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This was requested by in my discord server, and I thought I'd do a full write up in DeviantArt so that all of you can benefit as well!

I don't have much experience with commissions compared to many others, but I can take you through all the considerations I had when doing them, and when writing my commission journal. This write up will be pretty opinionated, so I'd recommend seeing what other's thoughts are.

I might put this into video form someday!

Table of Contents
1. Should I start doing commissions?

2. When should I start doing commissions?
3. How should I do them?
4. How much should I charge for them?
5. What options should I provide?
6. Pet peeves
7. What you need
8. Questions from comments

1. Should I start doing commissions?
This one's a little hard to answer. While earning money from your hobby is nice, remember that doing business, and handling others' money is a responsibility. When you take money from others, you have to be certain that you are able to provide the service that they paid for.

I'd recommend seeing if you:
1. Want to do commissions in the first place (duh)
2. Know basic art fundamentals, including
- Lines
- Shape
- Form (important!)
- Anatomy (SUPER important!)
- Perspective
- Anything related to colours
3. Have a consistent style (important!)
4. Have the time at least once a week to sit down and work on art

It helps if you can easily describe what exactly it is that you do. For me it's pretty easy: I paint anime

If you satisfy the above, you might make a good artist to commission from!

2. When should I start doing commissions?
This one can be pretty simple. If people are asking if you do commissions, then it might be a good idea to start. People asking is a good sign that there is demand for your work.

If nobody has ever asked you that, it could be either:
1. Your works have not been exposed to the right people
2. Your art isn't good

For a lot of beginners with big dreams, it's usually the latter, but I trust that most of you are good enough.
While you could try to promote yourself in the DA forums, other social medias, I don't know much about that type of thing. I'd recommend just trying your best to improve in the meantime. These things can take quite some time.

Of course, if you are confident in your ability, you don't need to consider any of the above!

3. How should I do them?
Start by thinking of the business process.

For me it goes something like this
1. Get the commission request
2. I do a couple of concept sketches (like this: imgur.com/8qgEYA0 )
3. I send the concept sketches to the client
4. Client chooses the sketch
5. I take payment
6. I finish the piece
7. Send for approval
8. Approved
9. I upload the piece everywhere and send it + the working files to the client

The important parts are:
1. Getting the commission request. I get them via the commission form on my journal, but some do approach me with general ideas and I decide the category from there.
2. When to accept payment. I take it after a concept sketch is chosen.
3. Communication with the client as you're working on it. If I have their contact on discord I send WIPs there, otherwise I prefer to work uninterrupted on the piece.
4. Final changes. Some artists don't accept changes after finishing the piece. I don't really know since I never needed to edit stuff after the fact on request.

You might notice something special in my process, the fact that I do multiple sketches for the client to choose from. I don't know any others that do multiple sketches, which is a shame. A lot of my ideas aren't that good, and it's difficult to know which ideas are worth expanding on. I think doing this increases the satisfaction and value of your service as well!

4. How much should I charge for them?
First, if you're thinking of doing anything under $5 / 500 points, I wouldn't recommend it. Your time is more valuable than that, and I think it's not good to set people's expectations of your prices to be almost nothing.

You could think of it in terms of per hour pay, or set it based on demand.

So if it takes on average 8 hours for me to finish an illustration, I could take $10 * 8 = $80 for example.
Don't actually charge based on actual time taken because that's out of the client's control and just feels unfair.

The resulting prices from this will be pretty high, so most likely the prices would be based on whether anybody actually ordered anything from you.

It depends if you want to focus on doing commissions, or are fine with not always having a commission to work on. I like spending a lot of time on personal pieces and studies, I'm fine with my higher prices resulting in not having a commission to work on for most of my time.

I will recommend having things at different price tiers. Think about what your low, medium, and high cost options are.

5. What options should I provide?
First, figure out what you are comfortable doing. If you can only do bust ups reliably then just offering bust ups is perfectly fine! If it's only animals then that's fine too! As long as it's within your ability it's good to offer it.

For character art, the typical options are based off of how much of the character is shown, as that's what takes the most time and effort.

