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Have experiences with commissions?

Whether from accepting or buying, your experiences with commissions could help inform others. The survey will only take a few minutes and won’t ask for any potentially identifying information (e.g., email or demographics), keeping all of your responses completely anonymous. If we receive enough responses, we’ll also post a summary online to help spread awareness and potentially increase the quality of all our commissions posts.

Click here to get started!

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Have experiences with commissions?

Whether from accepting or buying, your experiences with commissions could help inform others. The survey will only take a few minutes and won't ask for any potentially identifying information (e.g., email or demographics), keeping all of your responses completely anonymous. If we receive enough responses, we'll also post a summary online to help spread awareness and potentially increase the quality of all our commissions posts.

Click here to get started!

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A new banner for mobile views!

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Add-ons offer additional product options on top of the base product (e.g., backgrounds or dynamic shading). Think of them as the candy bars in the check-out lane at a grocery store as well the upgrade options on a new car. They can simultaneously keep initial prices low, offer clients to personally customize their requests, and convince clients to spend just a little more—because the price is so low, why not. Clever use of add-ons can make the commissioning process more streamlined for everyone while also offering more description about the products being offered.

Unfortunately, add-ons aren’t always beneficial and may suffer from the same problems as pricing tiers. Just as extra pricing tiers can give potential clients too many options—leading to indecision—add-ons can make pricing and product descriptions unnecessarily complex. Consider if every pricing tier has six or seven add-ons, the length of the post increases dramatically leading to less information getting through to readers. Additionally, the amount of possible combinations of products being offered explodes quickly as the number of pricing tiers increases (e.g., consider how many combinations of 7 add-ons you can make with 3 tiers). If we want our audience to commit to requesting a commission, we need to give them the simplest path available to do so.

As such, keep add-ons few in number (1 – 2), reduce their prices to whole numbers (e.g., $2.00), and make their purpose clear without additional description—for example, “+$2.00 for backgrounds” is clear, but “+$2.00 for smooth backgrounds” is unclear. Providing only a few, essential add-ons helps to refocus readers on the commission they want instead of the amount of add-ons they can choose from. Similarly, listing add-ons as whole values makes pricing easier for potential clients to calculate how much their commission would cost. Clean pricing, when combined with clear labeling, can help remove any lingering confusions within the add-ons, making them easier for potential clients to request.

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Hyperlinks can be great to include within commissions ads. Links to survey forms can help potential clients communicate their ideas in a stream-lined fashion, links to portfolios can provide additional examples of your work, and links to Terms & Conditions could save time and space. However, assume that no one will ever click on the link. When advertising, our ultimate goal involves driving an audience to commit an action—in this case, handing us money in exchange for art. Yet, relying on an action (e.g., clicking on a link) to make the advertisement successful could backfire as readers miss a link, ignore the link, or intend to click on the link but never do.

Accordingly, only place inessential information behind hyperlinks. If a potential client absolutely needs to know something (e.g., your contact info), assume that it will be ignored if its not plastered on the primary ad. Thus, before using a hyperlink in a post, consider: “Would the post be effective if someone ignored this information?” If the answer is “no,” consider incorporating the information behind the link into your graphics or short description instead.

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People like options when shopping, but they don’t like too many options. 2 – 3 options (often sketches, linework, and finished pieces) should be enough to give people the opportunity to feel like they have a lot to choose from without overwhelming them with too many choices—which could create indecision. Additionally, for each option offered, also include 1 – 2 examples of work that would fit in that tier. The examples help potential clients to both check out your style and infer more meaning regarding a tier’s offerings. For instance, “sketches” vary in meaning and complexity between artists. Where one artist may call a detailed, black and white drawing a sketch, another artist may only think of a sketch as whatever can be done in 15 minutes or less. Thus, by offering an example, you help to solidify what’s being offered so that potential clients can make an informed decision.

Furthermore, when giving examples, use recent works. While a piece from a year ago may look awesome, that piece may not reflect your current style, quality, or tool use. Thus, recent examples offer a more honest representation of what your current work’s all about. Additionally, it avoids awkward moments when potential clients want something similar to a work done years ago (as shown in your examples) whose work process you’ve forgotten about entirely. Ultimately, the examples you provide should represent who you currently are as an artist, not who you were in the past.

