Study Task 8 - Commissions / Freelance

After the seminar on commissions I thought about my day rate. Since I usually charge £10 an hour, I think that £80 a day sounds sensible, since a working day is around 8 hours.  I think this is fairly reasonable as I am definitely skilled enough to be earning a little more than minimum wage, but I don't want to charge too much until my skills get to the point where I am comfortable charging that much. I think once I graduate this will change, as I'll need to pay for my rent and food (whereas I am living on student finance right now). Through research, it seems like a junior creative should be earning 25,000 a year, which is roughly £13 an hour. However, I also need to consider that I'm not going to be working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week consistently, unless I find a proper studio job right away. I think it's more realistic to pick up a second job in order to pay bills while still developing as an artist, and growing my skillset.

I used a Microsoft template for the invoice as it was the easiest way to get the template, and then just adjusted each part for my own need - putting in my own address and day rate, as well as an example of a commission.

I found the contract really difficult to write up. The examples I found online are ridden with legal jargon, so I tried to write one up that still sounded very authoritative, but still understandable to someone who isn't familiar with legal-talk. I'm sure I've missed an important point or two, so I will have to run the contract by a few people to check it looks ok. It's quite difficult to cover all bases, but I know it's really important, so definitely worth taking some time over to make sure it's perfect.