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How much to charge in commissions?

Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: The Lounge
Forum Name: Resources and Support
Forum Discription: Help your fellow pixel artists out with links to good tutorials, other forums, software, fonts, etc. Bugs and support issues should go here as well.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26647
Printed Date: 11 September 2025 at 8:08pm


Topic: How much to charge in commissions?
Posted By: PixelNovak
Subject: How much to charge in commissions?
Date Posted: 18 June 2019 at 10:43am
I'm being asked for commissions and I'm not sure how much I should charge for them.



Replies:
Posted By: eishiya
Date Posted: 18 June 2019 at 5:59pm
How quickly can you do the work, approximately? Multiply that time by your desired hourly rate, which should probably be upwards of $15. The better your work and the quicker you can produce it, the higher an hourly rate you can charge, but $15/hr is a good starting point. If you live in a country with low costs of living, you could perhaps go for a lower hourly rate, but you shouldn't need to. Clients unwilling or unable to pay a reasonable rate for fully custom pixel art have other, cheaper avenues available to them.

There's no good formula for calculating a suitable hourly wage. The main factors are 1. how much people who actually want YOUR* work are willing to pay for it, 2. how much your time is worth to you. If you're not desperate for money (e.g. have a day job) and do pixel art primarily for fun, then the second factor should be the main one.
There will always be people trying to lowball you, and unless you're desperate for money, they're not worth the effort of healing with them.

* I specifically bring up "your work" as opposed to "just anything that does the job" because for custom art, the good clients are typically there for your style and skills. If they wanted "just anything", they wouldn't need fully custom art. Some clients don't understand this and seek to pay stock art-like prices for custom art. Usually, just explaining the difference is enough. When it's not, they're usually not worth the trouble xP



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