This is by no means the correct way to do it or the best way to do it, but it is the way I do it - in particular the pet and people portraits I offer on my shop - https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/ScoleIllustration
Where to start…
Everyone has to start somewhere - not a lot of customers, no reputation, no demand, not many followers but the more work you produce, the more those things grow along with you and pricing your work accordingly is key.
If you are pricing to highly in the beginning people will not buy from you. I repeat. Will not buy. The reason being is that you don’t have a big enough body of work as examples and potential customers won’t be able to trust in you that you will fulfil their order to the level of skill your high price reflects.
So…start basic and build your portfolio of work with a reasonable fair price point.
First things first:
Figure out a basic cost price that you would want to pay yourself for doing the artwork E.g £10 per hour.
Start off by making a rough estimate of how long you think something would take you to complete and do this for every size or product you are offering. E.g A5 coloured pencil drawing will take around 5 Hours. (This is a random guess so don’t worry about accuracy. Just dont be unrealistic).
This will be your starting price. This price reflects your time only so if you require materials in order to make your product/artwork then add this on top (I don’t add materials to my pricing because I buy my paper in bulk and I have endless pencils so I don’t need to repurchase anything per order.)
From this moment on, record data on every piece of work you create on a spreadsheet or in a notebook (the nerd in me loves a good spreadsheet). If you are creating the artwork for yourself and not a customer - price it as if a customer has purchased it.
Make sure to include all of the following things:
The more data you fill out, you can begin to see averages in the time it takes you to complete certain things and you can adjust your pricing accordingly. Wait until you have at least 5 of the same thing before finding an average (You don’t want to change your pricing after everything you create - build a good amount of data first). Yes, in the beginning it is guess work but you won’t know how long things take you until you start recording it.
Even of you are at the very beginning stage and have no custom orders - start recording the time is takes you to do your own artwork. Create a piece similar to what you would sell and time yourself
As you can see from the above example - the artwork was priced at £45 which, by the £10 p/h rule, should have taken 4 hours 30 mins but instead it took 5 hours 30 mins. So if you find that many of the same sized commissions are taking the same amount of time you can then adjust your price to charge £55 instead.
This is how I set up my workspace- I have my reference image to the left, my artwork in the centre and then a timesheet to the right!
I always prefer to record my time this way because I get distracted easy and I can’t work for solid hours in a row. I need breaks so this allows me to see accurately how much time I actually spent working on the art rather than saying 2pm-4pm but actually in that time I got distracted by instagram and snack breaks. I write short bursts of time and then add it up at the end of the day.
In the beginning you won’t seem to be making a profit as your only charging for your time and not your skill but it is essential in building a good portfolio and building trust for your customers that you can continue to deliver good work.
Naturally, the more you do the faster you will become as you will find ways to cut down time in certains areas or faster ways of doing certain things and that is when your price mark up creeps up by itself. For example you may be charging £60 for something that now takes you 4 hours instead of 6 but you’re still getting paid for 6 hours work.
Once you have enough experience, skill, portfolio and customer reviews/recommendations that your demand increases - you can up your price again. At this stage you have already proven that you can create the high standard of work, you have the customer reviews to back you up so people will want to to pay more money because now you are in demand for your time and you can charge for your time - maybe upping the price again to £70
You need to make reasonable price jumps that are realistic and not too big, otherwise it will scare people off.
Bonus Tip:
When deciding time scales and despatch times - always give double the amount of time rather than the actual amount of time. For example if it takes 2 weeks to complete then give a 3-4 week despatch time. Life happens and things get put on hold, so instead of stressing to finish in 2 weeks you have already allowed extra time for mishaps or setbacks and it means no unhappy customers and no stress for you.
Also if your customer wants a faster turnaround than the 3-4 weeks you are able to offer a quicker time for more money as you already know you can complete in around 2 weeks. Just have a limit. If you know you can’t complete something before 2 weeks then do not agree to a faster time.
If customers want something for a gift then make sure you outline in the description and the shipping info that they must order in plenty of time and your commissions cannot be rushed to suit quick deadlines.