Where to sell art commissions online

The short answer: take commissions wherever your audience already is, but close them on a page you own.

Most artists do the opposite. They build an audience on Instagram, get asked "do you do commissions?" in the DMs, and then try to run the whole job — pricing, references, revisions, delivery — inside a chat thread that also contains their cousin's holiday photos. It works, right up until it doesn't.

Here's an honest look at the four routes, and what each one actually costs you.

1. Instagram and TikTok DMs

This is where most commissions start, and that's fine. Someone sees your work, likes it, asks.

What's good: zero setup, and the person is already interested. No cold pitch required.

What it costs you: everything after "yes". There's no record of what was agreed, so scope creep is constant — "could you add a second figure?" arrives three weeks in and you've no written price for it. Requests from people who don't follow you land in a separate folder you may never see. And if your account is ever restricted, the conversation and the client both disappear with it.

Use it for: the first contact. Not the job.

2. Etsy

You can list a commission as a custom order, and plenty of artists do.

What's good: buyers already trust Etsy with their card. Payments, refunds and disputes are handled. You get some search traffic you didn't have to earn.

What it costs you: fees on every sale, and a listing model built for finished products rather than bespoke work. A commission involves a conversation — references, revisions, approvals — and Etsy's messaging is a poor place to have it. You'll also find yourself listing a placeholder item at a guess price, then adjusting, which confuses buyers.

Use it for: commissions that are nearly standardised. A pet portrait in one of three sizes works. An open-ended brief doesn't.

3. Commission marketplaces

Fiverr, Ko-fi, VGen, Artists&Clients and similar.

What's good: genuine discovery — people arrive specifically looking to commission something. Several handle escrow, so you're not chasing payment.

What it costs you: price pressure, mostly. These platforms put you next to hundreds of artists and the cheapest listing is always visible. More importantly, the platform owns the relationship. A client who found you on Fiverr tends to stay a Fiverr client, and you'll pay a cut every time they come back.

Use it for: filling empty slots and building a portfolio early on. Not as your permanent home.

4. Your own commissions page

A page you control, with your terms on it, that you send people to.

What's good: your prices, your rules, no cut taken. It answers the twenty questions you'd otherwise type out individually. And it makes you look like a working professional rather than someone doing favours — which, more than anything else on this list, is what changes the prices people are willing to pay.

What it costs you: nobody finds it on its own. A commissions page doesn't generate demand; it converts demand you already created somewhere else.

Use it for: closing every commission, whichever platform the person came from.

What a commissions page actually needs

Most commission pages fail for the same reason: they show beautiful work and then make the reader guess at everything else. Six things fix that.

1. What you will and won't take. Be specific. "Portraits, pets and character work. No mecha, no NSFW, no large group scenes." Saying no in advance saves you four polite rejection emails a month.

2. Prices, written down. Not "DM for pricing". That phrase costs artists more money than anything else they do. It reads as either expensive-and-cagey or not-really-a-business, and a sizeable share of people simply won't ask. A starting price — "From $250" — plus two or three named levels lets someone decide whether they're in the right room before they contact you.

3. What a request has to include. Reference images, dimensions, deadline, and whether it's for personal or commercial use. Asking for this upfront turns a four-message back-and-forth into one.

4. Turnaround. A range, honestly stated. "Two to four weeks from approved sketch" is better than silence, and far better than an optimistic number you'll miss.

5. Your revisions limit. Two rounds included, then an hourly rate. Written down, in advance.

6. Whether you're open. "Commissions open" or "Closed until December" at the top. It costs you nothing and stops you fielding requests you can't take.

Quoting, and why the quote should be written

The part that goes wrong isn't the painting. It's the gap between what the buyer pictured and what you agreed to make.

A written quote closes that gap. It doesn't need to be a contract — it needs to say: what you're making, what size, what it costs, how long, how many revisions, and what happens if they change their mind. Send it, get a yes in writing, then start.

If you revise a quote after they ask for something extra, send the new one in full rather than saying "that'll be another forty". Showing the price move from one number to another is clearer, and it makes the extra feel like a decision rather than a surprise.

Deposits

Fifty percent upfront, balance on delivery, is the standard and it's standard for good reasons.

A deposit filters out people who were never going to commit — and that's most of the enquiries you'll lose sleep over. It means a cancellation halfway through doesn't leave you with nothing for three weeks of work. And it establishes the thing clearly as a transaction, which quietly reduces the number of "just one more small change" requests.

For larger pieces, split it three ways: a third to start, a third at sketch approval, a third on delivery.

Most tools won't collect a deposit for you, so take it however you already take money — bank transfer, UPI, Zelle, a payment request — and don't start work until it lands. Say on your page whether it's refundable, and before what point. Vagueness here is where the unpleasant conversations come from.

Pricing without underselling

Two approaches, and the second is usually better.

Hourly is honest, but it punishes you for getting faster and clients dislike open-ended numbers.

Flat rate per level is where most working artists land. Pick three levels, estimate the hours each takes, multiply by what you want to earn an hour, and round up. Then track your real hours for a few months and adjust. Almost everyone finds they underestimated.

Add a commercial use rate. If the work is going on a product, a book cover, a logo or an advert, it's worth more — two to three times the personal rate is a common starting point.

Managing the queue

Once more than two or three jobs are running, the admin becomes the hard part.

Keep a visible list of where each one stands: request received, quote sent, quote accepted, sketch sent, approved, in progress, delivered. Send a one-line update at each stage even when nothing needs discussing — unprompted updates are the single biggest reason clients come back and recommend you.

And close the queue when it's full. "Commissions closed, reopening in December" costs you nothing and protects the work you've already taken on.

About Kalaikona. Kalaikona builds a storefront for independent artists and makers from a chat, and it includes the commission conversation: a buyer sends a request with a reference photo, you reply with a price, revise it if the brief changes, and they accept — with every message kept in one thread instead of your DMs. You can show a "From" price and named levels on the page.

Two things to know. Card payment on an accepted quote isn't open yet, so for now you take payment your own way once the quote is agreed. And Kalaikona is invite-only while it's in early access — if you'd like a store built, email a few photos of your work and your prices to start@kalaikona.com and someone will build one and send you the link.