5 Important Steps to Becoming A Full Time Artist

donnamakesart

This got me thinking of my 5 Steps to Freelancing haha. It probably looks something like this:

list all the creative jobs I’m interested in (storyboarding, concept art, animation, logo design, etc)
try them one by one. fail them one by one haha. begin to understand who I am as a person and where I fit in the world.
learn business and marketing.
find mentorship and build a network in your chosen niche.
transition out of day job into full-time freelance.

I am currently doing step 3&4. Hoping I’ll get to step 5 next year

Jeannelle

@LisaF My experience was with odesk, I think it's now upwork. I have some friends who have stayed with it and have become successful. But I had an encounter with someone who asked for my price and after I gave him a quote he totally became unprofessional and accused me of trying to cheat him. He sort harassed me about it. And honestly, my prices weren't even high at all. It just didn't seem worth the stress of dealing with those kinds of potential clients for a small pay and so I quit using it altogether.

jdubz

@LisaF said in 5 Important Steps to Becoming A Full Time Artist:

Anyone have any experience with fiverr? Just curious to hear some real life experiences

My experience with it has been from the buying side (for a good number of my clients) and just based on that I'd never post jobs that I'd like to get paid for. Fiverr's reputation from the hiring side is "we know it's too expensive to get a quote, proposal and pay for professionally, so let's get it cheap from here" and when contractors did a good job, if they tried to raise rates to more respectable levels, then the hiring party would just go back to Fiverr because it was "just good enough".

I can't imagine trying to make living on Fiverr because you have no way to scale your income up.

Upwork for whatever reason seems to at least command a greater pay scale. As @davidhohn mentioned in that thread it's 100% work for hire with no possibility for licensing opportunities.
That said, I've actually got some decent paying jobs from Upwork, but only in the realm of things like making product labels or brochures or web design (things that typically wouldn't be licensed anyway - just work for hire project work no matter where you went).

Nyrryl Cadiz

For my first ever children’s book on Upwork, I got paid $75 to complete a 32 page book within 1 month. I was still working in watercolor then. I wasn’t able to meet the deadline because it was unrealistic. The client berated me for over promising which was fair but she paid only $75, what did she expect? I sent the book to her, she hired a digital artist to redraw all my illustrations. The author then did not even credit me in her book which was a blessing because her book was rubbish.

lpetiti

@Nyrryl-Cadiz The more I hear about clients like that, the more blessed I feel to be working with the one I am. She did research on her own about what first time illustrators make for children's books, asked if I thought it was fair, and has always been open to my asking for more money if I feel it's needed (which I rarely do). She even compensated me when her firm delayed the project for three months.

Nyrryl Cadiz

@lpetiti that sounds amazing. If only all self-publishing authors were that considerate.

Michael Angelo Go

@Nyrryl-Cadiz Oh my gosh I am so sorry about that Nyrryl.

I think I've told you this before in dm, but my first children's book was on a shoestring on UpWork as well. But that was because the client was a family friend who want to gift their friend's firstborn child with a baby book, that I gladly did for $90. It was only 7 pages, I didn't give all my effort, they wanted a copyrighted character in it, and I didn't want to put my name on it, just in case that guy decided to bank it and I would get involved in a potential lawsuit.

Because of this, when a lady wanted me to illustrate a "professional" 30-page children's book for only $60! (I bargained for $100), I reluctantly accepted under the assumption that this was just something she wanted to use to entertain her kids. On the fourth week of the project, when I requested our agreed payment in escrow (that she honestly thought was an advanced payment) she all of a sudden started talking about publishing the book and wanted to know if she was obliged to put my name on it.

I tried to be diplomatic, but that only showed her true colors. After back and forth emails of me trying to be professional and reasonable, like negotiating a new price after she brought something up that was never in the original contract, as she name-called me throughout the conversation, I left with the money and told her she wasn't getting a refund. I left with $70. She later got some poor soul probably from Fiverr to illustrate the final version of the book. The art ended up being really nice, but it's clearly clip art, and the cover is really poorly put together. It doesn't even name the illustrator, it just has the author's name, not clarifying if they wrote, illustrated it or both.

Michael Angelo Go

@lpetiti I think the clients who are not like that are not writing children's book because they are passionate about it. They are just basic suburban parents who need to have their egos flexed and will throw any illustrator under the bus to get it.

Michael Angelo Go

@davidhohn Thank you for linking my thread.

lpetiti

@Michael-Angelo-Go my gosh that person has an ego on them, practically wants you to kiss their boots for even considering to “let” you work.

This client I have is wonderful! She and her firm are super passionate about promoting literacy in our county.

Michael Angelo Go

@Jeannelle I'm really sorry that one "client" got reactive with you. Usually, when I offer a quote, whether I was lowballing myself or being honest, they always say "thank you for your time" or runaway without saying it to my face.

I had one person approach me for a 10-page children's book and asked me how much it would be. I lowballed myself to $500 so they would bite the bait, but then they told me "well... I should do more research before making a smart business choice" translation: "I'm no longer interested".

I think it was two weeks ago, but an older colleague I know told me that he knew a guy who wanted to make a children's book. I wanted to provide realistic rates by charging $150 per page. My colleague let the guy know my rates and then they said "meeting moved to new date, to be decided" aka never.

