Howdy Folks! I'm Eolis or Leems & I worked at ABU from 2016-2024, designing their visual identity & product catalogue as the lead member of the art & design team. I now produce a wide range of products & run this site, Little Lemur Stickers, as well as doing consultation work for multiple diaper companies around the world, large & small.
As a business buying artwork & as an artist working in a professional setting for over 9 years now, one thing I often notice is artists selling to companies undercharge for their work. There are many reasons for this, but the primary one I see repeated is that there is a general lack of understanding about what you are selling in terms of rights to your work & how to price the sale of those rights. With this post I want to lift the veil a bit & empower artists with the information needed to appropriately charge for artwork that is commissioned by a business for commercial sale.
Commercial Vs. Commission
Most furry artists are used to the grind of commissions, setting our prices & selling work to friendly folks online enamoured with our art. Most artists know a good range of price for their work & update it over time as they improve or gain popularity. Art is a luxury product & you should most certainly charge as much as you can for it, while remaining within a range that is appropriate for your deliverables.
Commission work of this nature leaves all the rights of your produced art in your hands, it does not matter that someone paid to have it made or that it is their character you are drawing; you made the art, the rights are yours until you sell them. The rights I am referring to are, specifically, your trademark over the artwork & the commercial sale of that work. When you make "an art" for personal use that means the person may do many things with that art, as long as it does not generate profit for them. They can print it as a poster for their room, add it to a telegram sticker pack, print stickers to give away, etc. What they cannot do is print stickers to then sell for profit using the artwork you made, that is where commercial rights come in.
Exclusive Commercial vs. Commercial vs. Royalties
There are varying levels of commercial rights, & royalties are a version of a commercial agreement. Often a company will want to purchase "commercial rights" to an art piece, as these rights are required for them to sell the art on a product for a profit without the artist suing them. Companies will often lean away from royalties as they are a bit complicated to work out and generate reports on, & also because it can lead to paying artists indefinitely. The royalties vs. commercial payout debate isn't always about corporate greed, sometimes an item is simply not expected to earn very much & the royalties would be around $4 a year & noone wants to bother with that.
I offer royalties to artists on Little Lemur & it is a task each month generating payouts, which is why I also offer the option for a buyout of commercial rights. Companies will offer one or the other, more frequently a purchase of commercial rights. I opt to leave the choice in artists hands, as my business is often a gateway to the commercial sale of their work & I want to instill an understanding of what is being sold & let the artist choose. If a royalties agreement is offered, you don't charge a fee for commercial rights; as that fee is in lieu of being paid royalties. A payment for commercial rights should be calculated based on the potential sales profit you could get from royalties if you went that direction.
Next is the expensive word, "Exclusive". For logos & product brands (like a new diaper brand) a business will want to purchase "Exclusive Commercial Rights". This severely restricts what the artist can do with the work, but is in place for a reason. Companies want to protect their assets from competitors & logos must be purchased with exclusive rights if a company wishes to trademark the brand-name using the graphics purchased.
If I wanted you to make a sticker design for Little Lemur & I purchased commercial rights, it means I could put that artwork on mugs or sell as stickers, put on a t-shirt, use in an advertisement, etc. & profit off those goods. It also means that you can do the same, you are not restricted in making money off the work; you have simply sold the right for me to also profit off of it. Basic commercial rights is like selling a company a ticket to use your work in products and marketing, you are still the holder of the roll of tickets & may still use your work as desired in your own shops, ads, etc. I often encourage folks to use sticker designs I purchase in their shops, sticker clubs and anywhere they wish. It is a kindness to confirm with the commissioning company that is it acceptable to do this, and doing so will help maintain a healthy relationship; but you in no way NEED to.
If you sell "Exclusive Commercial Rights", you have sold a ticket & burnt the ticket roll. You can no longer make money off the work, as the company exclusively owns that right. This is why one must be careful with that specific word in contracts & agreements, and you charge a much higher fee for exclusive rights, since you are selling all of the profit potential of your work. You can still say you made it & put it in your art portfolio, but you cannot use it in any commercial sense.
How To Calculate Your Rates
As mentioned earlier, most artists have a good understanding of what to charge for their work; using this as a base-point will determine what you charge for a commercial sale. My formulae is something that will get you within a range for a project, and you need to determine the profit potential of that project & your works contribution in order to adjust the rate into a reasonable range.
For example: If you are making a diaper brand for a company, that is often the diaper design, a logo for the brand & product packaging. This is also the kind of product that I would mark as having the highest profit potential; there is no diaper brand without your design, so your work is 100% of the artistic portion of the product. Now let's look at a comparison like a card piece for Little Troubles. Your work is still a valuable art piece, however it is maybe 1/130th of a card series, it is not in itself the entire artistic contribution to the product & the potential royalties earnings on this is much lower. Also Little Troubles does not want exclusive rights to the work; they just want to use it, so the payment calculation is lower again.
Alright, lets math: In general, take the base price of your commission (lets call it a $100 sticker design) and for the sale of commercial rights add on 0.5-2x the base value atop your commission for the sale of those rights (the 0.5x would be a Little Troubles type of example, the 2x would be the Diaper example, adjust the rate based on % of the project made up by your work & the earning potential of the item). Now the sticker design with commercial rights becomes $150-$300. If Exclusive commercial rights are wanted, I usually double that previous amount; as the original fee for artwork with commercial rights was determined based on the royalties potential, and "Exclusive" is taking out your potential to earn money with the work. It doubles the cost, for removing the remaining half of the earning potential you previously held; making the sticker design, with Exclusive Commercial Rights, about $300-$600.
