How to Price a YCH (Your Character Here) Commission

Price a YCH slot from the finishing hours it still costs you after the pre-drawn base: multiply those hours by your hourly rate, which puts a fixed-price slot at roughly 50-80% of your full custom rate for the same piece. An auction opens lower, at those same hours multiplied by the lowest hourly rate you would genuinely accept.

The sections below turn that rule into a formula, a worked example at an $80 flat rate, a line-item add-on table, and the platform rules that constrain a starting bid. FanBell's own mechanics for taking the payment are set out on how FanBell works and Creator Services.

What is a YCH commission and how does pricing work?

A YCH — "your character here" — is a pre-drawn pose an artist sells as a template and finishes once a buyer claims it with their own character. Because the composition, pose, and often the linework are already decided, a YCH slot prices below a fully custom piece of the same size: the buyer pays for the finishing hours only.

YCH.Commishes, the auction platform built specifically for this format, defines a YCH as "a special type of commission where the person who offers it (the artist) provides an unfinished sketch of the final artwork" and states that the buyer "can just provide the artist with a character reference" instead of defining a pose (YCH.Commishes, "What is a YCH or 'Your character here' commission?", archived 2 August 2026). That platform definition is the pricing logic in one sentence: the artist has already absorbed the pose, composition, and layout cost once, and no buyer repeats it.

The share of the piece already complete before anyone claims a slot is the share the buyer should not pay for. Every figure below is built on that single rule.

How do you calculate a YCH price step by step?

Calculate a YCH price in four steps: divide your flat rate by the hours a full custom piece takes to get your implied hourly rate, estimate the finishing hours a claimed slot still needs after the pre-drawn base, multiply those hours by that rate, then add stated fees for extra complexity, extra revisions, or commercial use.

The formula:

Fixed-price slot = (hours remaining after the base) × (your hourly rate) + stated add-ons

Worked example, using an $80 flat rate for a single-character, colored, one-pose illustration that takes you 4.0 hours end to end, including one revision round:

The 20%, 35%, and 50% completion figures in that table are illustrative inputs chosen to demonstrate the arithmetic. No primary source publishes a canonical completion percentage for a sketch, lined, or lined-and-flats YCH base, so time your own base once and substitute your own number. What the calculation does produce is a defensible floor: an $80 flat rate yields a $40-$64 fixed-price slot across those three example base stages, which is why "$40-$64" is a plausible band for an $80 artist and a meaningless one for anybody else.

Step 3 needs one extra input, and that input is a decision rather than a lookup. Set your minimum acceptable hourly rate at the level below which you would rather decline the commission entirely, and express it as a fixed fraction of your target rate so it moves whenever your target moves. The worked example uses 60% of the $20.00 target rate, which is where the $12.00 comes from; an artist who would never work below three-quarters of target would put $15.00 in step 3 and open the auction at $30 instead of $24.

The YCH platform that hosts this format publishes a concrete test for finding that number. Wiki.Commishes, the official documentation for YCH.Commishes, instructs sellers to "pick your preferred starting bid (for example, $30) and discount $5," then ask "Would I still sell this for $25?" and repeat the $5 decrement "until you reach a price when you're no longer comfortable" (Wiki.Commishes, "Auction guidelines," archived 1 April 2026). Running that $5-step exercise once on a $30 starting bid gives you the floor number the formula in step 3 needs, in your own currency rather than someone else's.

Should you sell a YCH as a fixed price or an auction?

Sell a YCH at a fixed price when you want predictable income and a simple checkout; run it as an auction when you expect enough competing interest that bidding will land above your floor. Fixed price is lower-risk and faster to fulfill; auctions can outperform your rate card, but only when demand is real rather than assumed.

The auction platform for this format states plainly that the opening number does not cap the closing number: Wiki.Commishes tells sellers "an auction will always adjust it's price automatically" and that "if your art is worth $40 it will receive a $40 bid regardless of the starting bid being $1 or $30". Peer-reviewed auction research points the same direction: Ku, Galinsky and Murnighan analyzed 179 Tabriz Persian rug auctions and 87 Nikon digital camera auctions on eBay and found that for both products a lower starting price produced a higher final price, because low openings attracted more bids and more unique bidders (Ku, Galinsky & Murnighan, "Starting Low but Ending High: A Reversal of the Anchoring Effect in Auctions," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90(6): 975-986, 2006).

