Unleashing Your Artistic Potential:The Power of Closing Commissions
This article emphasizes the importance of regularly closing commissions for artists. By doing so, artists can focus on delivering a high-quality experience to existing customers and increase efficiency. Closing commissions creates a perception of high demand, builds trust, and establishes reliability, ultimately contributing to the artist's success and commitment to their craft.
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In this article, I want to discuss how crucial it is to employ a commission cycle that includes frequently shutting your commissions. Several significant events take place when you close and reopen commissions that might improve your efficiency and increase demand for your product.
When you close your commissions, you give yourself the finest opportunity to concentrate on your most valuable aspect (the craft). Keeping your commissions open may appear to be a good idea at first because some may believe that closing them will cost you customers, but in my opinion, as many artists as there are, there will always be more clients to land, and any customers you might land by keeping your commissions open are not nearly as important as delivering a quality experience to the customers who have already commissioned you, which is what closing your commissions will allow you to focus on.
Leaving your commissions open can also be quite time-consuming as customers that have already paid need very little work compared to corresponding with customers that are on the fence or working through writing up an invoice or however your commission process works.
Another thing to remember is the positive effect closing your commissions may have on your engagement. Here's what I mean, when you close your commissions this can become a post that essentially tells everyone that sees it "Hey people value this enough for it to sell out!" and that's a great message! Trust is so important when selling commissions and anything you can do to show your customers that people love your art enough to commission you is super important. There is also a second part to this and that comes when you open your commissions again as well as when you post your finished commissions. This lets you show that you follow through with your commissions and that you open your commissions when you are ready for more work and thus trust is built!
If you use these methods when handling your commissions you create a predictable trustworthy system for your fans to follow. When you do this customers will line up for your commissions and be more than happy to wait for you to open them because they have seen that you deliver consistently.
As a bonus when people see that you closed commissions, it sends a few subconscious messages firstly as mentioned before, it tells people that you follow through but also that your work is valuable. People always value things that are in demand especially when there is a limited supply, and by closing commissions, you will have people who will jump at the next chance they get to commission you. Something to keep in mind is that it's important to still have easy-to-access free quotes for people when your commissions are closed.
As a final point, I would like to talk about the psychological effect it can have on you as an artist. As artists, we all know how disheartening and demotivating it can be to open your commissions and have them open for months with no or very minimal results. And as I have mentioned above leaving your commissions open just to try to land a commission can just compound the issue. Additionally, this can compound into a rather unhealthy mindset that can seriously hinder your ability to set up an effective plan moving forward. I would recommend to any artist that is struggling to fill commission slots just be patient and decrease your commission slots even down to 1-2 until they are filled and focus on them before opening again.
In conclusion, I think it's immensely important to develop a commission cycle that takes into consideration your needs and abilities so you can maintain consistency and quality that will display to your followers that you are trustworthy and care about the work you do!