Heya, i'm a bit new to all the comission affair but i started recently because i want to save money for other forms of art (mainly IRL sculptures and plushies, + upgrades for my equipment and that kind of stuff)
i'm personally struggling to find comissions, like on discord i got some from friends but they werent a lot and most were simple cheap stuff. Its nothing to sneeze at but considering how much sculptures and plushies cost, i'll need far more than what ive got until now (like holy crap, those go for over 1000 usd)

What can i do to attract more folks? i'm honestly open with drawing anything that isn't straight up immoral, i just really want the plushies. I'm a complete noob on comissions beyond doing them for friends

Being active in discords and telegrams are probably your best bets.

Disclaimer: I'm not an artist, myself.

The number one site in terms of volume of eyeballs is still probably FurAffinity. If you don't have an account there, make one, fill in your commission info page, and post an "Open for commissions" image. See what happens. :)

notsohague said:
i'm honestly open with drawing anything that isn't straight up immoral

You will find that people have widely varying opinions on this subject. A lot of artists I follow have a "will draw" and "won't draw" list on their commission page, listing the types of characters or situations or kinks that they do or don't like to work on. Some of them go further and have a "favorite things to draw", "will draw", and "won't draw" list. It's probably a good idea to have at least a basic "won't draw" list, if there are things you don't like to draw.

Some free advice, that's worth every penny:

1. Give (potential) commissioners some idea of how long it will take for them to get the finished artwork. Try to be as accurate as you can. Like, if you have the ability to do art 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, you can give people shorter estimates. But if you have a job or living situation that means you sometimes can't work on art for 3 or 4 days at a time, give them a longer estimate.

2. Come up with some kind of policy on revisions/changes requested by the commissioner. For simpler artwork, like a pencil sketch, you might not take *any* revisions. For more complex artwork, one thing I see that's kind of common is that the artist does a sketch and then shows it to the commissioner for minor changes - like, "her earring is on the other ear", or "his tail shouldn't be that long". After that, the artist goes to the finished inked/colored/shaded step, and then it's done.

3. Try to concentrate your communications in one place. In my opinion, email is the best - everyone already has it. If the only email you have relates to your IRL name, spin up a second one for art stuff. Don't expect potential commissioners to join Telegram, or Discord, or FA, or Twitter, or whatever, just to talk to you or hire you.

4. Even if you can't keep your communications in one spot, do keep a single text file or spreadsheet or something that lists all of your current and completed commissions, where to find the references (if any) the commissioner gave you, the commissioner's contact info, etc. If you're answering inquiries on Telegram and FA and Discord and email, and don't keep a list, you'll eventually have something fall through the cracks.

I am not a lawyer or tax adviser and items 5 and 6 are not legal, financial, or tax advice.

5. You probably really do have to pay taxes on this stuff. If you don't do anything else, keep track of who paid you how much, and on what date; you can use that when you do your taxes.

6. If you are considering being paid via PayPal, look into what it takes to send an invoice to your commissioners. That way, you can make the invoice say something generic, like "Commissioned work" or "Requested work", and nothing more. Don't use the PayPal methods where the commissioner can fill in the "what for" field (like "friends and family"); PayPal may be monitoring these for any hint of anything lewd, and disallow the payment if they find it.

I am not a lawyer or tax adviser and items 5 and 6 are not legal, financial, or tax advice.

Good luck!

I second Kora's advice, especially on having a "won't draw". Some people consider non-straight sex immoral, others might consider depicted violence immoral, and a few might consider depicting certain religious iconography immoral. If you need a jumping off point, take a look at your blacklist here on E621, and consider what tags you wouldn't be comfortable with drawing art for. Doing this early on will help define who your audience is as you grow it, and can avoid the stresses that come with changing it later on (look at E621's recent loli/shota rules change for an extreme example of what can happen when you do change these).

