My first commission was €80.

I was so excited. Someone wanted to pay me actual money to draw something. I poured everything into it. Every detail had to be perfect. It took me a week, maybe two.

When I finally sent the finished piece, I felt empty and exhausted in a way I couldn’t explain.

Years later, I did the math on a different commission. Thirty hours of work for €225. That came out to €7.50 per hour.

My first commission was even worse. That €80 piece I spent two weeks on came out to maybe €4 or €5 per hour if I’m being generous.

Less than minimum wage in France. Less than flipping burgers at McDonald’s. And way harder than flipping burgers.

I realized I can’t do this full-time. Not like this.

My brain immediately went to the obvious solution: I need to get faster. Draw quicker. Work more hours. Stop being so slow and perfectionist.

“I just need to work faster”

Nobody told me to think this way. I wasn’t on Twitter yet. I hadn’t been to art school.

I just assumed working faster was the answer. Because what else is there?

If you’re making €5 per hour, obviously you need to work more hours to make more money. The math seems simple.

That path ends in burnout though. The kind where you have 50 commissions in your queue and you’re thinking about disappearing with the money.

You’ve probably seen it happen. An artist undercharges. Gets overwhelmed with orders. The queue gets longer and longer. One day they just vanish.

I started noticing something else too. Some artists who weren’t even that far ahead skill-wise than me were charging 5 times, 10 times what I charged. And they seemed fine. Happy, even.

That’s when I realized I was playing the wrong game entirely.

Model 1: Charge what people will actually pay

Your price shouldn’t be based on hours worked. It should be based on how many people want to commission you.

If 100 people want your art but you can only do three commissions per month, the price goes up. This is just how markets work.

Here’s the math that changed everything for me. Let’s say you charge €250 and get 6 clients per month. That’s €1,500. Now imagine you double your price to €500. You’ll lose some clients, maybe a third of them. Now you get 4 clients per month. That’s €2,000. You’re making more money and working less.

Being “greedy” with your time is necessary if you’re planning to stay in business for a long time.

I’d rather see artists charge €500 per commission and keep going for 10 years than charge €50 and burn out in year two.

Will you want to keep doing commissions at your current rate for the next 10 years? Ask yourself that question.

When I asked myself that, the answer came immediately. Absolutely not.

I won’t take projects that pay less than €15 per hour anymore. That’s my line. That’s the only way I can justify becoming a full-time artist.

The fear comes up immediately when I say this. Won’t people get mad? Won’t they think I’m greedy or entitled?

Yes, some will. When artists post commission prices publicly, there are always two groups. One group celebrates. The other gets furious that you’re charging real money for your work.

That’s why I’m planning to keep the prices only on my website, if someone is really interested they can go see them.

Model 2: Build things that keep selling

Let me show you some numbers that should change how you think about commissions.

Commission math over 8 years: €500 per commission, 30 commissions per year. That’s €15,000 per year, €120,000 total over eight years. Total hours worked: 4,800 hours. (at ~20 hours per commission)

Marc Brunet’s art school over eight years: roughly €8 million in revenue. Even if it took him 5,000 hours to build and maintain, that comes out to €1,600 per hour.

The commission artist made €120,000. Marc made 67 (yes, that number) times that amount. And Marc’s course is still selling while the commission artist has to keep grinding for every euro.

Assets are things like courses, brush packs, templates, and prints. You build them once. You sell them forever.

Building assets isn’t easy though. Marc didn’t throw together a quick course and call it done. It probably took him thousands of hours between building the actual content and marketing it. He has 1.8 million YouTube subscribers. The upfront cost and time investment are massive.

But if you can build something valuable, something you’d actually buy yourself, the returns completely change the game.

Model 3: Subscriptions

Guweiz has 15,939 Patreon members paying €4.50 per month.

That’s €71,725 per month. Over €860,000 per year.

He posts tutorials, process breakdowns, and high-res images. Consistently. Every month.

10 subscribers vs 1,000 subscribers requires roughly the same amount of work from him. He makes one tutorial and everyone sees it.

The catch is consistency. You have to show up every single month. Miss a month and people unsubscribe.

This model works for artists who can provide genuine value every month. Educational content works well.

The hybrid approach

Here’s what I’m actually doing, and why I think combining these models makes sense.

First I’m doing commissions for at least €15 an hour. This teaches me how to actually run a business and makes me get better at handling real projects.

Then I’ll start doing consultations with other artists. This shows me what they’re actually struggling with. What problems keep coming up over and over.

Finally I’ll build something that solves those exact problems. I won’t be guessing what people need because they’ll have told me directly.

Each step funds the next step. Each step builds toward something that compounds over time.

Right now I’m in step one.

What you can do this week

Calculate your real hourly rate on your last commission. Include everything: the initial sketching, all the conversations with the client, finding and organizing references, the actual drawing time, the first round of revisions, the second round of revisions, preparing and sending the final files.

Take your total payment and divide it by those real hours.

Would you do this exact same work for this exact same client again at this rate? Answer that honestly.

If your answer is yes, you’re probably priced correctly for where you are right now.

If your answer is no, something needs to change.

Write down what price would actually make you excited to take on that project. Don’t post it anywhere. Don’t announce anything to anyone yet.

That’s your real rate.

You don’t need to open commissions this week. You don’t need to launch a course or start a Patreon or announce new prices to the world.

You just need to stop lying to yourself about what your time is actually worth.

Because if you don’t do this, one year from now, you’ll still be grinding away at the same rate, more exhausted than you are right now, wondering why everyone else seems to have this figured out while you’re still stuck.

The version of me that was making €5 per hour needed to hear this.

Maybe you do too.