a discouraged artist

hi!! i have been trying to sell my art here on wolvden and twitter, and no one seems to want to commission me. no, this is not me seeking sales. i am mainly just expressing how discouraging it is to be an artist that no one seems to want! the only time i gave art to someone here on wolvden is when i approached them first and offered, and i also might have undersold myself (i traded a unique piece that took 3 whole days... for a pair of tier 1 merle pups......).

i just dont know what im doing wrong!

i notice a lot of people here on the site charge wayyy too less for the beautiful art that they are offering, and it makes me worry that im charging too much. however, i know i am not because my friends offer me encouragement and refuse to let me undersell myself (usually...). the only commissions ive really gotten are from my close friends!

not to be all woe is me, but it really is just discouraging. :( anybody else experiencing the same thing? or have any advice?

once again i am not trying to advertise !!! i would consider this to be a vent.

blahhhhhh whatever fkjdskljfjfsdaoiej idk what else to say. im just kind of bummed.

I was unable to sell my art either and I found it is easier to do stuff on the TC to make cones rather than art. I wouldn't feel too bad, there's only so many cones & there's a lot of competition out there for artists. :(

that's true!! i find cones very hard to come by myself

do you have any tips for making cones and such on the TC?

i feel like such a newbie still. i JUST found out that no one likes tier 1 wolves!

I think the problem with art pricing is people undervaluing themselves.

Like, I am a semi-professional artist I get paid real money for pictures, most recently $50 for a full body background piece and that's $50 real dollars not game money. So to me there is no incentive to lower my prices if I can get real money for the same work off site. On the other hand, there are a lot of younger artist on wolvden that don't get paid real money for art and are just using their art to get ahead in the game faster so they have no problem selling themselves short and fluctuating the market. They also don't see their time as equaling money which I think is the biggest factor. 

The same issue is on deviantart and any other website, I've seen kids on Deviantart charge 25 cents for a full color piece with a background and sure their skill level is not the best, but they spend more than 25 cents worth of time on it. 

Also a LOT of art sales is marketing yourself. In the real world I have connections and a reputation, so people would be willing to pick my art over somebody else, here I have neither of those things, I don't even use the same name so there isn't anything saying I'm better than these people so to speak, I'm not saying I am a great artist or anything, but the concepts remains of why would I pay more for you when this person will do it cheaper. 

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Ahhh anyway....I make a lot of money on the TC selling 4x healing salves for 100SC or 1GC, 3x Lucky Feet for 100SC or 1GC, and food for 3 SC a use and toys for 5 SC a use. Food sells better in winter, and I have no idea how bad the market is going to crash after Christmas when everybody opens their gifts and tries to sell stuff off. 

Generally I sell Tier II pups for about 1 GC each, so they're not exactly money makers, but the more markings and stats a wolf has the more money they can go for. But I also feel like the auction house is super subjective, nobody bids on my wolves but I've seen arguably worse wolves auto bought for 20x the amount I'm selling mine for so I can't say I understand the market either. I think the wolf sales would get a lot better if we had an actual auction house tbh. It might be the same issue with art where people like to bid on wolves only from well known players? idk I just buy things if the wolves are pretty. 

i think with people under charging.. a lot of people are insecure about their art / do not know how to price correctly. a lot of people do not see their art as worth x amount, so they charge less, its more so a self confidence thing. i personally do not even offer commissions because..i do not see myself as skilled enough (despite making semi decent art according to those around me LMAO), and even when I did attempt to put a price on my art.. it was low. many follow the rule of $ per hour taken on the piece (many usually taking the $ as minimum wage in their area), but I know myself & many others.. would not do that out of insecurity / believing our art is not worthy of it.

i don't think people undercharge to give others a hard time - i think some just purely do not care about the financial side, and some (like myself) are insecure & would not charge a large amount no matter what.

but art is..a really competitive market, and you also have the issue of "the average consumer" loving art but refusing to pay the price tag on it. you see a lot of people begging & expecting free art, or cheap art, because they love art, but refuse to pay the artist minimum wage for hours spent. it sucks.

art selling really relies on connections & marketing as Dinaro brought up. it can suck but sometimes you have to put money in an attempt to make money - such as paying for ads etc. obviously people are successful without doing that..but then i'd argue its a case of luck, such as getting noticed by a popular person & getting a boost, or just years and years of hard work.

selling art is also difficult as everybody has their own "choice" in what styles they prefer.. some styles are more popular than others, either because they're aesthetically pleasing, or they're just amazing (thinking of photorealistic paintings). some styles are less popular because they're more of a "niche" market. which does mean you have less competition in theory, but may have less interest overall.

overall.. making money from art is hard. people that do have either put years, got lucky, or put their own money into getting where they are - maybe all three. there's a lot of artists out there, and people with differing tastes. finding the right people that like your art style can be hard, even if it is good. there's a really small amount of people that can make money from art consistently like a job, a bit like with millionaires they're sorta the top 1%, many will struggle to reach that :')

+ with the current wordly situation.. money is tight of a lot of people. i know i havent had the money to commission people just purely because of that is going on in the world.