Auction volume is capped by platform rule and by audience patience, both with published numbers. Wiki.Commishes sets a hard ceiling of 20 auctions running at one time per user, warns that "having over about 5 auctions at the same time will degrade your score for each auction," and states that flooding the site with "50+ auctions" is grounds for suspension (Wiki.Commishes, "General rules," archived 14 January 2026). Separately, Wiki.Commishes recommends that a seller "host no more than 1 or 2 auctions a month," because posting more than that "exhausts" the audience whose bidding an auction depends on.

Auction length is a pricing decision too, and the platform's advice runs against instinct. Wiki.Commishes writes that "many rookies think that a 7 day auction is more likely to sell than a 3 day or 1 day auction," and recommends instead that sellers "prefer shorter auctions with lower starting bids that get pushed up rather than auctions that run for a long time waiting for that one bid to come in".

What is a reasonable starting bid or floor price?

An auction's opening bid should equal your floor: the finishing hours a claimed slot still needs, multiplied by the lowest hourly rate you would genuinely accept if the auction never drew a second bid. In the $80 worked example above the floor is 2.0 hours × $12.00 = $24, against a $40 fixed-price equivalent for the identical lined-and-flats slot.

Wiki.Commishes makes that floor a listing condition rather than advice, stating as a basic rule for every auction that "your starting bid has to be the minimum of what you are willing to work for". Wiki.Commishes also instructs a seller who breaks that rule to pull the listing: "If you've set your starting bid lower than the minimum of what you are willing to work for … delete the auction. Feel free to start it anew with the correct starting bid" (Wiki.Commishes, "Reporting," archived 11 March 2026). Setting an opening bid you would resent winning is therefore a platform-rule problem as well as a pricing mistake.

Two different YCH numbers are in play, and conflating them is the most common YCH pricing mistake. The fixed-price slot is your target, computed at your normal hourly rate, and in this article's worked model it lands at 50-80% of the $80 flat rate depending on base stage. The auction opening bid is your floor, computed at your minimum acceptable hourly rate, and it lands lower — 30% of the flat rate in the worked example, where the minimum acceptable rate is $12.00 against a $20.00 target. The gap between target price and floor is entirely a function of the gap between your target rate and your minimum rate, so no percentage from another artist's listing transfers to yours.

Decide the floor before you look at comparable listings, and base it on your own finishing time rather than what a similar YCH sold for elsewhere — detail level, complexity, and your backlog all change the real cost of a slot. If a buyer's character needs meaningfully more detail than the base allows, treat the extra detail as a scope change worth a stated add-on fee, not something absorbed into the base price.

How do you price add-ons, revisions, and commercial use?

Price every add-on the same way as the base slot: estimate the extra hours it costs, multiply by your hourly rate, and publish the number before anyone claims a slot. Commercial-use rights are the exception — commercial rights cost no extra drawing time, so price them as a stated multiple of the slot price instead.

The +25% rush surcharge and the ×2 commercial-use multiplier shown above are illustrative placeholders, not industry standards — no primary source publishes a canonical multiplier for either, so pick your own, publish it in the listing, and apply it consistently. Publishing every add-on price in advance is also a platform rule on auction listings: Wiki.Commishes states that "you can not increase the price of an auction at a later time" and requires the description to carry "ladder options - if you have them" up front. On FanBell, the same information belongs in the listing itself: each Creator Service is defined by "what's included, the price, the turnaround, and how many revisions (if any) come with it".

How do you handle payment for an auction-format YCH?

Collect payment only from the winning bidder, and collect it before you start finishing the slot — never begin work on a promise to pay. For a fixed-price or first-come slot, payment at claim time is standard; for an auction, payment happens once bidding closes and a winner is confirmed.