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Following up from the previous post on pricing, minimum rates should be considered while determining the price for commissions. When we take commissions, we are working as freelancers. By recognizing this, we can start to weigh an artwork’s quality against the value of time put into creating the artwork. If someone thoughtlessly scratches a doodle, selling the doodle for $2.00 might be reasonable, but $2.00 would be quite far from the worth of a piece an artist labored over for several days. When deciding how to price your art, consider: “How much would I expect to get from a day job?” Even if that price amounts to minimum wage for your area, the rate gives you somewhere to start and helps to prevent underpricing.

Calculating a minimum rate

As of June 1, 2018, the federal minimum wage within the United States is $7.25 per hour—meaning federal employees cannot be payed lower than that wage for their work. If possible, you should never price your work below this rate. Additionally, because commissions are skilled positions, you should consider charging more than the federal minimum wage for your work.

For the beginner base price—the lowest price tier of a beginner artist—I generally round up to $10 per hour, because it’s an even number and people appear to think somewhere between $10 and $20 is a good price for a sketch (typically ~1 hour of work). With that rate, I also cap the cost of work at 2 – 3 hours, placing a complex sketch (e.g., detailed background or many characters) at around $20 - $30. This cap is arbitrary but can help when negotiating prices with potential clients.

Increasing Prices

The cap and the base price should increase with the artist’s skill level. After all, $40/hour for even a complex work from a beginner artist could be a stretch, but $40/hour for largescale project from an advanced artist would seem about right. Accordingly, the biggest factor to consider will always be the perceptions of potential clients. Clients who believe they’re either overpaying or underpaying may shy away from requesting a commission. Therefore, consider asking your target audience about the prices they think are reasonable and work from there. Otherwise, consider starting above your determined minimum rate and use a few months of commissions requests to judge whether you’re satisfied with your traffic. If you’re getting a lot of customers, increasing your prices could help advance your business, whereas a dearth of customers may suggest revisiting how you’re advertising your work. In most cases, lowering your prices should be a last resort.

Also, the range of prices which will seem reasonable to potential clients may also widen for more skilled artists. For example, potential clients may only find $10/hour – $20/hour a reasonable price for a sketch from a beginner, but $25/hour – $160+/hour for an expert artist may not be out of line. Importantly, artists with higher quality work will generally have more control over their prices due to higher consumer demand. Therefore, as time passes, be sure to reevaluate how your prices relate to your skill level and work quality.

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When advertising online, there are some general concepts that will help get your post viewed more often.  However, two factors could really make or break a commissions ad.

a.       Use Graphics

             Above all, include all your commissions information on colorful graphics that catch people’s eyes. Graphics are much more portable and not constrained by the same posting limitations as text between social media sites. Additionally, they allow for an initial example of the type and the quality of work being offered. Unlike long text posts, graphics offer a lot of control over what the audience will see and how they will see it. This flexibility can help draw readers in and create more interest around the ad. However, just be sure that the message presented by the graphic is clear and includes only essential information. When in doubt, show the images to a friend and ask what information they take away from the graphics after viewing them. If your friend gets the wrong idea or gets confused by any of the information, consider redrafting.

b.       Descriptions offered beside graphics

             While including graphics is a good strategy, long descriptions about commission tiers can hinder an advertisement. When posting the graphics, try to include as little textual description as possible by sharing only the essential details—such as payment methods, types of commissions that won’t be entertained, or links to external pages. While browsing social media sites, people tend to scroll quickly between posts and don’t necessarily take the time to read each post they come across. Therefore, assuming that people will only glance briefly at graphics and read a portion of the description could aide informed organization of the advertisement and maximize information shared in a short amount of time.

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Each community will differ in their standard pricing. Tumblr, for example, tends to float between $10 – $20 USD for sketches, whereas artists on sites like DeviantArt could work for less than $1 USD (through the unfortunate points system). Additionally, most commissions pricing is driven by consumer demand, in which clients’ demands for a specific style or topic combined with the availability of those demands at a certain quality will lead to perceptions of a commission’s worth. (If a client’s looking for something uncommon (e.g., Flash Gordon throwing a glaive at the Tramp in Modern Times) or in a unique style, they could carry an expectation to pay more to get what they want.) Meanwhile, popular artists, retain more control over their prices because many consumers enjoy and want to access to their work. Accordingly, many artists follow consumer demands until their brand reaches a vague threshold of popularity, at which their art generates the demand. Unfortunately, this path isn’t absolute and may never happen for some artists. As such, artists could find happy mediums by both paying attention to the clients’ wants and creating payment standards—or minimums—for their prices.