So How Do I Price A Diaper Design?
ABDL Diapers are a wildly profitable item, and their designs become beloved nostalgic additions to many folks collections over the years, as such their selling potential remains quite constant. Also the model for selling ABDL diapers is something I often describe as a legal drug trade: People want them, they will buy them, use them, and; if they were satisfied with the quality, they will get more.
On launch week of a new brand, especially for a developed diaper company, revenue on sales are easily 20k-50k & a sizeable portion of that is profits. That's on week 1; so they can most certainly afford to pay quite a bit for a design that can be sold in perpetuity. The margins are often 350-400% above landed cost; now, you have to pay for shipping, storage, staff, and the list goes on & on, slowly cutting into that number. Regardless, ABDL Diapers have excellent earning potential & margins while being almost guaranteed to sell out. This is why when calculating commercial rates for a diaper product I use the full 2x multiplier on base cost, then double it for exclusive rights.
Diapers are also a project unlike any you are likely to have done before. It takes between 3-6 months if it's your primary focus & you must be careful to put limits on revisions and charge if those limits are exceeded. You also need to be confident in process' you likely have not done before, Pantone Matching, colour limited design, vector deliverables. For each of these things you cannot do, someone else must be paid to do it and that will cut into your earnings. Often a diapers concept is figured out in a few weeks to a month, and then edits, revisions, alternate layouts, etc. slowly combine into a massive project with 90% of the work not seeing the light of day; but the final result is a perfected & beautiful product to bring to market. Think of how much money you need to live for an average project duration of 4 months, it should be between $10,000-$20,000 USD, as that is a pretty basic salary for a product designer & you are not on staff, contractors charge more than employees as they receive none of the benefits of employment.
When making a proposal you should offer a range of deliverables. This way a company can decide if they want less expensive work of lower quality, or more expensive work of higher quality. The complexity of what is being made will change the price dramatically and there are many different levels of complexity in diaper design. There are multi-panel diapers with up to 5 different panels, multi-panel with a backsheet where you have a repeating backsheet design to make atop the panels, a repeating backsheet design or single panel design, or the new & quite complex positional printed designs, which have a lot of formatting considerations. Then there are variations in the complexity of your work: flat colour, fully rendered, cell shaded, etc. Finally, don't forget that is just the diaper. There is still packaging & logo design along with cute little features like a custom barcode, changing graphics, etc. Don't underestimate the scale & undercharge because the number was thought to be too big, this is a big numbers project.
Let me price something mid-range in complexity based off what I might consider as my rate. Recall I can do all stages of design, pantone work, vector separated & plated deliverables; as such I get the whole project paid to me.
A company wants a 4-panel design with a bag-wrap (instead of a sticker) for packaging & a logo. The panels each have 1 main character on them, a set of objects (5-6) and a basic patterned background (dots or stars or something). For the character work I'll do $200 each, the objects $100 & the simple BG $50. So we have $350 base price for 1 panel. There are 4 panels, so that's $1,400. Basic commercial is double that base price added atop, so $4,200. Now they want exclusive, so double that and we are at $8,400 USD just for the panels. That also presumes a limit set on revisions (say 5), if they are indecisive and require lots of extra work the revisions make it cost more.
The bag wrap is often a full artwork made to wrap around a bag seamlessly, done in vector; they have lots of info spaces needed and formatting work. It is much like designing the diaper again in a way that represents the entire brand in a cohesive image; they are a lot of work. $2000 - $5,000 for a bag wrap with exclusive commercial rights; bag wraps vary with complexity & a simple one can be made inexpensively if required. For the logo, depending on complexity, maybe $500-$2000 (Lower end is just a basic font with minimal edits, higher end is something like the AlphaGatorZ logo with custom font work and a lot of creative elements worked in). Again, revision limit everything & ensure you charge an appropriate rate if more revisions than offered are needed.
For a delivered 4-panel product (with 1 character per panel & other assets), full complex bag-wrap, & Logo; ie: a completed diaper brand, my initial estimate is about $14,900 USD. That number is appropriate for the labour & the deliverables given with exclusive commercial rights.
Considerations Beyond Financial Compensation
I would be remiss not to mention the leverage companies use & offer in order to lower the cost of these projects. You will have to determine their value to you, but do not let adequate compensation be replaced by benefits. Again, I will be referencing Little Troubles as they present very generous models that favour artists. I would consider them the best case scenario for dipping toes into commercial work for community creatives with multiple artistic pursuits.
Not only do they pay above industry standard for their card art, they also freely offer benefits to you for joining their team of artists. You can utilize their sources for the production of onesies, custom card sleeves; playmats & basically anything they produce. You get a lifetime discount on any Little Troubles product & their documentation goes on with many more benefits. Also their commercial licensing terms are very generous, allowing you to keep the rights to your work & being able to profit off it; they even provide artist proofs of your cards so you can auction them off as rare versions, all for personal profit. These are substantial benefits that are worth consideration when negotiating.
It is perfectly acceptable to weigh offered benefits and lower your price, as this is part of negotiating. Be wary of companies leveraging "exposure" to lower your price, as that is an ethereal benefit; seek tangible benefits in exchange for monetary discounts. Make sure to weigh the value of each benefit offered, if you charge too little for a big project you will be left feeling a bit used. The optimal goal in the end is to find a price-range the company seeking your work finds acceptable, while also leaving you satisfied that you were compensated adequately for your work.