Read "How can I use my skills for financial gain?"

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

growly discusses the process of working on commission and how to determine if it's a good business plan for you.  This is a very insightful examination of creativity and work style.

Most of my work relies on other models, but I do a bit of commission.  For instance, you can get a scrapbooked poem from me, like these sample pages; or hire me to compose a poem from scratch.

Who here likes to work on commission?  Who likes to buy things that way?

Comments

[jenny_evergreen]

Excellent article! I hope the people who need to read it end up doing so!

I like to buy things on commission, but generally only very rarely, usually for a special occasion/gift. There's so much great stuff out there that I rarely need to use commission to get something that makes me happy.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I've bought a very few things on commission. I rarely need it and can rarely afford it. The concept is good, though.

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

I actually love to work on commission, though I'm not often available to do so - I find it challenging and fascinating, and the difficult customers are less common than the wonderful ones. (Though the difficult customers can be VERY frustrating.)

I also have commissioned a great deal of work - favorite personal characters and the like, so I've been at the other end of the process, too. I can say definitively that it is not the right business fit for many, many artists, which is one reason I've worked so hard to set up alternatives like Portrait Adoption (http://portraitadoption.com) that don't require those same sets of business skills.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I really like the idea of Portrait Adoptions. It's not quite crowdfunding, because it's not much for interaction, but it's close. It has the same flavor of connecting people to meet an otherwise unmet need.

[laffingkat.livejournal.com]

I'm often too impatient to deal with buying things on commission, but I've occasionally had good experiences buying things that way. Your scrapbooked poems are one example (and if you meant to link to those in your post, the link doesn't seem to have worked).

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I added the link for the scrapbooked poetry samples. Good catch!

[meeksp.livejournal.com]

Moonvoice on DW posted a good article (http://moonvoice.dreamwidth.org/1362249.html) on this subject earlier today.

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I have linked to that so people can see it. That's a really good post.