As a rule of thumb, artists should always charge at least a minimum wage ($10+ USD per hour) for their work. Using an hourly pricing scheme can help remove the burden of determining prices by focusing on how long it takes to create the work, rather than subjective assessments of the work’s worth. Plus, minimums provide extra logic behind final prices if a client wants to know more (eliminating some confusion) while dissuading devaluation of a work due to low prices.

With this in-mind, always use a fixed price in advertisements. People get anxious around numbers; making them do more than simple addition to calculate costs could result in them overlooking your ad. The hourly wage concept should primarily be used when either determining how much to advertise a specific type of work or how to raise prices when a client wants extra work done. Still, remember to do your research on how other artists price their works. If enough artists are charging more than your minimum wage, raising the minimum wage may be a good strategy. Alternatively, if other artists are charging far less for their work, stick to your minimum wage and only reevaluate if you knowingly started that minimum higher than average.

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A new series of posts about commissions!

Creating art takes time, effort, and funding. To secure funding, many artists turn to offering custom art via commissions. Unfortunately, the process of determining how to price, construct, and advertise commissions is often left up to the artist to awkwardly stumble through. If an artist has a large enough social network filled with more experienced artists, they may have an abundance of examples off which to base their own commissions. However, even well-connected artists may not take a systematic approach to discovering what does and does not work well for others. Instead, they listen to general principles offered by other artists—e.g., offer plenty of examples for your work—which may not apply to all artists in all circumstances.

Back in 2017, I conducted a survey of (a portion of) Tumblr’s pokèmon community to figure out how pokèmon fan artists advertised themselves and how consumers thought about approaching online commissions. For a detailed analysis of the community’s attitudes toward commissions and my previous post about online advertising, check out the following links:

Commission advertisement

Commission Pricing

Online advertising: The Basics

While some of the data I collected won’t generalize to other communities, websites, or time periods—trends on the internet move fast—there are some general principles, which (combined with my own experiences) will ring true for most artists advertising their work online. In later posts, I’ll attempt to dig into the issue with a more scientific angle, but, for now, consider the following five features which may make or break a commissions ad.

General overview:

Pricing

Advertisement formatting

Commission offerings

External links

Add-ons

Information on each topic will be posted 2 days apart starting Monday. As such, be sure to keep checking back to get all the hints and tips! Impatient? Patrons will get all posts earlier.

Until then, if you know of any quality tips regarding posting commissions ads on social media, feel free to share them with us! The more people communicate about best practices, the easier time newcommers and veterans alike will have making their work visible to others.

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What are references?

References are guides that help someone get a sense of the structure, the feeling, or the concept of material on which their newer work is based. References may exist as—but are not limited to—audio files, natural landmarks, images, written text, theoretical frameworks, or cultural norms. A creator could use almost anything as a reference if they wish to do so. The only qualifications for something to be used as a reference is for that something to be an extant idea and be acknowledged as useful for creating a new work.

Who uses references?

Creators of every skill level use references (e.g., portraits of live models, fan art, or political satire) while creating work. Often, a creator’s nonuse of physical references relates to a solid mental reference from which that creator may draw. If a person has created any work at any point in time, they are guaranteed to have used some type of reference to create their work.

How should someone use a reference?

To use a reference, understand the content being referenced and create a new piece of work based on that content. For example, a painter may reference a live model to paint their interpretation of the model’s pose, attitudes, or general appearance. Similarly, a fan artist may take artwork created by the author of a known work and reference how the work demonstrates a character’s size, palette, personality, or imagery. Critically, a content creator uses a reference properly when their new work builds upon established work to create something new or expand upon the referenced work. If the new creation expands upon or incorporates imagery from the referenced work, the content creator should attempt to ask permission to use a portion of the referenced content or, at least, provide some notation to indicate the identity of the referenced work’s creator.

