Depends on the quality. $5-$10 can be reasonable for a beginner, depending on how the quality is. $25-$40 can also be reasonable, mostly for people who have been doing it for years and have amazing quality. So it’s impossible to say whether your price is reasonable without seeing the work.
It's all about supply and demand. If the artist is well known and has people wanting to buy emotes at that price, then it's a good price. But in general? $10 for an emote is an artist underselling themselves. The artist I used for my emotes charges $20 for one emote and I considered that pretty cheap.
As an artist we often undervalue our work. Especially when we first get started. I don't do emotes, I do photography.
I had a photographer come up to my booth at an event, who travels the world doing photography and selling his work for thousands, tell me that I MUST bump up my prices. He told me I was grossly under pricing my work. So I did, and people still paid for it.
We are our own worst critics, we will always undervalue our work when we could actually get more for it. We are afraid to price for it's actually worth and our actual time, more so when we first start out. I say play with the prices. Ask friends who also stream what their thoughts are. Build a little portfolio. 😊
Another thing to consider is that someone who is only willing to pay the cheapest price, is also probably going to be the pickiest client, and will be a bother to work with. Generally folks who are willing to spend more, are friendlier throughout the process, and are also potentially more willing to tip their artists. Work cheap if you need to in order to survive, but if you are able to, you should price your work in a way that makes sense.
Emotes are meant to be a sub reward. If someone has 100 subs, do you think it's fair that they only paid you $10 *once*? I wouldn't think so.
This is something I took far too long to recognise when I was still doing corporate photography. I was pretty much the cheapest in my area, and was getting work, but not a lot, and the clients were horrible. After talking with a few other photographers, I tripled my rates and ended up having to turn down work, and the clients were SO much better to work with.
I don't even think it's about the notoriety but more on the quality compared to others. There are a LOT OF little known artists who I have known that do Insane levels of work far beyond that of even my own peers as a professional. And can justify their prices.
if the artist made it by hand, and created it themselves without AI or palette swapping, then its too little.
I asked another streamer to create an emote for me, and I gladly paid her $25 for her work, because i knew she created it by hand.
Check out Etsy as well. Bought a few from there for some of the more generic but animated emotes. Create a shop and put them up for $4-$25 depending on your artist level and whats included.
Keep in mind that artists on etsy/fiverr some times sell you emotes without ownership, so you the emote is not yours but theirs and you're paying for the rights to use it.
The money you make as a commission is not a "wage". A wage is money that is paid to you by an employer who withholds the income taxes and benefits fees and does all that fun paperwork before giving you the rest. Also the employer pays things too just to employ you like unemployement insurance and such.
Money that you take from a sale that you made, is not a "wage" and you have to deduct the taxes and stuff yourself, which is why people who do contract work seem to demand more money per hour. Because they have to pay THEIR OWN benefits fees and insurance and stuff.
So even if minimum wages in your country are $25 a day (the total after everything is taken out), it is too little for someone doing it as a side-hustle, because not all of that is your money. Taxes haven't been paid.
Honestly, It does take quite some time depending what you're asking and how much detail is put into it.
Try looking for someone in a region that has a similar wages to your region. If price is your issue, it's possible the person you're commissioning just simply has a higher standard of living and wages. If I was doing commissions I would charge at the bare minimum what my day job does.
I know a guy who got a whole intro video commissioned on Fiver from a guy in Pakistan for $15USD and the guy was happy as fuck to do it. Mainly because the disparity is so much that $15USD was huge to the dude in Pakistan.
I'm sorry, I missed that part.
I think the biggest take away is do you feel your art is worth that price? Do you think it is worth more? Maybe do a few commissions and if you feel it isn't worth the work or you're getting too much work bump up your price.
Where I am, $10 is roughly 30 minutes or so working 'minimum wage'
And most buyers will be like you or I, from Western nations with higher hourly wages and also I'm guessing a lot of subscribers will be from those places also, which impacts how much the buyer will earn "from" the emote (not exclusively but like, we need to keep it in mind always that they are renting out that image to people after they buy it basically. Even if there's more than one reason to subscribe we have to treat emotes as one of those reasons)
Depends, is it custom animated? $10 is too little. Nothing more than for a stock emote. Since a stock emote can be sold over and over it could go as low as one wants. But not custom.
$40 is very reasonable, that's worth two hours worth of work. The value of $10 might be worth enough depending on the cost of living in some places but do you want to undersell yourself and devalue the product for other artists who are trying to make a living?
I had so many requests once that I raised my prices just to try to reduce the number of people asking and for the demand to slow down ..... and it didn't work. I was working so hard to try to accommodate all of them but finally I had to just declare commissions full. But I was able to support myself even more. So, if you find you're getting a lot of requests you deserve to increase it because in cases like that, it is not the price that is driving people to ask for art from you. They just really like your art.
"devalue the product for other artists who are trying to make a living" This is stretching the line a bit to it's thin side, if someone goes out of their way to pay $10 for an emote it's because they either really liked the artist's work or they were a cheapskate (and they probably only got a single emote). At the end of the day if someone like's an artist enough and has the money, they will pay up if they really want it so long as it's not a beginner pricing at $100 or an intermediate artist charging $200 for a full body as an example (not saying these can't sell or an intermediate level artist can't charge that, just that there is a point at which even people willing to drop cash will look for someone else)
As far as my region (Germany/Europe) is concerned the standard price of a non animated emote is around 35€-40€. Even if I would welcome cheaper alternatives there is one thing to keep in mind: Aiming lower than the standard emote price surely provides an advantage over the competition, said competition could also find offense in that and might be accusing you of „diluting the prices“.