One additional piece of advice I have, in addition to what Kora has said, is try not to limit yourself to one platform early on. The tool PostyBirb makes it easier to upload art to multiple platforms, and by doing so you will see which ones tend to get the most views on your art. After some time (say, at least a year) you can start to narrow your focus to the sites that are bringing in the most people, but don't ever just go to only one, as the site's rules can change and force your art to be deleted. When this happens, you usually have to restart building your viewership on another platform with a fraction of the audience, which means less income for some period of time.

notsohague said:
Heya, i'm a bit new to all the comission affair but i started recently because i want to save money for other forms of art (mainly IRL sculptures and plushies, + upgrades for my equipment and that kind of stuff)
i'm personally struggling to find comissions, like on discord i got some from friends but they werent a lot and most were simple cheap stuff. Its nothing to sneeze at but considering how much sculptures and plushies cost, i'll need far more than what ive got until now (like holy crap, those go for over 1000 usd)

What can i do to attract more folks? i'm honestly open with drawing anything that isn't straight up immoral, i just really want the plushies. I'm a complete noob on comissions beyond doing them for friends

Honestly the best thing I've found is to just put stuff out there and usually NSFW. I get at least one commission request every time I post something.

kora_viridian said:
Disclaimer: I'm not an artist, myself.

The number one site in terms of volume of eyeballs is still probably FurAffinity. If you don't have an account there, make one, fill in your commission info page, and post an "Open for commissions" image. See what happens. :)

You will find that people have widely varying opinions on this subject. A lot of artists I follow have a "will draw" and "won't draw" list on their commission page, listing the types of characters or situations or kinks that they do or don't like to work on. Some of them go further and have a "favorite things to draw", "will draw", and "won't draw" list. It's probably a good idea to have at least a basic "won't draw" list, if there are things you don't like to draw.

Some free advice, that's worth every penny:

1. Give (potential) commissioners some idea of how long it will take for them to get the finished artwork. Try to be as accurate as you can. Like, if you have the ability to do art 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, you can give people shorter estimates. But if you have a job or living situation that means you sometimes can't work on art for 3 or 4 days at a time, give them a longer estimate.

2. Come up with some kind of policy on revisions/changes requested by the commissioner. For simpler artwork, like a pencil sketch, you might not take *any* revisions. For more complex artwork, one thing I see that's kind of common is that the artist does a sketch and then shows it to the commissioner for minor changes - like, "her earring is on the other ear", or "his tail shouldn't be that long". After that, the artist goes to the finished inked/colored/shaded step, and then it's done.

3. Try to concentrate your communications in one place. In my opinion, email is the best - everyone already has it. If the only email you have relates to your IRL name, spin up a second one for art stuff. Don't expect potential commissioners to join Telegram, or Discord, or FA, or Twitter, or whatever, just to talk to you or hire you.

4. Even if you can't keep your communications in one spot, do keep a single text file or spreadsheet or something that lists all of your current and completed commissions, where to find the references (if any) the commissioner gave you, the commissioner's contact info, etc. If you're answering inquiries on Telegram and FA and Discord and email, and don't keep a list, you'll eventually have something fall through the cracks.

I am not a lawyer or tax adviser and items 5 and 6 are not legal, financial, or tax advice.

5. You probably really do have to pay taxes on this stuff. If you don't do anything else, keep track of who paid you how much, and on what date; you can use that when you do your taxes.

6. If you are considering being paid via PayPal, look into what it takes to send an invoice to your commissioners. That way, you can make the invoice say something generic, like "Commissioned work" or "Requested work", and nothing more. Don't use the PayPal methods where the commissioner can fill in the "what for" field (like "friends and family"); PayPal may be monitoring these for any hint of anything lewd, and disallow the payment if they find it.

I am not a lawyer or tax adviser and items 5 and 6 are not legal, financial, or tax advice.

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice! I'm gonna open a furaffinity soon
I'm gonna set up a comission table for the specific info too