How should someone not use a reference?

Content creators should avoid directly copying reference material without indicating the source of the reference material’s content creator. Tracing—almost exact replication of a referenced work—may be used for educational purposes but is typically discouraged for use as original work. For example, a painter may recreate The Last Supper as a means of better understanding the work or to practice their painting skills. However, these replications should be treated as something originated by Leonardo da Vinci, not the painter. Works from newer or less well-known artists should be treated in kind. While content creators may benefit from using references to create new content, attempting to pass off others’ work as their own could create trouble for everyone involved. Thus, while using references, content creators should be cautious about similarities between their work and the work they’re referencing. If the two works are too similar, a content creator should consider reconsider how they address sourcing of the work while sharing the work with others.

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Whether an artist or a scientist, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually have to advertise your work online. Artists may need to relay information about their commissions or portfolio. Scientists may need to share a survey or two online or get word out about their latest and greatest research. Meanwhile, everyone needs to network to get their name out to whoever will listen. Yet, it’s not uncommon for people of all backgrounds to only experience anxiety while attempting to post important information online. After all, each social media platform has different cultural values for what’s appropriate to post, how those posts are distributed, who may see those posts, and how posts should be formatted. For example, I’ve shared this post on Tumblr with explicit HTML formatting. The code used to build the post can be whatever length I’d like but may not include most styling elements (CSS) or large, graphical organization (e.g., tables or embedded websites). However, if I posted this information to Twitter, I would quickly hit a character limit and kiss my fancy formatting goodbye. You’ll need to understand a platform’s specific quirks before making the most out of its posting features. Even so, all platforms share many of the same features, meaning we can start exploring how to post by thinking about some general strategies.

Now, in the future, we’ll dig into some actual marketing and psychology research to think about posting content more deeply. (After all, many researchers dedicate their careers to studying social media interactions, and it’d be a shame not to learn from their findings.) But, for now, let’s consider the basics of posting and how users may interact with posts. Specifically, we’ll examine the following characteristics of a post:

Colorful Images

Length

Audience

Timing

>Metadata

Colorful Images

Back at the start of the internet, people didn’t share images—because they weren’t able to. Nowadays, most social media platforms have become public spaces that depend upon image sharing as forms of interaction. Accordingly, even if you’re posting text-based information, include an image. Most people scroll through their media feeds quickly, spending very little time on each post. For your information to get noticed, you need to make people linger for longer on your post. That’s where images come in. A simple visual piece can help offset paragraphs of unattractive text and will catch eyes more than a bold headline. With all this in mind, not all images are created equal. While images in general may help to add interest to a post, the image needs to relate in some way to the information you’re trying to share. Otherwise, the image could distract from you message and do more harm than good.

Similarly, don’t underestimate the power of color. Even a well-placed image can become ineffective if it has bland colors (e.g., grayscale or dull, washed out tones) or colors that blend in with the website in the background. For example, a primarily blue post may not stand out against the Tumblr dashboard, but a bright yellow post will stand out in stark contrast (look up Color Theory for more info). In the end, that’s what you really want: contrast. Colors which contrast with the surrounding website will draw readers’ eyes and make your post pop out. However, remember to use common sense and stay away from blinding colors (e.g., neon yellow) which may have plenty of contrast but hurt readers’ eyes.

Continue Reading

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Initial sketches for our new portfolio app

Some initial layout plans for our Portfolio App (actual name TBD). The concept amounts to having an offline space for people to easily show off their artwork and business info. We've progressed a bit in the development process and have added a few more features and design changes. But, looking back at where we started is always interesting.

Created and digitized via Wacom Bamboo Slate

For early access to sketches, articles, and design plans, check out our Patreon page.

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Whether an artist or a scientist, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually have to advertise your work online. Artists may need to relay information about their commissions or portfolio. Scientists may need to share a survey or two online or get word out about their latest and greatest research. Meanwhile, everyone needs to network to get their name out to whoever will listen. Yet, it’s not uncommon for people of all backgrounds to only experience anxiety while attempting to post important information online. After all, each social media platform has different cultural values for what’s appropriate to post, how those posts are distributed, who may see those posts, and how posts should be formatted. For example, I’ve shared this post on Tumblr with explicit HTML formatting. The code used to build the post can be whatever length I’d like but may not include most styling elements (CSS) or large, graphical organization (e.g., tables or embedded websites). However, if I posted this information to Twitter, I would quickly hit a character limit and kiss my fancy formatting goodbye. You’ll need to understand a platform’s specific quirks before making the most out of its posting features. Even so, all platforms share many of the same features, meaning we can start exploring how to post by thinking about some general strategies.

