#a wee busy w my jobs have these wips

[seraphont]

DaGOI comic wips + sketchdumps

[spadefish]

Spadefish’s Advice On Getting Your Art Seen and Your Work Sold: Making It As A Freelancer In The Online Art Scene

since a few people have expressed interest in hearing how I make things work!! I don’t know if I’d consider myself a ‘professional,’ but I do make commission art for a living and I do pay my bills, so take this as you will!! Gonna put this under a readmore so it doesn’t take up too much dash space. This applies mostly to tumblr artists, especially those just starting out. 

1. TAG YOUR WORK. 

I know, I know, tags are dead. Except they’re not!! The search system here is whack, but people still use it. In addition, you never know if someone is gonna go through your art and look for a specific fandom or character! Tag liberally. Put the most pertinent tags in the first five, because those are the ones that show up, but tag EVERYTHING. fandom, series, character name, subject, anything you can think of. And ofc, you’d better have a tag for your art!! Mine is ‘my art’ and there’s a link to it right on my blog. 

(I personally also have a blog JUST for my art-- this is useful and I highly recommend it.) 

Another thing this does is allows people viewing your art to disambiguate it. If I see a picture of a blonde boy with messy hair and I want to know if it’s Ryuji, Spark, or Owain, I’m gonna go to the original post to see. If the character’s name isn’t listed, I’m less likely to reblog it because I might be wrong! 

2. POST AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE.

Even if it’s a doodle or a sketch, or a wip. Even if you’re not necessarily sure you like how it turned out. More content means more stuff for people to look at, and you never know which pieces are gonna resonate with which people. Draw fandom stuff, draw oc stuff, do studies and still lives and everything else, but post it!! 

Kind of on this note, don’t rag on your own work in the caption. Being negative about your own work 1. only further makes you feel bad and 2. definitely doesn’t convince someone to buy work from you. Be confident in your skills!! You made something!! 

3. PROMO YOUR WORK.

Self reblogs!! Don’t be afraid of them!! Especially if you’re like me and post in the wee hours of the morning. Always reblog your own art at least once in a ‘prime’ part of the day so more people see it. Every once in a while, I queue a bunch of my favourite recent work so more people get to see it. You should be doing this with your commission info as well-- reblog it often, so people know you’re open! 

4. YOUR COMMISSION INFO...

...Should be easy to access, as to-the-point as possible, and most importantly, it should feature recent work!! I update my commission info at least once a year to feature more recent work, so that it’s accurately reflecting my skills. If you’re working, you’re growing and making progress, and your info should reflect that. Use your BEST WORK as your examples, because that’s what people are going to look at when they think about commissioning you. 

Pricing is a little trickier, because for a lot of freelancers on this site, shooting lower often yields more sales. Pay attention to competitors of your ‘skill level’ and consider the demand for your work when pricing. Personally, I think you should never charge lower than $10 for a piece, but even that’s still murder in my opinion. If you have the resources, time yourself while you draw and try and assign yourself an hourly wage estimate. 

5. SPREAD OUT!!

Don’t limit yourself to just tumblr. Post your work in as many places as possible. In my opinion, Furaffinity is one of the most lucrative places to put your art, if you’ve got the right subject material. Make sure your commission info is easily accessible in those places as well!!

(6. Are you 18+?) Comfortable with and practiced in drawing n/s//f/w content? If it’s something that floats your boat, there’s a lot of business there. Be clear in your guidelines of what you will and will not draw. Obviously, you can’t post n/s/f//w work here any longer, but you sure can on FA and Twitter, and you can still take nsf///w orders through messenger here.

AFTERWORD 

These are my methods!! They’re obviously not the end-all-be-all, but they make things work for me-- I’ve got steady work and I’m paying bills, so that seems like success to me!! This is more of a supplement to help anyone out who’s struggling to figure out the business side of a passion-job. Hope this helps someone!!