Art by the lovely Bunboxi.
1. Make sure you’re responsible enough before taking paid commissions at all. Make a working schedule for yourself and stick to it, practice doing art for friends or offer freebies to potential clients in exchange for detailed feedback on your service. Ask them if they felt comfortable with the waiting time, if the amount of updates received was good, if the end result met their expectations. Make sure to keep note of any positive or negative feedback. Do not take this feedback personally, use what you can to improve.
2. Research the different types of licenses that you can offer to your clients in-depth. You do NOT want to accidentally offer full rights without knowing what this means. Do your research and make sure that you understand how your potential clients operate. Do they often need commercial usage? Of what kind? What do they use the art for in general? Make sure your licenses are crafted with your customers in mind. The three most common type of licenses in the VTuber/Creator industry are Personal, Digital Commercial and Print/Merch Commercial. Selling full copyright of your work is a completely different matter that requires a contract, and you would be giving up your rights to that specific piece of work.
3. Learn the basics of customer service: Prompt responses, polite language, an organized queue and a regular update schedule. These are ESSENTIAL so clients are aware of what’s going on with their order. It's not a 'courtesy' that you're doing for them, it's part of your job. Delivering the final artwork is only 10% of the entire process. Communication is the other 90%. Don't let your clients get stressed out or wonder if you've forgotten about them. It is YOUR JOB to keep them updated, especially if there will be delays.
4. If you're very new, I recommend platforms that already have systems in place to help you organize your commissions like VGen. Ideally, you want a site that centralizes both communication and file delivery so it's easier for you to focus on making the art and not so much hunting down clients through DM's or emails. Try it out for some time, see if the system/features are useful to you. This will help you build a better workflow for the future.
5. Build a portfolio website. Do not trust social media to be your portfolio. It doesn't need to be fancy, it doesn't need to be complicated. You need a page to describe who you are as an artist, your workflow and tools, another page for your Terms of Service, and another for your best works. Only showcase the pieces that reflect the type of audience you want to work with. Be prepared, you never know when social media will be down or banned in X or Y country. You need a personal hub that your clients can go back to in order to keep up with you, and a personal website is a place that nobody else but you can control.
6. Extra tip: Build a mailing list. Even if social media goes up in flames, email will most likely still be an important method of communication. Collect your clients' emails (with consent) and keep them in a mailing list, send regular updates of projects you're working on, commission openings, and any cool things you want to share with them. Do NOT let social media be the only way you can keep in contact with your clients/peers, make sure you're not entirely dependent on these flaky platforms.
Have fun, and stay whimsical! :3
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