One payment method is banned outright on the main YCH platform: Wiki.Commishes states that "asking for transfer fees or payment via family and friends is not allowed" as a basic rule for every auction, because friends-and-family transfers strip the buyer of payment protection. Card processing is a normal cost of the sale instead, and it has a published number: Stripe's pricing page lists "2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction" for widely used credit and debit cards, plus 1.5% for international cards and 1% for currency conversion (Stripe, "Pricing," archived 3 September 2026). On a $40 YCH slot, Stripe's published 2.9% + 30¢ card rate works out to $1.46 in processing, an arithmetic conversion performed here rather than a figure Stripe publishes.

On FanBell, a fan pays the full price upfront, "checking out as a guest by card, with no account to create and no app to install," and the request lands in the creator's inbox as a private thread. FanBell charges a 12% platform fee per paid transaction with $0/month to start, and states that payment-processing fees "are deducted separately from creator earnings" (FanBell, Pricing) — so a $40 slot carries a $4.80 FanBell fee alongside the Stripe cost, again an arithmetic conversion from the published 12% rather than a published figure. A fixed-price or first-come YCH slot maps onto a FanBell Creator Service directly: list the base art, price, turnaround, and revision count, and a fan pays before finishing begins. Live bid tracking and announcing a winner still happen wherever your audience already is, with FanBell used to collect the winning payment and the character reference once a winner is set.

What should a YCH listing include besides price?

A YCH listing should tell the buyer what's already decided (pose, medium, background) and what's still theirs to customize (character design, colors, minor tweaks), plus turnaround, revision count, and limits on how much can change. Buyers who don't know the boundaries will ask for edits that turn a finishing job back into a full custom commission.

At minimum, state:

• Base status: sketch, lined, or lined-and-flat — the base status determines both the price the formula produces and how much you can still adjust.
• Customization limits: what parts of the pose, outfit, or background can change vs. what's locked.
• Slot count: one buyer, or several sharing the same base with palette swaps.
• Attribution, if you didn't draw the base: Wiki.Commishes requires a seller using someone else's base to "disclose your auction / offering is a base," to "include a link to the original artist's page," and to "include a link to the terms of the artist you sourced the base from," on pain of the auction being cancelled and the account suspended.
• Turnaround: a delivery time you set per listing — on FanBell you "set a price and delivery time, and decide how many revisions (if any) are included" when you create a service.
• Revisions: how many rounds are included, and the stated fee for each additional one.
• Delivery format: FanBell Creator Services deliver "a written note plus up to 5 files (video, audio, images, PDF, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint)" with video and audio up to 20 minutes, and/or a private link for anything larger.
• Payment timing: due at claim (fixed price) or immediately after an auction closes.

Every dollar figure on this page is a worked example from an $80 flat rate, not a guarantee — your own hours, hourly rate, audience, and queue length change the output.

How is a YCH different from an adoptable character or a full custom commission?

A YCH sells a slot in a pose you've already drawn; an adoptable sells full ownership of an already-designed original character; a full custom commission designs something new from the buyer's brief. All three move through a similar "claim, pay, receive" flow, but the labor differs, so the hours-based formula produces a different price for each.

Wiki.Commishes draws the same line in its published auction-type definitions, describing a YCH as "a fixed pose where the figurine is altered to look like your OC/character of choice," a commission slot as "a custom commission offered by the artist," and an adoptable as "a ready to use designed character". YCH.Commishes adds the buyer-side distinction: "If you're bidding for a YCH you need to provide the character for the finished piece. In a character auction you are bidding for the character itself" (YCH.Commishes).

Adoptable character sales vs. custom commissions covers ownership and pricing differences between adopts and bespoke commissions. If a buyer wants a fully original design rather than a slot in your existing pose, how much to charge for a character design commission has separate pricing anchors. A buyer's character appearing as a one-off guest in someone else's comic is a different job again, priced by placing a fan's character into an existing comic panel rather than by the hours-remaining formula above.

What else can round out a YCH-selling page?