Now, in the future, we’ll dig into some actual marketing and psychology research to think about posting content more deeply. (After all, many researchers dedicate their careers to studying social media interactions, and it’d be a shame not to learn from their findings.) But, for now, let’s consider the basics of posting and how users may interact with posts. Specifically, we’ll examine the following characteristics of a post:

Colorful Images

Length

Audience

Timing

>Metadata

Colorful Images

Back at the start of the internet, people didn’t share images—because they weren’t able to. Nowadays, most social media platforms have become public spaces that depend upon image sharing as forms of interaction. Accordingly, even if you’re posting text-based information, include an image. Most people scroll through their media feeds quickly, spending very little time on each post. For your information to get noticed, you need to make people linger for longer on your post. That’s where images come in. A simple visual piece can help offset paragraphs of unattractive text and will catch eyes more than a bold headline. With all this in mind, not all images are created equal. While images in general may help to add interest to a post, the image needs to relate in some way to the information you’re trying to share. Otherwise, the image could distract from you message and do more harm than good.

Similarly, don’t underestimate the power of color. Even a well-placed image can become ineffective if it has bland colors (e.g., grayscale or dull, washed out tones) or colors that blend in with the website in the background. For example, a primarily blue post may not stand out against the Tumblr dashboard, but a bright yellow post will stand out in stark contrast (look up Color Theory for more info). In the end, that’s what you really want: contrast. Colors which contrast with the surrounding website will draw readers’ eyes and make your post pop out. However, remember to use common sense and stay away from blinding colors (e.g., neon yellow) which may have plenty of contrast but hurt readers’ eyes.

Continue Reading

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Check back tomorrow (7:00 PM CST)

We’ll be posting the first in a series of informational posts on the mechanics of advertising online. Each post will cover posting commissions, creating online surveys, or creating graphics to pair with this week. However, this week we’ll start with the basics.

Impatient? Check out our Patreon page to read the article now (and future articles early). 

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Soooooooon!

We’ll start posting weekly articles about art, science, and technology next week. This week, keep an eye out for the app design sketches we have scheduled for Friday. Can’t wait? Become a patreon of ours to get an early look at all of our posts.

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Who are we?

Put simply, Neverender Technology is a one man team (run by @fictional-seviper​) trying to introduce artists and scientists to the technology available to them. Often, people in both groups either haven’t had programming training or don’t have a good grasp of how technology works. With a Masters in psychology and many years dedicated to creating digital content, I’ve noticed countless people (from novices to professors) who could make their lives easier with just a little more work on their tech skills. As such, through Neverender Technology, I’m hoping to provide some additional resources to help everyone get a bit more out of their professional work.

While content may come weekly rather than daily, I'll try to provide as much reference material as possible to help people grow on their own. Additionally, if you know of any blogs with quality content that I should follow (and reblog) or if you would like to contribute content, let me know!

Upcomming projects

The initial projects I tackle will focus one some fundamental concepts, mainly: artists promoting themselves and scientists running online studies. Over the past year, I've been investigating both concepts thoroughly, with the former being via surveys run through Tumblr and the latter being with large scale data collection at my day job. By putting the information out there, I'm hoping to get people more comfortable with both.

Here's an overview of how it'll break down:

Artist promotion

Promotion basics: Things to consider

Advertising and pricing

Mobile application for promoting in person

Breakdown of how the app works

Demonstration of how to create an online portfolio

Online data collection

Initial hurdles and consideration

Creating online surveys: Software and construction

Examples of lab experiments running as web applications

Breakdown of how each app works

Demonstration of how to create the apps

While the release dates for each of the posts aren't set in stone, I'll be tackline each topic in that order. But, if you don't feel like shortening the wait for new content, head on over to my Patreon page. All articles, application progress details, and coding templates will be available to patrons a little earlier than everyone else.