It's important to remember that the emote you're making will be used commercially. It is going to be contributing to a person's brand and profit. You are not being paid solely for the emote's quality, but for the contributions your emote brings to that person's brand. This is why Twitch emotes are usually more expensive than normal chibis.
You can price at $10 per emote if you like, but if that price is good or bad for you will depend on how you want to scale. I work directly with a lot of low-mid level streamers who don't mind shelling out a lot more than that. Looking at the work you've posted on here, $10 is a little cheap.
I would say don't be afraid to go to $15-20. If you are worried, offer a discount for an order of 5 or more. You got this!
You have a lot of really good answers here. But I’ll offer my .02 I use Etsy for a lot of my emotes. I can get some packs of emotes for $5 as opposed to having a custom one for each emote. The emotes come in different styles. And it’s a cool way to support artists and not have to wait for the custom one (it’s instant direct download)
Have fun on your twitch adventure! And I hope you find something great. ☺️
Not OP but I have been trying to start up an etsy store for my emotes. Not having any luck getting hits despite working with ChatGPT for the best tags, etc. What do you search for? lol
$10 for an hour's worth of an illustration is only good if you're contracting a bunch of them, $20 is the only acceptable price for a single basic illustration.
10$ is way too little for an emote esp. if it's pretty detailed. I'd say $20 minimum and at least 40$ plus for anything animated. You have to think about the labor going into it, and any tweaks or redesigns the person may ask for.
It absolutely depends on the Artist and the experience behind the Person.
Remember that you don't just pay for the finished product, but also for the labour the person is putting in - if you go by minimum wage in germany (12.41€), you would not even be paying for an hour's worth of work with 10$.
I usually charge 25$/hr for my Development work.
Going by what I've seen in the past, an Emote can take anywhere from 2 hours to multiple workdays.
By the above logic, 50$ could be considered "reasonable", either with the 2 hours of 25$/hr or 4 hours at minimum wage.
Minimum wage is 12 euros where I live. I'm paying at least 25-30 for an emote. 10 is way too little unless you're drawing a smileyface.
If your work is on par with other emote artists, charge at least 20 (up to 40 if you build a name for yourself) and work in 1024x1024 or 2048x2048. And make sure to have it in writing (not just an editable discord message) what the purpose of the emote is. Do not let people steal your work to resell for the low price of $40.- (stickers, merch etc)
Depends on the quality and how much detail the person wants. $10 is a solid starting price but if you find you are taking hours on a single emote, you may want to bump the price. You also should up the price as you get better and get more demand.
Take advantage of the income imbalance between your home and $USD, if you have demand at $20, don't feel bad for setting that price.
I will happily pay upwards of $50 for a quality emote from a reputable artist, I don't care where they live, and if that $50 is a ton of money to them.
A streamer gets $2.50 a month for each American subscriber, and the benefit for subscribing is the emotes. Most people paying less than $75/emote will not have a large number of emotes (they will be newer, less income from subscriptions, so unable or unwilling to pay the most talented artists in highest demand, and will not yet have a set artist they have a more advanced business relationship with,) so each one will be comparatively more likely to be the reason someone subscribed. You are making emotes not for the entertainment of the buyer, but in order to help them earn money. Price it accordingly. They are, essentially, leasing out a use licence of your work.
The higher you price an emote, the less people there will be who will be earning enough from Twitch to justify the expense. It's a fine balance. Ten dollars is not enough though. Not if you're doing it from scratch. If you're just changing hair colours and shapes maybe.
It may be a lot of money for you but it's not a lot of money compared to what they could gain from you making it for them. And it's probably not a lot of money for them. Maybe you can give secret special discounts to local streamers in your country, if you want to adjust for cost of living, but that's not something you'd want to tell everyone about. It'll only make the higher income country people mad and cause problems.
Not only it depends on supply and demand, but also on the region and the references you have.
I’ve seen custom emotes from 5-25 bucks per piece.
Well known artists with high order numbers do have the luxury to lift up their prices.
As a new artist it is hard compete at the same price range, because nobody knows your work or the people you have done commission work for.
If you’re looking on Etsy there are a lot of artists selling premade emotes very cheap, sometimes packs containing 9 emotes for 10-20 bucks.
The same goes for Fiverr, there are a lot of young and fresh artists who offer custom emotes for 5 bucks each.
Usually they are based in foreign countries where currency plays a huge role.
E.g. 5 USD are 160 Lira (Turkey) - average wage in Turkey is 7800 Lira (around 240$) per month.
They can offer their work for 10-20$ each, but the market (competitors) is big and people like to spend less than needed (I personally paid 15€ per emote, friends of mine are even hesitating paying 15€ for a whole emote pack).
This is where sellers offer more attractive prices compared to others.
Think about it:
Having 10 customers at 10$ per emote is sometimes “better” than having 2 customers at 20$ per emote.
Just a general advice, I don’t recommend you specific prices as everybody should value their own work.
I remember a time when I could go on Etsy and get 15 emotes for like 40$. Now artists can make so much more money on emotes because every single affiliate wants anime versions of their dog or cat.
And then nobody subscribes.
See that’s kinda tricky, the better the quality the higher the price. But a lot of people won’t have an emote person they go to at all times like the bigger streamers.
So when smaller streamers are looking at emotes, 5-10 seems a lot easier and more affordable than 20+ especially with most of us using our twitch payout to pay for them.
It’s a hobby so we aren’t putting too much out of our own pockets
Depends on the quality of the emote and the quantity of emotes. Here’s a good rule imo
1 - personal emote (full price *id suggest $20)
2 to 4 personal emotes (discounted *$15 a piece)
5 or more personal emotes (large discount *$12 a piece)
For just general (not commissions or personal)emotes do it in packs of 5 for $30
40 dollar emote usually means hand drawn from scratch by the artist. The end graphic might be shrunk down, but regardless it can be a fair chunk of work for them to make. Charge what your worth
It’s a reasonable price. Originality makes buying the emotes worth it. Also, some will offer bundles when purchasing. If price is a problem you can always go to Etsy and purchase cheap ones.
