Whenever I hear about starting commission artist being fucking hurdled into underselling themselves by greedy and manipulative fucking customers I just..

To all starting commission artists. Here’s some tips.

1- Figure out what the minimum wage is for your country, your country doesnt have one? 10 euros per hour. (convert to other currency for different countries)
Time yourself drawing something, get a feel of how long it takes you to draw something. You never have to ask for less than the minimum wage.

If you put hours of work into something someone requested you have every right to get paid for said thing.

2-  Give your customer a clear cut amount of edits you will do. Sometimes a customer would like to see changes to the sketches or pose idea. To keep you from getting told to change your sketch 6000 times by someone who’ll never be satisfied give them a limit.
Personally I go by 3 edits per commission.

3-  your customers a deadline. Or a general idea of how long the commission will take you. This will give you time to work and your customer a realistic time to wait.

4- Do not accept jobs you can’t fulfill. Start building your artistic credit by clearly stating your limits. Nobody likes it when an artist is reaching far beyond their skill limit. Take your time to build up to that goal and when you’re there other customers will appear.

Then, if you have any questions regarding how to set up your commissions  look at artists who take commissions. What do they do? How do they work? What is different about what they do compared to what you do.

You are an artist working to create someone else’s idea but this doesn’t mean you are forced to do so for near nothing.
They do not grant you payment, they are paying for your art.