A YCH slot doesn't have to be the only priced option on your page. Pairing one pre-drawn slot with smaller, low-friction offers gives buyers who don't want a slot — or who lost the auction — another way to pay you. FanBell lets a creator switch on paid private questions, personalized shoutouts, creator services, tips, and support toward a project or wishlist, each "with your own price and turnaround".

• Paid Private Questions: a fan pays a small fixed price to ask something specific — "will you take character X in pose Y?" — answered privately by text.
• Tips: support without buying a slot at all, no delivery required.
• Wishlist / Project Support: cash toward a defined goal, like new brushes or a display tablet, shown with a funding progress bar rather than a per-item sale.
• Personalized Shoutouts: for a buyer who wants a quick personal video instead of a drawn piece.

Spreading demand across more than one paid option also relieves the pressure that makes artists over-post auctions, which the platform penalizes twice over: Wiki.Commishes caps a user at 20 simultaneous auctions and degrades the visibility score of every auction once a seller runs more than about 5 at a time.

Keeping the YCH listing itself narrowly scoped — one pose, one price structure, one turnaround, one revision count — while offering those smaller options alongside the slot avoids turning a simple slot sale into an open-ended negotiation.

Frequently asked questions

The questions below cover the four points buyers and artists most often get wrong about YCH pricing: how far a YCH slot should sit below a full custom commission, why an auction opening bid is deliberately lower than a fixed price, whether a small audience should auction at all, and how multi-slot bases are handled.

How much lower should a YCH price be than a full custom commission?

In the worked model on this page, a fixed-price YCH slot lands at 50-80% of the equivalent flat-rate custom commission, because the buyer pays only for the finishing hours left after the pre-drawn base. A bare sketch base sits near the top of that band (80% of the flat rate); a lined-and-flats base sits at the bottom (50%). The 50-80% band is an output of the hours × hourly rate formula above, not a published industry benchmark.

Why is the auction starting bid lower than the fixed-price slot?

Because the two prices answer different questions. The fixed-price slot is your target, computed at your normal hourly rate; the auction opening bid is your floor, computed at the lowest hourly rate you would accept. Wiki.Commishes requires that "your starting bid has to be the minimum of what you are willing to work for," and tells sellers to "set a starting bid as low as you can" because the platform's algorithm favors auctions likely to sell. Ku, Galinsky and Murnighan found the same pattern across 179 eBay Persian rug auctions and 87 eBay Nikon camera auctions, where lower starting prices produced higher final prices (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90(6): 975-986).

Should I run a YCH as an auction if I only have a small audience?

An auction works best with more than one interested buyer competing for the slot; with a small or inactive audience, a fixed price is more reliable, because a low-anchored auction with only one bidder closes at the floor rather than above it. Wiki.Commishes recommends hosting "no more than 1 or 2 auctions a month" so that audience "hype" has time to recover between listings.

Can I sell multiple slots of the same YCH base?

Yes, within platform limits. Wiki.Commishes explicitly permits "a clone auction with multible slots" but allows only one such listing at a time per seller, and suggests "setting the starting bid and autobuy to be the same on multi-slot auctions, so that you can repost them the second someone buys them". Price each slot separately at the full finishing-hours rate, since every slot costs the same finishing time, and note that Wiki.Commishes warns "if you resell the same auction to another buyer, interest in your auctions will quickly fade".

Does FanBell run the bidding for an auction-style YCH?

No — FanBell is used to collect a priced Creator Services payment and receive the buyer's character reference, not to run live bid tracking; a fan ordering a service "can attach whatever the work requires — a file, a link, a screenshot, a few lines of context". Bidding itself happens wherever your audience already is (stream chat, post comments, a form), with the winning bid then paid through your FanBell listing.

What does FanBell charge to sell a YCH?

FanBell's published pricing is $0/month with a 12% platform fee per paid transaction, and payment-processing fees are "deducted separately from creator earnings". FanBell also states there is "no follower minimum and nothing to apply for" to start selling. Card processing is separate and published by the processor: Stripe lists "2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction" for widely used credit and debit cards.

Create your free FanBell page