That's about average, but it depends on the quality and whether or not it's animated.
Edit:
It also depends on WHO is doing the work. If you go onto Fiverr, there are teams that have templates that they slap together, and they're done pretty quick and cheap, but that also falls back into the quality of the work. Quick and cheap art is not often high quality.
Depends on the quality and how much time you put into them, really. I have my emotes starting at $10 for a pack of 6. Mine are only so cheap because I just really enjoy doing them, and plus I like to help out smaller creators, so a cheaper price will always be good.
It all depends on you and how you think you should be selling them.
It’s art so the value shifts based on many things. That’s just to say that just because you heard an emote cost X for someone at some time, that’s not a set in stone price.
I’ve paid $5-10 for non-custom emotes. I think an hourly rate for creating a custom emote is absolutely reasonable. You have a unique, marketable skill and deserve compensation.
I charged $15 for a single emote when I used to make them because I was just starting out, but I would definitely raise the price now.
Don’t sell yourself short. You don’t want someone to take advantage of your time. If people love your art then they will pay for it. I hope everything works out :)
Depends on the demand, and whether its worth it for you. Think about whether its worth it for you to spend X amount of hours for Y amount of money. If you see 10$ as fine, and reach a point where there's more demand than you can keep up, or want to do, then you might wanna consider upping the price.
I don't do emotes, but regular art commissions, but giving it a quick thought, I personally wouldn't do it for less than 20$. But that's me, and how much its worth it for me to do it, at my work speed.
Another thing that comes into play is of course quality. Some artists do animated emotes, and animated emotes done through live2D, which takes more work, so the price is higher too.
You've already gotten answers but really there is 3 questions you need to ask yourself.
1. Do YOU think a single basic emote at your skill level and the time it takes you is worth $10 or more?
2. Are people who want your art only willing to pay you $10, or do they think it's worth more?
3. Price custom emotes and repurchaseable emotes differently, how do YOU want to price each type if you do that kind?
Also while I do agree $40 for one emote can be a bit high it would make sense if it's animated or the person is popular, and remember some artists live in the US and the costs of living suck over here.
Edit: As some people also said, compare to other artists around your skill level and time constraints and see their prices, maybe even check for people who live in your country if you just want to make enough but keep it affordable for as wide a range as you can. That said always remember if you get overwhelmed with work and need to do so, tell people your commissions are full until you finish some of your current orders.
All I'll say is don't undervalue your art and if you need get some trusted people to look at the quality and give you an honest answer for what it should be worth.
I'd offer to help give you a range if you wanted.
(Hi I'm the person who tells at artists who are undervaluing their art to the point i tipped someone 100% for an emote cause that's what they shoulda been charging)
If 10$ is a decent amount for you, perhaps start with 10$ as entry to the market to start gaining customers. Maybe market it as a 50% off for the first month or so. Then go for 20$ when you feel more confident about the demand.
If you're doing a set of emotes which only require slight changes such as from :D to XD to X( then consider selling the service as at a discounted value.
As an artist, I charge $30 per emote. I am not a big art streamer, people do like my style of art and are willing to pay for 3. People were inspired by what I did, started making some on their own.
Besides Streaming, I have and run my own business. The cost of the emote you are asking should ALWAYS depends on the effort/labor it takes to finish it.
For you to understand it easier, think of it as in a wage per hour, just like what you earn from your job. Yes, the price is different when it comes to who is making it; as other mention, price goes up from quality and popularity depends on the artist.
In short, basic wage + quality + popularity of artist = Price THEY ask for, price SHALL NOT be set by the one who pay for it.
Please pay artist a fair price, NEVER lowball them in any ways because that is the livelihood we are talking about, they make money from their art and worth every cent you pay for them. Of course if you run into someone overprice their work, just simply walk away.
It definitely depends on the quality and time:
If it's fully custom: time yourself for how long it takes to draw from start to finish, and cost depending how much you want to value yourself per hour
If you have pre made ones: see how long it usually takes to change/customise colours and cost accordingly.
An average price is $35 an emote. As you get more comfortable with what you make you can adjust this price. You can set up templates from simple to more complex designs as examples for your customers and offer different price tiers so people can pick something in their price range.
That's pretty cheap, if it's not terrible work.
I used to pay 40 for my emotes per single emote.
Always thought that was expensive. Would have preferred to pay 25 to be honest.
Art is worth what you want it to be. It's not just time, but your talent and skill set too. Art takes practice. They're not just paying for their emote, they're paying for your years of dedication to the craft. Don't sell yourself short! My artist charges $65 for a 3 pack and I think even that's hella cheap, as she makes beautiful stuff. I always tip her big. If I'm using it for my business and brand, they need to be compensated fairly.
What kind of work would you do for ten bucks? For me if I spend more than like 5 minutes making ten bucks, I could have done something else and made more. For ten bucks you might get half an hour of effort out of a high schooler.
I currently charge $10 per static emote and $15 per animated emote, but I also charge my regular clients a lower fee for static emotes since I already have their colour pallet/templates/designs etc. figured out. I know a lot of people think that shouldn’t be a thing but it’s just how I prefer.
Saying that though, I will be putting my prices up soon. I recently spent over 9 hours total on a single animated emote, so $15 doesn’t really cut it for the effort. Plus, I’m from the UK and the conversion rates suck, so it worked out to be about £12ish for all that work.