You can split the body into the head, bust, half body, knee, and full bodies, and price based on those.

But also, instead of the business process, you can also look at your art process.

Mine would be:
1. Concepting
2. Sketch
3. Underpaint
4. Overpaint
5. Adjustments

And as such you can split your options based on those too. From my commission categories:
Sketch -> Concepting + Sketch
Coloured Sketch -> Concepting + Sketch + Underpaint + Adjustments
Illustration -> Concepting + Sketch + Underpaint + Overpaint + Adjustments
Full Illustration -> same as above, with much more time spent on each stage due to complexity

And now I base my options exclusively based on the process. Why?

Well when I did options based on the body, I felt too limited. Coming up with interesting compositions and scenes while only being able to show a certain part of the body is tough, and I didn't want that anymore. Doing things this way opens me up to art where the character is not the focus, like background art, or things that are not anime in general.

Doing both is also an option, but be wary that this will result in a lot of different prices!

Lastly you can offer different styles entirely, like Chibis!

There's also one off things like YCHs (Your Character Here) where you start by offering a base, and clients can pay for you to draw what they want on top of that base. Those seem like pretty fun and simple work, but I've never done one before so I won't comment further

6. Pet peeves
I commission a few artists myself, and these are some bad things that I've noticed that make it very unlikely for me to commission the artist ever.

I have pretty high expectations so keep that in mind

1. Lack of communication
When I don't know when the piece would be finished, what the artist is working on, what stage the piece is on. It adds a lot of uncertainty that doesn't feel good. You can solve this by being clear on how long the delivery time is, and informing clients of any delays

2. Super long waiting times after payment.
Having to wait long before payment is fine, but after payment I start having expectations. When a month turns to two and there's still nothing, I get very disappointed.

3. Attitude regarding deadlines.
To be clear, it's fine to not be ok with deadlines. Just decline the ones that do come with them. What I don't like is "Don't rush me because art takes time and I don't want to be stressed with deadlines etc etc" type of stuff. There's no need to explain yourself like that, and all it does is make you seem irresponsible.

7. What you need
1. A way to accept payment

If you're using DeviantArt points, DA already has all the tools you need! The commission widget should be all that you need, just create the widget for the commission as needed, and then you can remove them after the fact.

For higher prices accepting payment in currency would be better. I don't actually know how to set up card payments by myself, so I and most artists you'd find use paypal to handle it. Paypal allows you to send invoices to people's emails, and they can pay using any of their credit / debit cards or their own paypal balance.

I recommend using the business focused methods above and not the gift features in either platform. It gives legitimacy to you as a professional artist, and usually the funds are more secure.

2. A way to present your offerings

On DeviantArt the best would be a commission journal, here's mine for example [OPEN] Kuan's Commissions
I might revamp how it looks soon, but for now that's how it is.
When you do this be sure to check how it looks in eclipse! Mine looks way worse in eclipse and that's why I want to revamp it.

You can also make an infographic featuring all your options, there are many great examples here
www.deviantart.com/commission-…

I couldn't figure out a way to effectively show all the information without the picture being super cluttered so I didn't bother.

3. (For traditional artists) Figure out shipping
I don't know anything about this so don't ask me~

8. Questions from comments
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1. Got any more Paypal advice? Should I create a personal or business account?

Business accounts have some benefits like:
1. Paypal generating a debit card from the account (US only I think)
2. Multi-user access
3. Being able to display the business name and logo on the transaction screen
All of which we don't really need

Fees are the same for both accounts, and important features like sending invoices are in both as well.
I have a business account because that's just what commissions are. There's no real logical reason to it.

If you do create a business account it will ask you for additional details like business name, I used my real name until recently where I changed it to Kwanfi. This name will appear on the invoices.

Again please use the invoices, using gifting means that the client has to navigate paypal themselves, and find and enter the correct amount to give, in addition to their card info and all that. It's an extra step for them that doesn't need to be there.
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And that's all I can think of regarding starting commissions! If you have further questions please leave them in the comments and I'll try my best to answer them! I hope it helped! If you need a base to start from I won't mind you lifted from my commission journal for a start!