I've been away from this site for several years really, and I was having a look through the art market to see if there was anyone I wanted to commission and I was astounded by the massive difference in a) the price of art compared to before, and b) the number of users effectively paying lip service to the on site currency rule and pretty much using subeta as a business to make money.

I understand that subeta plays host to a huge number of artists and it would be foolhardy to disallow USD commissions as a lot of users would likely go, but I can't understand the price increase. I believe I used to pay around 65m sP for fairly detailed art, maybe a full overlay? And currently some artists are charging that for 'partial' overlays/edits, which seems outrageous.

I hate to say 'back in my day', but I remember the conversion rate of CSC going UP to 8.5m and thinking it was high. What has happened that 500CSC is now worth 60m sP? Honestly, I am shocked.

Eh... to be honest, I think it's a good thing if the price of art has gone up, or if artists can make a little money off of their art. (This is my personal opinion here, by the way, so please don't take offense!) Good art takes time and effort and I'm glad to see it being valued more. Remember that, for example, 500 CSC is equivalent to $5.00 (or less, considering that you often get bonus CSC when you buy, like on bonus weekend etc) and a detailed art piece probably takes more than an hour to complete. $5.00/hour is already below minimum wage - so my opinion is that it's not unreasonable to charge $10.00 or more for a quality art piece.

Art is a luxury, not a necessity. For this reason, artists have the right to price their art no matter how "high/expensive" it might be for other people. I'm glad that people aren't undercharging as much as they used to (though there are still a lot of people who do it, just that it's not MOST of the userbase anymore.)

I returned from a 2 year hiatus to find the sP:100 CSC rate jump from 4 million to 10 million (right now it seems to be at 12 million,) a natural consequence of increased demand for items purchaseable with CSC (e.g. Custom Clothing, which are what caused the huge spike around 2011-2012. I don't know what accounted for the increase between 2014-2016.)

I don't think it's a bad thing to open commissions primarily for USD, with just a single sP/CSC slot - I mean, wasn't that also common practice back five years ago? People need to study/pay rent/eat, and people should be compensated fairly (I.e. earning more than minimum wage) for their art.

Honestly, I've looked at the art prices now and they seem a lot more reasonable, considering what they used to be. Some of them for sure could even be bumped up higher. I was one of the artists who did do commissions way back when the prices were much lower and I'm glad they've been going for more now.

Oh gosh, thank you! I'm glad you enjoy it. It was a nice lil thing to do after coming back from a long hiatus.

Artists usually price their work based on how long it takes them to finish it.So if someone draws a piece that takes them 3 hours to finish then the price would be $30 dollars.A lot of artists make a living off of selling their artwork so it would be pretty ridiculous if they chose to severely underprice or gave their art away for free all the time.

Every year, black friday happens, and so the sP price for csc cards shoots way up and almost never even remotely comes back down. I do remember when 100 csc was valued at like 3mil sP or something like that, but I also know that it keeps increasing due to black friday. So people asking for the now normal "inflated" sP prices for their art isn't that surprising to me. There's also the fact that sP is worthless and ridiculously easy to obtain, which is why prices stay so high. If you look at the about subeta page it says There is a total of 2,736,636,281,549 sP on site.

I also think that people should get out of the habit of undervaluing their art. Because it's not something that only affects that artist, but other artists as well. If there are other artists that are charging proper rates for the kind of work they do, and someone else comes in only charging a dollar... well the customers are going to say "why should I pay this much for yours when this other person is only charging a dollar?" Then that artist is basically working for peanuts and forcing others to either have no business or also work for peanuts. That's my opinion.

I've seen a lot of people price their art that way.I know it doesn't work for everyone but a lot of people do it.

Yeah it is more common outside of Subeta, I wouldn't expect many people here to want to pay $70 for art.I've seen people on here use this pricing method for chibis, thigh up artwork and any kind of cel shaded artwork.

Because 65M back then isn't worth the same as 65M now.

Value of SP pretty much dropped in half, so 65M in 2013 would be closer to 130M, and 65M in 2010 would be around 190M

Sopheroo makes a valid point in that the price of sp is nowhere near as valuable as it once was, but also, in general subeta art when you consider real life pricing for art is actually kind of underpriced.

My art professors in undergrad charged around 40-50 and up minimum per hour and then, added a supplemental fee for the necessary supplies. So, 25 for a full art piece assuming it's 2-5 hours for a standard digital art piece or more for a large one is actually kind of underpriced.

I'd also argue that the market has changed as well. There's more artists who are using the USD commissions on site as supplemental or main real life art income and that's to live; it's not a hobby. They're using art commissions as their real life living income, so even if one factors in that digital art doesn't require extraneous supplies outside of a computer and possibly a tablet, someone who commissions an artist is still commissioning them for the number of hours it took to finish the piece.