I'm honestly surprised I myself haven't encountered a more hostile response. Choosing-beggars are always passive-aggressive, if not full-blown aggressive.

jdubz

@Michael-Angelo-Go It always cracks me up when people start a soapbox rant with "No offense...". It's like the precursor to guarantee someone will be pretty nasty, but justified in their mind.

I get what @Will-Terry is saying in the podcast about just getting work - you gotta do work to get experience and there's no way around that. I think it's worth being super cautious about this though for 2 reasons:

If you lowball your clients, and you get people that accept those lower rates, it is psychologically difficult to re-define your value in your own mind once you get enough experience to be worth a larger sum. It's hard mentally to charge someone say $1000 for a project, then the next project that comes along SHOULD be $5,000, you have a difficult time feeling confident asking for what it's worth because all this time you've been charging 75% less than that.
If you are getting work for lower rates and let's say you are doing an amazing job, those people will tell their friends "hey, I know this artist that does incredible work and he/she is super affordable" and in a year or two you might end up a word of mouth based client pool that is expecting super cheap art. So you then realize you're not making any money and getting burned out and NOW you gotta turn all these people down and find a whole new client pool that sees value in your work.

I think there's a healthy blend in there. Obviously everyone has to start somewhere. But sometimes we accidentally paint ourselves into the starving artist role if we aren't careful.

sigross

@jdubz There was advice I've utilised from one of the SVS classes. Where you can keep your high rates but if they can't afford it, to offer a discount. When you invoice/quote them, quote the normal rate but apply the discount - and write it into the deal - so they know this is a special offer.

Michael Angelo Go

@sigross For me, I told them $500 was a discount because they were a self-publishing author and it was only 10 pages and that the normal rate was $1K.

xin li

I normally avoid name my price for as long as I can when working as a freelancer. I ask the potential client to tell me their budge instead. If I think the fee is not reasonable, I then tell the client the budget is too low to meet my standard and ask if they can raise the budget. If the potential client is not serious, he/she would probably stop coming back to me by now, which is fine for me. If a project is very interesting, and the client seems to be serious, then I can consider offering a discount.

davidhohn

@xin-li

I normally avoid name my price for as long as I can when working as a freelancer. I ask the potential client to tell me their budge instead.

While your approach is quite common, I recommend that illustrators don't make this the ongoing tactic they use.
Instead as soon as you have enough experience to know what your work should be worth, the illustrator should put out the first number.

To be clear -- I'm not saying this approach of first asking the client the budget should never be used, just that there is a time (two to three years into your career) that it should be intentionally phased out. The reality is that asking the client for their budget first puts the illustrator at a disadvantage.

For YEARS I read seasoned IP attorneys repeatedly telling illustrators to stop asking clients to name the budget. This was on an older discussion board TheiSpot.com. I was quite new to my career and so I didn't quite understand why.

A while back I came across a really good negotiation podcast Slate's Negotiation Academy. In episode 1 "Who Sets the Price?" this dynamic is covered. Scrub to 9:40 which is where they start discussing this topic.

If you only listen to one episode of the series listen to that part. But the entire 10 episode series is eye opening!

xin li

@davidhohn Thank you for sharing the podcast. I really need some more negotiation advice.

Well, regarding naming the price: with established publishing houses, I would get an offer as a starting point for negotiation. I thought it was a good tactic to use for other types of projects as well. Now I am not so sure anymore, got to listen to the podcast you suggested :-).

carlianne

@davidhohn said in 5 Important Steps to Becoming A Full Time Artist:

TheiSpot.com

Thanks so much for sharing this! I've always struggled with doing the "tell me your budget" thing because when I freelance with larger companies they always ask me my price, and it feels weird to try and get them to tell me their budget instead of just answering. It doesn't bother me so much when it's just a small company or person for some reason.

Jeannelle

@jdubz totally agree on this. I think you can accept lower rates if it serves another purpose- maybe it will be a great portfolio piece or maybe you agree with whatever the project’s goal is. It doesn’t have to be money but there has to be something in it for you. But keep your minsdset clear that you did not do it for the money only. Because you are right, it’s so easy to get trapped in the starving artist mindset. I think it’s good to have another job that brings some sort of regular income so you don’t fall into this trap when you’re just starting out.

Michael Angelo Go

@Jeannelle said in 5 Important Steps to Becoming A Full Time Artist:

"But keep your mindset clear that you did not do it for the money only. Because you are right, it’s so easy to get trapped in the starving artist mindset."

I think you're right to say that you were willing to work on a project because there was something more to it than just the money. But I see some issues to this as well. If we were to adhere to what @jdubz said, your client pool might be composed of word of mouth clients that told each other that "this artist was willing to lower their rates because they believed in my message". Like a game of telephone, those other clients pay more attention to keywords such as "lower rates" and not so much of "the message". There are a lot of self-publishing authors with a "cause" and if they take a liking to your work, with the understanding of your previous rates, I'm concerned you'll get a handful of authors swarming at you asking to push whatever agenda they have for cheap.

I keep hearing people say that illustrators should charge cheap because they should focus more on educating children. While yes providing quality education through children's books are important, you get what you pay for, which does not bring out books of quality education.