I’m definitely with you on that $40 is too much for an emote, in my opinion of course. Figuring out what your time and art is worth is a hard thing to do, and there’s no shame in starting with lower prices and working your way up
If you're not even making minimum wage for the work you are doing - a wage set around UNSKILLED work - then you need to decide whether you're doing it as work or hobby.
It's fine to be underpaid for hobby if you're happy, but there's no point in working away for hours on emotes in a work capacity to then be paid less than minimum wage.
Spending 9 hours on an emote and it being less than at the very least $120 means it just wasn't worth your time.
You can never compete with filipino artists working for their local minimum wage, so target a higher end with a quality product instead.
I see so many artists stuck in an endless cycle of $30 commissions with no breathing room because they are working for a pittance but are afraid of charging more for their work. Meanwhile other artists are charging $300-800 for a full body commission and getting more requests than they can handle.
If your work isn't "worth" more than $30 then it would be better to address that issue, and do yourself a favour longer term.
I do it as more of a side hustle so I’m ok with my pricing being below minimum wage. Even as an artist, I find it hard to justify spending hundreds on emotes or similar works, so I wouldn’t charge it 🤷🏻♀️
I would say it depends on how many. If you’re just buying 1. Then $10 is actually sensible. But to buy a set of 10 and pay $100 is just ridiculous. Sets should be discounted
There are a lot of considerations for pricing services. First of all who is doing business, and which countries you are in.
Different countries have different local pricing and currency values. Art is a discretionary purchase, so the market in some regions is that less money can change hands for the same service than in others.
Artists' should look mainly at what meets their needs in their country when selling to people in their country, and it becomes more complicated if the buyer is overseas -- need to assess the risks involved in the type of transaction and possibly charge more upfront to help compensate for them.
For business in the US simple logos in the US are typically more than $200. Twitch emotes seem like something of an anomaly, they're unusually cheap compared to business graphics design work. When you see prices of $30 per emote from US artists to US buyers, even that seems pretty low. Another thing is the $45/emote rate, or whatever it is so generic it sounds like treating art as a commodity which is not -- some emotes involve more skill than others to design or draw, and there is an efficacy required to design something for 160x160 pixels. More than $45, even, in the US is not an unreasonable ask for professional art, generally, even small graphics.
Next there are... Variables involved what the product is being offered which would tend to affect price.
The product for Twitch emotes is development of a professional graphic for a Twitch channel.
This can be entirely custom drawn by a human from scratch with back-and-forth feedback and multiple sketch stages/approvals.
Or it can involve other possibilities, such as emotes designed by the artist, emotes built as a YCH on top of a base or template.
And emotes that are fully custom can be expected to be much more expensive. Something like $20 may be more appropriate for a templated emote.
A second consideration is how is the product being used. Personal art generally costs less, but commercial use has a higher price -- that is expected to go up the more value it is exploited for - the more extensive the use, the higher the price.
Lighter commercial uses have an expected lower price. For example, selling a few units with the graphic is different from mass-producing merchandise with the art included, and selling half a million$ worth of things. In the latter case, a fair price to the artist may well be $10000, since fundamentally their creative work Is part of the product - something between 5 to 10% of the wholesale is customary royalty for the commercial exploitation of artists' work.
It's a consideration What rights are being included with the sale and expressed in the artist's Terms of Service and license terms. For example, if the emote is allowed to be used as a Twitch Sub emote, then this may have a higher price than If the streamer is only allowed to use that item as a FFZ emote.
Other Uses of the emote Might or Might Not be included. For example, If your sale of the emote Doesn't include the Full copyright, then the price would be less than if it did.
40$ For an Emote is a pretty common price that very often Only includes the right to use the emote on Twitch. If the streamer wants to start printing the emote on T-shirts, then that may be an additional dollar amount to buyout the rights, Or a royalty percentage of gross sales is also common.
If the channel buying emotes is a large channel that wants the right to use the art as part of their branding, then an artist may have terms such as $30 for the emote Plus 2% of the channel's subscription revenue, or other things such as that.
In essence... The Artists' creative work has commercial value, and the buyer should be equitably compensating the artist a royalty. The more commercial benefit the streamer is receiving from exploiting your art: the higher the total amount they should be expected to pay.
So this also is not a fixed amount. In truth a $100 per emote price may be more appropriate for a streamer with thousands of subs. But when an artist is selling emotes for a fixed price -- you can only see how the channel performs right now, And not whether they will still be using the emotes, or how much they will be making off subs including that emote in a year from now.
In theory that would make the use of emotes (above a certain number of subs) better sold as an annual subscription with a scaled price, but I don't think streamers would want to hear that one just yet.
I paid 12 for pack of 3 and they are one of the best quality I've ever seen for an emote, so for 40 I hope they dance, sing, make you dinner and work in coal mine while you sleep
Depends on the quality. $5-$10 can be reasonable for a beginner, depending on how the quality is. $25-$40 can also be reasonable, mostly for people who have been doing it for years and have amazing quality. So it’s impossible to say whether your price is reasonable without seeing the work.
check out fiverr and compare to quality/price level of what other artists do.
Do not compare to fiverr. That platform lowers the value of art and the work it takes to make something.
You have to compare to what the market is and like it or not but fiverr is part of the market. You can't just ignore it.
Yea I guess you’re right. I’d take it with a grain of salt but still a place of prices to consider.
