The experience of pricing work appropriately as a digital artist is a skill that develops slowly and I want to document the stages I've gone through.

Stage one: pricing by comparison. I looked at what other artists charged and matched or undercut slightly. This is wrong because you don't know their cost structure, their demand level, or how their work compares to yours for a given client's need.

Stage two: pricing by time. I tracked hours and priced to recover a target hourly rate. This is better but still incomplete because it doesn't account for demand — what someone will pay for the specific output.

Stage three: pricing by value to client. What is this illustration worth to the client? A book cover that sells 50,000 copies generates significantly more revenue than a personal commission for a Discord avatar. The value to the client is a legitimate input to pricing.

I now use a combination: minimum price from cost-plus calculation, informed by what the deliverable is worth to the client, with a premium for rush timeline or difficult subject matter.