not sure when I will have enough free time to do so in college.
Thanks for keeping up with me through everything, and I'd like to be a better artist and businessperson.
On another note, I would love to do live commission streams again. Honestly streams are very fun and I miss doing them, and it's a great way to talk to people. Maybe I can even manage something besides joinme now! :D
I'm a very academic person and I like to keep my focus on schooling for the most part, and this is gonna be a lot more important now that I'm in art school. I want to improve my work.
That said, I'm also really going to need to pay off some things. Scholarships and loans haven't fully paid for it yet, and as you guys know, I actually love doing commission work. I'd far rather enjoy drawing your cute characters and ideas than work any other job I can think of. You guys are awesome <3
So really the only choice I have that allows me to spend less time (due to schoolwork) and make more, is to raise my prices again. Be honest with me, how much do you think my work's worth? Do I undercharge to you, and if so, by how much? Or, do I overcharge already? Bear in mind the customer service aspect, too. My pricelist is a mess right now (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/15567774/) and I'm probably gonna cut out some options from the main list. (Not that I won't do them at all, but journal only for simplicity's sake.)
I'm not going to raise prices yet, I'll most likely hold a stream or a sale right before with the old prices as is my tradition, but for now I'm still closed since I need to work through my queue and organize a work schedule that fits with college.
Oh right! The queue! How is that going to work with this?
Well, my expectation is that college will actually speed up my work productivity. I plan to treat both college and artwork like a job, with a full spread of hours to devote to it specifically. (Before, I treated FA more like a serious hobby, without specific hours.)
The job aspect does have some negative consequences, but my policy has always been not to spend any money until the work is finished, and that's still true! Don't worry, all of it is safe. This means that refunds are always available to anyone.
With that said, because I need to make money as fast as possible to appease my university, I'm going to need to put the work with the highest $-to-time ratio up front. That doesn't mean that other art from earlier is going to be ignored, but I have to get to it later, because I don't have the time to devote to it right now. Basically, I'm going to be doing a payment plan with the university, and when I have made enough to breathe for that month, I can then work on less profitable stuff.
I won't be opening for any new LARGE work until I've finished the high profit-to-time ratio things on queue already, to prevent working out of order, and of course I'll be working on the other things in between. Phantom's refs and the final Zordrak are the lower-ratio commissions, so these will be the ones with unsteady work devotion. They've been on queue for a while, though, so if I ever have a block of free time, I will be cracking down on them hard and working to get them out of the way. I am just not sure when I will have enough free time to do so in college.
Thanks for keeping up with me through everything, and I'd like to be a better artist and businessperson.
On another note, I would love to do live commission streams again. Honestly streams are very fun and I miss doing them, and it's a great way to talk to people. Maybe I can even manage something besides joinme now! :D
If you raise prices, given the high quality (imo), as well as funding needs, would be well worth to keep coming back to illustrative work done.
It really is good to hear the reinforcement. ;w;
- I'd make "icons," "binaries," "chibis," and "dinkles" one category for each with no different coloring options. That way people are buying the style primarily, and don't have to futz about how they want it colored. :)
- Sketches, lineart, and shading are kind of complicated since you can get shaded sketches (called painted) and so on. I'd probably slightly restructure it to the following:
1.) Sketches (black and white/flats/shaded)
2.) Lineart (B&W/flats/cel shaded)
3.) Lineless (B&W/shaded)
This isn't the best breakup but at least that way you have the type of lines as your main category, and the type of coloring as the second choice. It's also how I try to split up my pricesheet, so I'm biased. >.>
Anyway, hopefully this gives you some ideas! I'll pop more in here if I think of them. :D
I do have an idea about how I'm gonna structure it- I think I may not even have Binaries on there at all, and only open for them through journal. Good idea on simplifying the others! People seem really evenly divided on whether they want Dinkles shaded or not though, so I may keep those. But yeah, Chibis could be simplified.
Augh.. Icons are a rough thing to think about, because I've always had options. Hmm.. I'll probably just make them cel by default and say people can ask for other options.
I'm thinking the new ref will have these options, as opposed to the old: http://i.imgur.com/r6OK6r6.png
No binaries or monochrome since it's niche, and that can be a journal thing. And no lineless, because those are actually very rough for me! I'll probably only put them in via journal, and consider them part of full illustration.