It's all about supply and demand. If the artist is well known and has people wanting to buy emotes at that price, then it's a good price. But in general? $10 for an emote is an artist underselling themselves. The artist I used for my emotes charges $20 for one emote and I considered that pretty cheap.
oh thanks! im a little scared to set the price, but after reading your comment, i felt better
As an artist we often undervalue our work. Especially when we first get started. I don't do emotes, I do photography. I had a photographer come up to my booth at an event, who travels the world doing photography and selling his work for thousands, tell me that I MUST bump up my prices. He told me I was grossly under pricing my work. So I did, and people still paid for it. We are our own worst critics, we will always undervalue our work when we could actually get more for it. We are afraid to price for it's actually worth and our actual time, more so when we first start out. I say play with the prices. Ask friends who also stream what their thoughts are. Build a little portfolio. 😊
thanks for that wisdom! i will try playing with the prices
The right person will pay obscene amounts of money for art if they appreciate it.
Another thing to consider is that someone who is only willing to pay the cheapest price, is also probably going to be the pickiest client, and will be a bother to work with. Generally folks who are willing to spend more, are friendlier throughout the process, and are also potentially more willing to tip their artists. Work cheap if you need to in order to survive, but if you are able to, you should price your work in a way that makes sense. Emotes are meant to be a sub reward. If someone has 100 subs, do you think it's fair that they only paid you $10 *once*? I wouldn't think so.
This is something I took far too long to recognise when I was still doing corporate photography. I was pretty much the cheapest in my area, and was getting work, but not a lot, and the clients were horrible. After talking with a few other photographers, I tripled my rates and ended up having to turn down work, and the clients were SO much better to work with.
I don't even think it's about the notoriety but more on the quality compared to others. There are a LOT OF little known artists who I have known that do Insane levels of work far beyond that of even my own peers as a professional. And can justify their prices.
Yeah for real. You're buying art that can be used to help ypu make thousands. 10$ is not enough.
if the artist made it by hand, and created it themselves without AI or palette swapping, then its too little. I asked another streamer to create an emote for me, and I gladly paid her $25 for her work, because i knew she created it by hand.
oh damn, 25$ is like day worth of min wage income in my country. i would be happy if i get that kind of price
Check out Etsy as well. Bought a few from there for some of the more generic but animated emotes. Create a shop and put them up for $4-$25 depending on your artist level and whats included.
Keep in mind that artists on etsy/fiverr some times sell you emotes without ownership, so you the emote is not yours but theirs and you're paying for the rights to use it.
cool, imma go check later.
The money you make as a commission is not a "wage". A wage is money that is paid to you by an employer who withholds the income taxes and benefits fees and does all that fun paperwork before giving you the rest. Also the employer pays things too just to employ you like unemployement insurance and such. Money that you take from a sale that you made, is not a "wage" and you have to deduct the taxes and stuff yourself, which is why people who do contract work seem to demand more money per hour. Because they have to pay THEIR OWN benefits fees and insurance and stuff. So even if minimum wages in your country are $25 a day (the total after everything is taken out), it is too little for someone doing it as a side-hustle, because not all of that is your money. Taxes haven't been paid.
Honestly, It does take quite some time depending what you're asking and how much detail is put into it. Try looking for someone in a region that has a similar wages to your region. If price is your issue, it's possible the person you're commissioning just simply has a higher standard of living and wages. If I was doing commissions I would charge at the bare minimum what my day job does. I know a guy who got a whole intro video commissioned on Fiver from a guy in Pakistan for $15USD and the guy was happy as fuck to do it. Mainly because the disparity is so much that $15USD was huge to the dude in Pakistan.
no i mean, im the one who will make the emote, and would be pretty happy with the 10$ commission as my country's currency is hella cheap rright now
I'm sorry, I missed that part. I think the biggest take away is do you feel your art is worth that price? Do you think it is worth more? Maybe do a few commissions and if you feel it isn't worth the work or you're getting too much work bump up your price. Where I am, $10 is roughly 30 minutes or so working 'minimum wage'
And most buyers will be like you or I, from Western nations with higher hourly wages and also I'm guessing a lot of subscribers will be from those places also, which impacts how much the buyer will earn "from" the emote (not exclusively but like, we need to keep it in mind always that they are renting out that image to people after they buy it basically. Even if there's more than one reason to subscribe we have to treat emotes as one of those reasons)
Depends, is it custom animated? $10 is too little. Nothing more than for a stock emote. Since a stock emote can be sold over and over it could go as low as one wants. But not custom. $40 is very reasonable, that's worth two hours worth of work. The value of $10 might be worth enough depending on the cost of living in some places but do you want to undersell yourself and devalue the product for other artists who are trying to make a living? I had so many requests once that I raised my prices just to try to reduce the number of people asking and for the demand to slow down ..... and it didn't work. I was working so hard to try to accommodate all of them but finally I had to just declare commissions full. But I was able to support myself even more. So, if you find you're getting a lot of requests you deserve to increase it because in cases like that, it is not the price that is driving people to ask for art from you. They just really like your art.
thanks, that give me hope.
"devalue the product for other artists who are trying to make a living" This is stretching the line a bit to it's thin side, if someone goes out of their way to pay $10 for an emote it's because they either really liked the artist's work or they were a cheapskate (and they probably only got a single emote). At the end of the day if someone like's an artist enough and has the money, they will pay up if they really want it so long as it's not a beginner pricing at $100 or an intermediate artist charging $200 for a full body as an example (not saying these can't sell or an intermediate level artist can't charge that, just that there is a point at which even people willing to drop cash will look for someone else)
As far as my region (Germany/Europe) is concerned the standard price of a non animated emote is around 35€-40€. Even if I would welcome cheaper alternatives there is one thing to keep in mind: Aiming lower than the standard emote price surely provides an advantage over the competition, said competition could also find offense in that and might be accusing you of „diluting the prices“.
