Fairest is charging by the hour and displaying how long pieces took you.

You can still gift folks extra time if you really want to for some reason - like you had some art block or whatever - and you can decide whether to include that time in the quoted duration.

Classic rule:

How long do you take for one art piece ( note: 5 min breaks max./hr added to the calculation)?

What is the minumum wage in your country/region?

How much service fee (percentage or flat) (to calculate in food, electricity, equipment, etc.) do you want to add?

My tip would be the same as others TIME THYSELF drawing. then multiply by AT LEAST $10 an hour, or more depending on skill level.

Basically raise the price until people stop keeping you busy as you'd like, and then back off a bit.

This is the answer.

Use this principle and the prices will set themselves.

This is a great concept of supply and demand. Devils art is has improved to a point where he deserves a premium and it shows in his work.

Just going to +1 this.

Art is pretty much worth: Popularity * Quality * Speed. You can more or less quantify the latter two, but the first one is something you have to gauge.

EDIT: Having said that, I would never agree to an hourly wage when it comes to commissions. Individuals are too inconsistent, unlike say, a building company putting up a house.

yup! i got the timing down and stuff! which is why im switching over to hourly, permanently! i got it down well, so im quickly slapping together a ref sheet for now, then i will make a more glorious one before taking commissions again XD

If you got the timing down, I would highly suggest putting together a pricesheet with "this is how much you pay for this kind of shading and + this amount for background". Because with an hourly rate, you don't know what the finished quality will be and with this kind of format, if you know the timing, you will know how much you will spend on each piece and it will make it a lot more clearer.

I personally freakng love, but an hourly rate and not knowing what the finished quality would be makes me rather afraid to order anything, incase you might be out of my price range for casual commissions and instead I maybe need to save up or something. Because it's so hard to judge, it simply makes me worried. I know others might just say fuck it and pay whatever, but I'm not in such a position, so I rather know what to expect.

Remember that pricing isn't about what you put into it, it's about what the customer gets out of it. Knowing how long something takes for you to do is a good indicator of whether it's profitable for you given the price that people will pay for the results, but it needn't and shouldn't have a direct correlation to the amount you charge.

Charge what you want. Just don't ask 5k for a 100x100 background slot in a ych

who would do a thing like that?

Someone who'd put you on the cover of a book and not tell you beforehand

Am I thinking of who you're thinking of?

An individual who's name enda up DF?

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe

Not to stir up too much drama...

But unless you paid extra to keep the commission private, posting your commission as a cover is within the artist's rights.
Something similar happened a few years back with a different artist releasing CD art collections of the work they did. One person was not happy.

Alternatively... a private commission cannot be printed and sold without the artist's permission either.

A lot of fandom artists take things in good faith and try to contact people regarding something like making a commission the coverpiece.... or letting the art be sold as a minor print run. But in the end all rights do go to the artist for that work.

Cool your tits. Just wish I would've been told by the artist first. That's all.

Lol. Well good luck on that.

Just wanted to thank you for taking the time to post this. At least at the time of my reply, the artist in question's ToS does actually state explicitly that they don't do private commissions and they retain the right to use all commissioned work in promotional pieces with full credit given in the form of: displaying the character's full name and their owner's full name.

Which they didn't even have to say, legally, because all rights are retained by the artist unless signed away in writing.

I appreciate you explaining that, as an artist, myself. Some people get frustrated when they see the art they commissioned used on artbooks, but it's no different than using those same works as portfolio pieces to advertise your services. It's just on a much larger scale.

No problem!
It can be really frustrating at times for sure! I think the more that it gets mentioned and brought up, the more people will realize that this is the norm. I understand being protective over your own characters and creations.... but this is the artist's creation as well.

Exactly~ It's refreshing to see another artist who really understands their rights as a creator.

base it on how long it takes

I'm still trying to understand , thank you for some insight

I tend to submit the description, refs and then ask the artist how much they want cause the amount of work requires varies between submission.

