Commission Tips part 5: More Models = More Money

What a fun ride.  Didn't expect this series to be this entertaining.  Thank you readers for your participation.

JJ blogging,  here we are the last post in the Commission Tips topic.  Some of you maybe sensing that the four previous posts were building up to something, with that foreshadowing I'm so fond of using.  That really bothers some of the players in my Friday night game.

We've chatted about payment, expectations, communication and deadlines.  All these are structured and designed to come to one conclusion.  As the title says: More Models = More Money.

You don't want to be involved in the white-man's-corporate-world anymore.  You want to start your own business.  Be your own boss.  You want to paint full-time.  You can do it.  Just takes a lot of time, patience and effort.  As Robert Spritzel in The Weather Man said: "Nothing that has meaning is easy."

This post could be summed up with the title and probably wouldn't warrant any explanation.  Let's see it again.

More Models = More Money.

Let's continue just a little more.  You clean your table of models and commissions regularly.  You have more opportunities to paint more models and get paid more regularly.  Rome wasn't built in a day.  Your world dominating commission business won't be either.

Everytime one of your painted models leaves your table and goes out into the world amongst all the other models is a walking, breathing advertisement.  Your resumes, painted toy soldiers, will be seen by people you'll never meet.  The more exposure you have the greater chance of you garnering more clients.  More clients = more models and as stated in the title, more models = more money.  Taco Bell and other fast food franchises aren't multi-billion dollar companies by taking their time painting providing product to their customers, not meeting expectations, poor communication and not figuring out payment.  Taco Bell apparently started out as a one hot dog stand set-up.  Just like our commission companies.  By taking the initiative, making their presence known and providing product quickly known they started raking in more and more money.  I'm not saying your commission business will become a multi-billion dollar business.  What I am saying is that the fast food industry fills a demand frequently enough to make plenty of cash.  And you can do the same.  [editors note: that last sentence sounded like an infomercial]

Really you're probably like me.  You want commission work to pay for your lifestyle plus have some for the future.  It can be done.  There are plenty of successful commission artists that do nothing but paint.  The only difference between us and them is they focused on clearing commissions from the table and finding more clients to send them models.

My goal is to make Silver Gargoyle Productions into a studio.  The studio will have a team of painters.  The studio will never come to fruition if I don't make my current clients models a priority and start moving them out the door.  So current and future clients will send me more models to paint.  Eventually this will lead to a tipping-point, either stay where I'm at in the commission business or get employees so the studio will happen.  A company makes money because they have employees.  The tattooist who only works by himself in his own shop makes his paper no problem.  If he brings in more tattooists who do what they love and earn money doing it, they pay the owner of the shop a percentage of what they made.  Commission work can be the same way.

That's the best analogy for a commission studio that I've come up with.  They are effectively the same.  The tattoos, models, done by the shop, studio, that are out in the world seen by other people.  And those customers rave about where they got their work done will only get the shop more business.  Goes right back to the title.  More Models = More Money.

Wish there was more to it than that.  Its genuis is its simplicity.

You're a commission artist.  Do you want more money?  Yeah you know what's coming next.  Paint more models.


slainte mhath