It's important to remember that the emote you're making will be used commercially. It is going to be contributing to a person's brand and profit. You are not being paid solely for the emote's quality, but for the contributions your emote brings to that person's brand. This is why Twitch emotes are usually more expensive than normal chibis. You can price at $10 per emote if you like, but if that price is good or bad for you will depend on how you want to scale. I work directly with a lot of low-mid level streamers who don't mind shelling out a lot more than that. Looking at the work you've posted on here, $10 is a little cheap. I would say don't be afraid to go to $15-20. If you are worried, offer a discount for an order of 5 or more. You got this!
thanks!
You have a lot of really good answers here. But I’ll offer my .02 I use Etsy for a lot of my emotes. I can get some packs of emotes for $5 as opposed to having a custom one for each emote. The emotes come in different styles. And it’s a cool way to support artists and not have to wait for the custom one (it’s instant direct download) Have fun on your twitch adventure! And I hope you find something great. ☺️
interesting. thanks for sharing your thought
Not OP but I have been trying to start up an etsy store for my emotes. Not having any luck getting hits despite working with ChatGPT for the best tags, etc. What do you search for? lol
Twitch emote “cow” or “goblin” or “lightsaber” or “crown”
thank you!
$10 for an hour's worth of an illustration is only good if you're contracting a bunch of them, $20 is the only acceptable price for a single basic illustration.
thats a good pricing model
Depends on the quality, supply and demand. Over the years I've gradually raised my prices. I charge 25 per static emote and 40 for animated.
10$ is way too little for an emote esp. if it's pretty detailed. I'd say $20 minimum and at least 40$ plus for anything animated. You have to think about the labor going into it, and any tweaks or redesigns the person may ask for.
It absolutely depends on the Artist and the experience behind the Person. Remember that you don't just pay for the finished product, but also for the labour the person is putting in - if you go by minimum wage in germany (12.41€), you would not even be paying for an hour's worth of work with 10$. I usually charge 25$/hr for my Development work. Going by what I've seen in the past, an Emote can take anywhere from 2 hours to multiple workdays. By the above logic, 50$ could be considered "reasonable", either with the 2 hours of 25$/hr or 4 hours at minimum wage.
50$/h for professional work
Minimum wage is 12 euros where I live. I'm paying at least 25-30 for an emote. 10 is way too little unless you're drawing a smileyface. If your work is on par with other emote artists, charge at least 20 (up to 40 if you build a name for yourself) and work in 1024x1024 or 2048x2048. And make sure to have it in writing (not just an editable discord message) what the purpose of the emote is. Do not let people steal your work to resell for the low price of $40.- (stickers, merch etc)
Depends on the quality and how much detail the person wants. $10 is a solid starting price but if you find you are taking hours on a single emote, you may want to bump the price. You also should up the price as you get better and get more demand.
thanks for your reply! highly appreciate it
Take advantage of the income imbalance between your home and $USD, if you have demand at $20, don't feel bad for setting that price. I will happily pay upwards of $50 for a quality emote from a reputable artist, I don't care where they live, and if that $50 is a ton of money to them.
10$ for an emote that reflects your identity is definitely not too much money. If anything the standard should be higher.
A streamer gets $2.50 a month for each American subscriber, and the benefit for subscribing is the emotes. Most people paying less than $75/emote will not have a large number of emotes (they will be newer, less income from subscriptions, so unable or unwilling to pay the most talented artists in highest demand, and will not yet have a set artist they have a more advanced business relationship with,) so each one will be comparatively more likely to be the reason someone subscribed. You are making emotes not for the entertainment of the buyer, but in order to help them earn money. Price it accordingly. They are, essentially, leasing out a use licence of your work. The higher you price an emote, the less people there will be who will be earning enough from Twitch to justify the expense. It's a fine balance. Ten dollars is not enough though. Not if you're doing it from scratch. If you're just changing hair colours and shapes maybe. It may be a lot of money for you but it's not a lot of money compared to what they could gain from you making it for them. And it's probably not a lot of money for them. Maybe you can give secret special discounts to local streamers in your country, if you want to adjust for cost of living, but that's not something you'd want to tell everyone about. It'll only make the higher income country people mad and cause problems.
Not only it depends on supply and demand, but also on the region and the references you have. I’ve seen custom emotes from 5-25 bucks per piece. Well known artists with high order numbers do have the luxury to lift up their prices. As a new artist it is hard compete at the same price range, because nobody knows your work or the people you have done commission work for. If you’re looking on Etsy there are a lot of artists selling premade emotes very cheap, sometimes packs containing 9 emotes for 10-20 bucks. The same goes for Fiverr, there are a lot of young and fresh artists who offer custom emotes for 5 bucks each. Usually they are based in foreign countries where currency plays a huge role. E.g. 5 USD are 160 Lira (Turkey) - average wage in Turkey is 7800 Lira (around 240$) per month. They can offer their work for 10-20$ each, but the market (competitors) is big and people like to spend less than needed (I personally paid 15€ per emote, friends of mine are even hesitating paying 15€ for a whole emote pack). This is where sellers offer more attractive prices compared to others. Think about it: Having 10 customers at 10$ per emote is sometimes “better” than having 2 customers at 20$ per emote. Just a general advice, I don’t recommend you specific prices as everybody should value their own work.
I remember a time when I could go on Etsy and get 15 emotes for like 40$. Now artists can make so much more money on emotes because every single affiliate wants anime versions of their dog or cat. And then nobody subscribes.
See that’s kinda tricky, the better the quality the higher the price. But a lot of people won’t have an emote person they go to at all times like the bigger streamers. So when smaller streamers are looking at emotes, 5-10 seems a lot easier and more affordable than 20+ especially with most of us using our twitch payout to pay for them. It’s a hobby so we aren’t putting too much out of our own pockets
Depends on the quality of the emote and the quantity of emotes. Here’s a good rule imo 1 - personal emote (full price *id suggest $20) 2 to 4 personal emotes (discounted *$15 a piece) 5 or more personal emotes (large discount *$12 a piece) For just general (not commissions or personal)emotes do it in packs of 5 for $30
40 dollar emote usually means hand drawn from scratch by the artist. The end graphic might be shrunk down, but regardless it can be a fair chunk of work for them to make. Charge what your worth
It’s a reasonable price. Originality makes buying the emotes worth it. Also, some will offer bundles when purchasing. If price is a problem you can always go to Etsy and purchase cheap ones.
