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Hello.
I, like many others, have decided to turn my passion for the hobby into a business. Yup, I wish to become a commission painter.
I was just wondering if any commission paintes out there would be willing to lend some advice to a novice in the trade.
Thanks in advance!

Pictures would help alot. .....

And its very difficult to make more than change from it. ...

Don't wait for commisions.

Paint as much as you can, time yourself and price up your time. Make sure you photograph everything and distribute the pictures widely. And make it clear in these galleries that you do commission work.

Sell the work of ebay, or similar, and make sure you sell your work according to your time. Think of this work as your stock for cash flow. Plus painting regularly for this market will improve your technique, give you a solid base of recommendations and allow you to test various markets, which in turn will help you with your prices (different markets - i.e. historical, GW, Battlefront etc) will pay differently for the same standard of work).

When selling this work avoid terms like 'pro painted', 'table top standard' etc and instead use words like 'nicely painted', 'well painted' etc - and be honest. And don't try and sell on price - if you advertise yourself as 'cheap' you leave yourself very little room for negotiating on price - set your price that you are willing to do the work and let the customer decide if they think it is value - and don't let them drive you below your price (there are plenty more fish in the sea). And above all always paint to the highest standard you can. Trying to set different standards of paint jobs will only confuse yourself and the customer - painting services that offer different standards generally farm out the work to a team of painters.

Make it clear from the outset what you are doing, how much you are charging, how much postage costs are, how payments are to be made (and take into account the costs of these payments - paypal charges etc - and make sure you add these and any other expenses onto the price), who is buying the figures, the timescale for painting them, and any other details

The other thing to keep in mind is don't take on jobs you don't want to do, or for people you don't like. This is a recipe for unhappiness.

Above all remember that you are an artist and not a painter and decorator.

Start by selling on feebay. Put something in your auctions that says you also paint on a commission basis.

Start a web site with extensive (well taken) photographs of your work, prices, "about me" information, etc.

Advertise. Get the word out.

Eric

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnv6EaFDcPI&list=UU0vYyCks8CDWZBHz-qtZhbA&index=3&feature=plpp_video

Les has some very good advice on this.

Learn to paint to a high quality stupid fast. That's the only advice that has become apparent to me after doing a few commission jobs.

Don't take bull from window shoppers. Most of my time spent talking to potential customers is wasted because of people who aren't serious about actually having a commission done. They simply seem content to blather on and on, always seeming to kinda sorta commit to a commission but never actually doing so.

You wanna attract serious people, people who have the cash for commissions. The best way to do this is to write up a guide for prospective customers telling them how this thing works and what to expect. Take a look at the "How to Request a Commission" page on my website for an example of this > http://blackdogpaintingstudio.webs.com/how-to-request-a-commission

Best of luck!

_Tim?

Expect it to go very, very slowly at first.

Concentrate as much as you can on getting your first few customers and leaving them extremely happy to get great reviews, customer feedback is really important when it comes to attracting more. Document EVERY mini and make sure you have clear pictures of them that you can use to advertise with.

Advertise as much as possible. Leave cards in local gaming stores, ask if you can leave work examples in cabinets, in local colleges, make sure you are on as many social media sites as possible with plenty of good content for people to check out.

Paint for ebay, paint for local stores, paint for friends who play often and will show your models around.

Don't expect to charge decent € until people are interested in you enough to be ready to pay it.

Practice. Constantly. With every kind of mini you can get your hands on in every kind of style that scares you and a customer could request.

Get your tabletop quality to a point where you can put out really nice pieces relatively quickly, so you don't have to charge a huge amount for them to still be profitable.

Take great pride in everything you paint. Don't let any shoddy work get sent out to people. It will damage you more than you might realise.

Be a professional about it. When it is your own projects, it is easy to simply put something aside or on the back burner when it becomes dull or tedious or frustrating, but when you are on someone else's dime, you give away that luxury. You are providing a service for your customer, and it is -work-. Don't shirk it.

Don't shortchange yourself. One of the biggest mistakes I made was taking on multiple successive commissions of increasing size and paint quality for less and less money. Also, it's very likely you'll burn out on painting completely, or if you'll get lucky like I did; burn out on painting stuff for other people and get really stoked about painting stuff for yourself!