misselaney:

thekurohime:

I want to offer commissions to earn money for school and I figure I should offer a product with a skill I have

So how do you do that? I know it’s more complicated than simply listing prices and pictures. How do you set up the paypal? Do you need an existing bank account?

Howdy Kurohime! I do not know a lot about you but I do see your art reblog gallery and your other stuff, so I thought I’d put this together for you: 

1.) Find out what your time is worth!

Here’s a trick ripped straight out of the the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines book. 

Sit down and add up all the expenses that you have to pay each month. Consider things like house note/rent, insurance and other bills (and add in a food bill). Multiply that by 12 to get how much you “cost” in a year.

For me personally, I have shell out about $2.5K a month so I have to scrounge up $30,000 a year, and that’s buying nothing extra, going nowhere but work and straight home. No gain. No progress.

Add a salary to this figure. If you are shy about a number, at the very least give yourself what is minimum wage for your area. You must add additional money to this figure because otherwise you would not be able to deal with taxes or spend money on more than staying alive (new clothes, a nice night out for a change!)

For me, minimum wage is $15,000/year. $15,000 + $30,000 = $45,000. This will be my goal salary for this example.

Now, do two things:

1.) Your Daily Rate: Divide the goal salary by 230. Write that down.  Multiply this by 1.15 (this figure is a profit margin; treat yourself). 

Ex: 45,000/230 = 195.65. 195.65 x 1.15= $225 an (8 hour) day.

2.) Your Hourly Rate: Divide the salary by 1125*. Then multiply the result by 1.15. 

Ex: 45,000/1125 = 40. 40 x 1.15 = $46 an hour.

*I wrote 1125; the Handbook suggests between 900 and 1350, so I gave you the average of the two.

Are you going to charge people these hard numbers? Not unless you want to. However, you do need to know how much you are worth so you can answer the question every beginner asks: “How much should I charge?”  When you know what your time is worth and you know how long it takes you to do something, it’s easier to answer that question! 

“Isn’t $46 an hour lofty?!”, you might ask.  If you made $46 an hour working 9 to 5, you’d be livin’ it up!  Surely since I’m just starting I should charge minimum wage?!

NO.

Minimum wage is for people who work finite schedules, whether full or part time.  Minimum wage is for the 9 to 5 world; the predictable world. You are not in the 9 to 5 world.  You are in a world where you will rock-hop from client to client and can go from showering in moolah Scrooge McDuck style to suffering a workless dry spell for what seems like eternity. 

Whatever you do, do not let anyone swindle you into paying you minimum wage.

2.) Put together samples of your work and tell people you’re ready for commissions! 

Don’t put price tags on your work if you don’t want to. People will come to to ask what your prices are; you can haggle with them! 

3.) Work on a ½ up front, ½ later basis. 

Most people are awesome to work with! However, there will be bad eggs. There are those rare, but still distressing times people will take advantage of you if you do the work before they pay you, like running off without paying you. To get around this, you should ask your customers for ½ up front (and don’t start until they pay you!).  

This works two-fold. First, you, the artist, know that at least you got paid something! And for the buyer, it’s easier, trust and money wise, to commit to a half-payment rather than the full thing.

4.) If you use PayPal, remember to send an invoice rather than accept gifts, and remember to use a Paypal Fee calculator!

PayPal will turn $15 into $14, and once or twice this is no big deal, but if you want to make good money (and I think you can), you will want to make sure that you actually get paid for what you need to be paid for! Account for PayPal fees in your invoices.

The way people do sometimes try to get around the fees is by sending money through gifts, but since the fees is how PayPal gets paid, they can/will also boot you for “suspicious activity” if you get paid via gifts. 

5.) Keep records of all your transactions and a percentage of what you make set aside for taxes.

Assuming you live in the United States, this money you make on the Internet is income, and you get the wonderful thrill of paying taxes (JOY OF JOYS). You have to report them yourself, and if you don’t, you might can get away with it for a while, but, it’s best not to find yourself in a big fat audit.  

Now I can’t give you financial advice in any legal capacity. However,  assuming you live in the US, you are going to have to anticipate paying about a fifth of everything you make in taxes.  The type of tax form you will be looking for is a called a 1099.

6.) Never stop!

Good luck! 

– Elaney