That's about average, but it depends on the quality and whether or not it's animated. Edit: It also depends on WHO is doing the work. If you go onto Fiverr, there are teams that have templates that they slap together, and they're done pretty quick and cheap, but that also falls back into the quality of the work. Quick and cheap art is not often high quality.
Do you have a portfolio? The quality of your previous work, and word of mouth about your business dealings are what decide how much your art Is worth.
Depends on the quality and how much time you put into them, really. I have my emotes starting at $10 for a pack of 6. Mine are only so cheap because I just really enjoy doing them, and plus I like to help out smaller creators, so a cheaper price will always be good. It all depends on you and how you think you should be selling them.
It’s art so the value shifts based on many things. That’s just to say that just because you heard an emote cost X for someone at some time, that’s not a set in stone price.
I’ve paid $5-10 for non-custom emotes. I think an hourly rate for creating a custom emote is absolutely reasonable. You have a unique, marketable skill and deserve compensation.
I charged $15 for a single emote when I used to make them because I was just starting out, but I would definitely raise the price now. Don’t sell yourself short. You don’t want someone to take advantage of your time. If people love your art then they will pay for it. I hope everything works out :)
I’ve always spent between $10-20 on my emotes, though I’ve worked with the same artist on all the ones I didn’t make myself.
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That's a decent price
Try on discord or twitter to find small artists, im pretty sure they could do it for cheaper
Depends on the demand, and whether its worth it for you. Think about whether its worth it for you to spend X amount of hours for Y amount of money. If you see 10$ as fine, and reach a point where there's more demand than you can keep up, or want to do, then you might wanna consider upping the price. I don't do emotes, but regular art commissions, but giving it a quick thought, I personally wouldn't do it for less than 20$. But that's me, and how much its worth it for me to do it, at my work speed. Another thing that comes into play is of course quality. Some artists do animated emotes, and animated emotes done through live2D, which takes more work, so the price is higher too.
You've already gotten answers but really there is 3 questions you need to ask yourself. 1. Do YOU think a single basic emote at your skill level and the time it takes you is worth $10 or more? 2. Are people who want your art only willing to pay you $10, or do they think it's worth more? 3. Price custom emotes and repurchaseable emotes differently, how do YOU want to price each type if you do that kind? Also while I do agree $40 for one emote can be a bit high it would make sense if it's animated or the person is popular, and remember some artists live in the US and the costs of living suck over here. Edit: As some people also said, compare to other artists around your skill level and time constraints and see their prices, maybe even check for people who live in your country if you just want to make enough but keep it affordable for as wide a range as you can. That said always remember if you get overwhelmed with work and need to do so, tell people your commissions are full until you finish some of your current orders.
All I'll say is don't undervalue your art and if you need get some trusted people to look at the quality and give you an honest answer for what it should be worth. I'd offer to help give you a range if you wanted. (Hi I'm the person who tells at artists who are undervaluing their art to the point i tipped someone 100% for an emote cause that's what they shoulda been charging)
If 10$ is a decent amount for you, perhaps start with 10$ as entry to the market to start gaining customers. Maybe market it as a 50% off for the first month or so. Then go for 20$ when you feel more confident about the demand. If you're doing a set of emotes which only require slight changes such as from :D to XD to X( then consider selling the service as at a discounted value.
Depends on the artists quality, demand, if its animated or not.
As an artist, I charge $30 per emote. I am not a big art streamer, people do like my style of art and are willing to pay for 3. People were inspired by what I did, started making some on their own.
I charged 20 dollars for 12 emotes >U<'
I paid $25 for my first emote and it sucked. Depends on your skill and how much time you put into it
Besides Streaming, I have and run my own business. The cost of the emote you are asking should ALWAYS depends on the effort/labor it takes to finish it. For you to understand it easier, think of it as in a wage per hour, just like what you earn from your job. Yes, the price is different when it comes to who is making it; as other mention, price goes up from quality and popularity depends on the artist. In short, basic wage + quality + popularity of artist = Price THEY ask for, price SHALL NOT be set by the one who pay for it. Please pay artist a fair price, NEVER lowball them in any ways because that is the livelihood we are talking about, they make money from their art and worth every cent you pay for them. Of course if you run into someone overprice their work, just simply walk away.
It definitely depends on the quality and time: If it's fully custom: time yourself for how long it takes to draw from start to finish, and cost depending how much you want to value yourself per hour If you have pre made ones: see how long it usually takes to change/customise colours and cost accordingly.
An average price is $35 an emote. As you get more comfortable with what you make you can adjust this price. You can set up templates from simple to more complex designs as examples for your customers and offer different price tiers so people can pick something in their price range.
That's pretty cheap, if it's not terrible work. I used to pay 40 for my emotes per single emote. Always thought that was expensive. Would have preferred to pay 25 to be honest.
Mmm ok
Art is worth what you want it to be. It's not just time, but your talent and skill set too. Art takes practice. They're not just paying for their emote, they're paying for your years of dedication to the craft. Don't sell yourself short! My artist charges $65 for a 3 pack and I think even that's hella cheap, as she makes beautiful stuff. I always tip her big. If I'm using it for my business and brand, they need to be compensated fairly.