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Pricing has honestly been one of the most difficult things I've tried to tackle. Usual formula being, average studio wage multiplied by 1.5 to 2, per hour. though now I charge by the day (multiplied studio wage times 8hrs, times how many days it'll take). I don't like having set prices for adding additional characters, BGs, etc cause you'll never know just how detailed or complicated they can go.

Perhaps you should try simple color without shading price. Again this isn't about how talent you are, but a tiny scrap can become better gold.

When I need to set a price for my commissions I do this: I look around the website where I'm going to sell them and see who else is selling. Let's say price range here on FA is 5$ - 5000$. Wow, that's a big range! It doesn't help us at all!
Let's just look at the prices for full body pieces with shading and ignore cheaper things like headshots and sketches. Now the price range is 25$ - 5000$. Still not helping.
Well, we can divide artists into categories. For example those with cheap prices, those with high prices and those in the middle. Or novice artists (not as good as you/me), epic artists (much better than you/me), and those who draw on your/mine level.

Now the price ranges (for shaded full body) looks like this:
That one poor artist with no watchers who can't sell anything - 10$
Low prices 25$ - 60$
Medium prices 60$ - 100$
High prices 100$ - 500$
That one epic artist who charges 10 times more than all the others - 5000$

I'm not very popular, but I don't want to go lower than 25$, 'cause nobody around here does. So good price for me would be low, let's say 30$. You have almost 30k watchers and good art skills, so your prices should be high. Try 100$ and if you get lots of buyers you can gradually make your prices higher. Hooray, prices set!

Why this method is good: it helps you to analyze the situation on different websites.
Somewhere it looks like this:
Novice artists with low prices 3$ - 5$
Artists who are a little better 5$ - 10$
Artists with your level of skills - none
Well, congratulations, you are the most skilled artist around and you can charge more than others! For example 20$ (and draw something quick like chibis or headshots, since you probably don't want to offer full body pieces for that price). This situation I saw on Flightrising, which is an on-line game, not an art gallery, so it has much fewer skilled artists.

And somewhere it looks like this:
Low prices 1$ - 3$
Medium prices 3$ - 6$
High prices 6$ - 10$
This I saw on Vk.com. So you can sell your art on Vk for 10$ max. WTF? On FA the lowest price is 25$ and Vk the highest price is 10$! That's why I don't sell commissions on Vk at all. :)

I'm a little late in replying, but I hope you'll read this all the same.

Don't charge by the hour. Even if you use that method to do the math for how much you should charge. It penalizes you for being good at what you do.

Example:

Your recent piece here is gorgeous work: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/31963574/

Let's say it took you 20 hours to do. And you charge $30 an hour. So you'd charge $600 for that piece, and your clients will happily pay for that art at that price.

One day, you decide you want to get faster at making art, so you have more time for personal pieces or I dunno, spending time doing something other than art. Like hanging with friends and family.

So you put in the practice to get faster at making your artwork, and that same piece now takes you 10 hours. Is it suddenly only worth $300? It was the same amount of effort. You even put in the time and practice to learn how to do the same quality of work in half the time.

Pricing things at a flat fee also takes the focus away from your time and puts it on your service/product. This is good for your clients, and good for you. Your clients stop seeing you as a commodity whose time is worth x amount of money, and instead as the artisan service provider that you are. And you stop equating your work with time, so you don't criticize yourself harshly because you're not spending 16 hours a day working.

But if you really feel the need to charge by the hour?

Work the formula in reverse for your most expensive offer, and then use that as your hourly rate for everything you do.

In other words, if this piece: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/31963574/
Took you 20 hours, and you want to make $600 off that time, your rate should be $30/hr.
A sketch that takes you two hours should cost $60.

In the future, if you find you can work even faster, you recalculate your rate accordingly.
That highest piece took you 15 hours? Congratulations, your hourly rate is now $40/hr.

In the end, the most important thing to remember is supply and demand. If you're getting more work than you can afford to take on, it's time to raise your prices.

I really like hourly for what that is worth.

But maybe the base stuffs like line art and flat color has a fixed cost and then lighting and special stuffs is on the hourly clock because it is too unique to each piece?