& i think with wolvden..selling art here is going to be really hard, at least for a few months, maybe even a year or so. the game is still new, the economy is finding its feet. currency is in short supply. people do not have the money to spend a large amount of in game currency on art. this is probably really unpopular for me to say, but art prices need to fluctuate to the market, yknow? if the majority can not pay the prices.. comms will be few & far between.

there's a lot of cheap art on wolvden, so you're up against the currant there, & it will be apart of the reason its so much more difficult. but i also genuinely believe its also apart of the game being new, and the market being out of whack to say the least. a lot of people who charge higher (their art is very much worth it, do not get me wrong), receive less offers on a combination of people offering services for less, and the game still being quite new & the economy finding its footing. buying gc fluctuates constantly and earning money can be.......difficult to say the least

& then that ties into the current world situation again. not everybody has income to buy large amounts of gc to commission (or pay with irl cash), so the cheaper ones are often more doable ^^

I completely agree with the insecurity and by no means am I making a living wage off of just art either. Plus fluctuation is good and you should change prices as your art changes as well, throwing a sale especially a holiday sale right now would be a good way to draw in customers. 

I do have to say though that for the best time = money = effort thing is a YCH, that way you spread out the 'cost' of your time across multiple different images instead of investing everything into one photo that can't exactly get you any farther than advertising value.

ALSO! Free art does NOT equal sales. If you want to do free art that is great, but it does not result in sales at all. There's the classic I'll pay in exposure, but it means nothing. 

One thing I did to build myself up for free is start with fanart, which well...hm...anyway I was on redbubble, I had merch and was on tumblr, deviantart, ect. The thing with merch is if I liked something I drew it for nobody except myself and if somebody else liked it enough to buy it on redbubble that was just a bonus!  Plus people are more likely to follow somebody drawing a recognizable character than an OC. 

I am also publishing a children's book, written and illustrated by myself. And you're probably wondering why I'm just talking about my self at this point. But it has to do with insecurity. I feel like when I have to draw for somebody else I am so terrified that they will not like it and I have wasted my time on something that nobody likes and is completely unusable. But if I do things first and foremost for me, who cares? Oh I made a comic and nobody read it but me? Oh well at least I have cute art of my OCs, oh people like it?! Great! Now I have things to sell and an audience. 

Oh! And just like YCH you can sell line art which is even less work, coloring pages are a thing on etsy and that way you can just draw like a wolf once and sell it off multiple times. People also buy line art to color adoptables on.

AHHH I ramble a lot, but I want others to be successful and help them out ya know? The world is turbulent, but that doesn't mean you can't try to do something or that you should just keep pushing things off.

oh wow!! i didnt expect anyone else to really reply, let alone leave replies that were as thought-out as this.

it makes me just a little less discouraged haha :)

i have been advertising some YCH/YWHs, so maybe i just need to shoot the prices on those way down for the holidays. i mean, any business is good business, right? sdkjlks

Ha...ah...I just like typing and helping people..

Art is just discouraging, at least this is online! I had a booth once at a local pier and it was cold and I only sold one thing, not even enough to pay back the booth fee and I was so distraught.

I mean you do you as far as prices go, also not to be a stalker or anything but I looked at your YCH page and it's confusing it's not obvious what the prices are or anything here's mine I feel like people like things more if they can get all the information at one glance instead of reading into things too hard. Try having the price in bold so it catches your eye and simplify the text a bit so things don't look jumbled. Try looking at other people's shops too for inspiration on making a friendly shop. 

You could also run 'buy one get one _____" deals instead of shooting down the price per say, like buy one get one half off which is really 2 pieces at 25% off, but buy one get one sounds better and more like a deal. 

In the end though it is what you value yourself as and what you feel comfortable charging to make it worth your while. 

aaa ;w; thanks for the tips

You're welcome ~ Feel free to message me in the future for anything I hate the struggling artist trope 😅 I'll try to help the best I can.