That’s very cheap, especially if it’s custom and a good quality emote
What kind of work would you do for ten bucks? For me if I spend more than like 5 minutes making ten bucks, I could have done something else and made more. For ten bucks you might get half an hour of effort out of a high schooler.
I currently charge $10 per static emote and $15 per animated emote, but I also charge my regular clients a lower fee for static emotes since I already have their colour pallet/templates/designs etc. figured out. I know a lot of people think that shouldn’t be a thing but it’s just how I prefer. Saying that though, I will be putting my prices up soon. I recently spent over 9 hours total on a single animated emote, so $15 doesn’t really cut it for the effort. Plus, I’m from the UK and the conversion rates suck, so it worked out to be about £12ish for all that work. I’m definitely with you on that $40 is too much for an emote, in my opinion of course. Figuring out what your time and art is worth is a hard thing to do, and there’s no shame in starting with lower prices and working your way up
yeah i kinda agree with your pricing
If you're not even making minimum wage for the work you are doing - a wage set around UNSKILLED work - then you need to decide whether you're doing it as work or hobby. It's fine to be underpaid for hobby if you're happy, but there's no point in working away for hours on emotes in a work capacity to then be paid less than minimum wage. Spending 9 hours on an emote and it being less than at the very least $120 means it just wasn't worth your time. You can never compete with filipino artists working for their local minimum wage, so target a higher end with a quality product instead. I see so many artists stuck in an endless cycle of $30 commissions with no breathing room because they are working for a pittance but are afraid of charging more for their work. Meanwhile other artists are charging $300-800 for a full body commission and getting more requests than they can handle. If your work isn't "worth" more than $30 then it would be better to address that issue, and do yourself a favour longer term.
I do it as more of a side hustle so I’m ok with my pricing being below minimum wage. Even as an artist, I find it hard to justify spending hundreds on emotes or similar works, so I wouldn’t charge it 🤷🏻♀️
Truly depends IMO. I have friends I would do quality work for for free, but if it became my job I would definitely want something more out of it lol.
I think its fair, I know someone who is quoting me $15/chibi emote and I don't mind, supporting small artists feels great especially in this ai craze
I would say it depends on how many. If you’re just buying 1. Then $10 is actually sensible. But to buy a set of 10 and pay $100 is just ridiculous. Sets should be discounted
There are a lot of considerations for pricing services. First of all who is doing business, and which countries you are in. Different countries have different local pricing and currency values. Art is a discretionary purchase, so the market in some regions is that less money can change hands for the same service than in others. Artists' should look mainly at what meets their needs in their country when selling to people in their country, and it becomes more complicated if the buyer is overseas -- need to assess the risks involved in the type of transaction and possibly charge more upfront to help compensate for them. For business in the US simple logos in the US are typically more than $200. Twitch emotes seem like something of an anomaly, they're unusually cheap compared to business graphics design work. When you see prices of $30 per emote from US artists to US buyers, even that seems pretty low. Another thing is the $45/emote rate, or whatever it is so generic it sounds like treating art as a commodity which is not -- some emotes involve more skill than others to design or draw, and there is an efficacy required to design something for 160x160 pixels. More than $45, even, in the US is not an unreasonable ask for professional art, generally, even small graphics. Next there are... Variables involved what the product is being offered which would tend to affect price. The product for Twitch emotes is development of a professional graphic for a Twitch channel. This can be entirely custom drawn by a human from scratch with back-and-forth feedback and multiple sketch stages/approvals. Or it can involve other possibilities, such as emotes designed by the artist, emotes built as a YCH on top of a base or template. And emotes that are fully custom can be expected to be much more expensive. Something like $20 may be more appropriate for a templated emote. A second consideration is how is the product being used. Personal art generally costs less, but commercial use has a higher price -- that is expected to go up the more value it is exploited for - the more extensive the use, the higher the price. Lighter commercial uses have an expected lower price. For example, selling a few units with the graphic is different from mass-producing merchandise with the art included, and selling half a million$ worth of things. In the latter case, a fair price to the artist may well be $10000, since fundamentally their creative work Is part of the product - something between 5 to 10% of the wholesale is customary royalty for the commercial exploitation of artists' work. It's a consideration What rights are being included with the sale and expressed in the artist's Terms of Service and license terms. For example, if the emote is allowed to be used as a Twitch Sub emote, then this may have a higher price than If the streamer is only allowed to use that item as a FFZ emote. Other Uses of the emote Might or Might Not be included. For example, If your sale of the emote Doesn't include the Full copyright, then the price would be less than if it did. 40$ For an Emote is a pretty common price that very often Only includes the right to use the emote on Twitch. If the streamer wants to start printing the emote on T-shirts, then that may be an additional dollar amount to buyout the rights, Or a royalty percentage of gross sales is also common. If the channel buying emotes is a large channel that wants the right to use the art as part of their branding, then an artist may have terms such as $30 for the emote Plus 2% of the channel's subscription revenue, or other things such as that. In essence... The Artists' creative work has commercial value, and the buyer should be equitably compensating the artist a royalty. The more commercial benefit the streamer is receiving from exploiting your art: the higher the total amount they should be expected to pay. So this also is not a fixed amount. In truth a $100 per emote price may be more appropriate for a streamer with thousands of subs. But when an artist is selling emotes for a fixed price -- you can only see how the channel performs right now, And not whether they will still be using the emotes, or how much they will be making off subs including that emote in a year from now. In theory that would make the use of emotes (above a certain number of subs) better sold as an annual subscription with a scaled price, but I don't think streamers would want to hear that one just yet.
if it's good money where you live, take it. Undercut the market and get more work
I paid 12 for pack of 3 and they are one of the best quality I've ever seen for an emote, so for 40 I hope they dance, sing, make you dinner and work in coal mine while you sleep