I lowered my prices to a more manageable and affordable amount recently. I didn't say anything because I was tired of announcing things and so on, but I figure I might as well let you all know what I've done and why I've done it.

So, for a couple years I was operating on a quote system where I would estimate the amount of time necessary to complete a picture and then I would charge hourly based on that estimate. I would not go over that estimate and if I went under the estimate I would refund the money that coincided with the time I didn't need to finish the pic. It worked okay but I only had one or two regular customers. Still, it was enough business in my opinion to raise my prices closer to what my artwork is actually worth. And in all the time since I raised my prices I didn't get a single commission.

It was then that I realized what I had done wrong. You see, even though my artwork may be good enough quality to sell it for a higher amount of money in a gallery if a gallery were to be willing to exhibit it, the fact is that I don't have my art posted in a gallery somewhere. I have it posted on furry websites, and most of the furries I know don't have lots of money to spend on a single drawing, especially when for the same price they can get three or four drawings of higher quality from other artists. I screwed myself over royally thinking I should charge based on the quality of my work. The thing is, though, that in a highly saturated market like the furry community, how much a drawing is worth depends mainly on how much people are willing to spend on it.

Add to all that, that I'm still pretty much an unknown artist, I don't do a drawing a day like the popular artists do and I'm not really all that visible as an artist, and it's no wonder that I don't get hardly any commissions. I did finally get one commission last week, but that was only because I lowered my prices to where the commissioner in question could actually afford one. This is why I lowered my prices. I realize some folks will think I'm undercutting and that this is a bad decision, and what have you. But you know what? I didn't go to business school. I don't know how to properly run a business and all I know is that ever since my first price hike back in 2011, my viability as a commissioning artist has tanked. Just goes to show that when you start out cheap and you make yourself less cheap, people become less willing to spend their money on your art. Now that I'm doing almost exclusively digital work and it takes me much longer to do a single image than it did back in 2011 when I was still doing mainly traditional works with colored pencils, I simply can't afford to charge the measly ten dollars that I charged back then for full color works. So now, I charge a flat $40 for full color. For awhile, that's the highest I'll go, but I absolutely will NOT go back to charging the pittance I did in the past for a full color work.

So to summarize, I screwed up, charged way too much, and now I have hardly any customers left. So I'm charging a more reasonable and affordable price. Maybe more people will commission me, or maybe I'll still get the sound of crickets, I don't know.