How Many Revisions Should an Illustration Commission Include?

FanBell's editorial recommendation is to include one to two revision rounds in the base price and quote everything past that as separate work billed at a stated hourly rate. The major freelance marketplaces publish no default number: Fiverr's Help Center states that the revision count "depends on what's included in your Gig package or agreed-upon order scope". On FanBell, that limit sits inside a Creator Services listing next to price and turnaround.

FanBell is free to start with no monthly fee and applies a 12% platform fee only when a fan pays (pricing).

"Unlimited revisions" reads well in a bio but rarely survives contact with a real client. Someone asks for a slightly different pose, then a different palette, then "one more small thing," and each request feels reasonable on its own. Writing the limit down converts that drift into a visible line — that framing is FanBell editorial guidance based on how commission listings are structured, not a surveyed finding, but the contract convention underneath it is documented: the AIGA Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services bills out-of-scope client changes at the designer's hourly rate. The same limit works for character work, concept pieces, and general fan art alike — see the wider artist and illustrator toolkit FanBell provides for pricing and scoping paid commission work.

How many revisions should an illustration commission include?

FanBell's editorial recommendation is one to two revision rounds inside the base price, with every round past that quoted separately at a stated hourly rate. That number is a starting point for keeping a fixed-price commission profitable, not a measured industry average: no industry-wide figure for illustration revisions is published anywhere FanBell could verify.

Two large freelance marketplaces both leave the revision count to the seller instead of setting a platform default. Fiverr's Help Center instructs sellers building a Gig to "Set the scope, revisions, and extras for each package" (Fiverr Help Center, Creating and managing Gig packages), and 99designs' support site tells clients that "designers typically provide minor revisions for free and will be happy to do more detailed revisions for a reasonable price".

"The number of revisions a client can request depends on what's included in your Gig package or agreed-upon order scope." — Fiverr Help Center, Managing your orders: a freelancer's guide to the Fiverr order process

FanBell works the same way: a creator writing a Creator Service sets a price and delivery time "and decide[s] how many revisions (if any) are included" (Creator Services). Because the revision field is seller-set on Fiverr, 99designs, and FanBell alike, the number a creator picks is a pricing decision rather than an industry rule to comply with.

Scope changes are a documented risk across creative and project work generally, not just illustration. PMI's 2018 Pulse of the Profession found that 52% of projects completed in the preceding 12 months experienced scope creep or uncontrolled changes to scope, up from 43% five years earlier (Project Management Institute). Illustration commissions are far smaller than the projects in that survey, so treat the figure as directional rather than a read on commission work specifically; the mechanism is the same either way.

A concrete version of the same FanBell editorial recommendation, offered as a default rather than a surveyed finding: one revision round included at the sketch stage, none included after color or final lines begin. Tighten or loosen from there once you know what your buyers actually request.

What counts as a revision versus a new request?

A revision adjusts something already inside the agreed brief — pose angle, color balance, an edit within the agreed concept. A new request changes the brief itself: a different character, an added background, a second pose, or a size or format change. Professional design contracts split these into two separately priced categories rather than one.

The AIGA Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services, Fifth Edition, does this in Section 4, "Changes." Section 4.1, General Changes, covers ordinary out-of-scope tweaks and bills them by the hour. Section 4.2, Substantive Changes, applies when a request "amount[s] to a revision in or near excess of ___ percent" of the time required to produce the deliverables, and entitles the designer to "submit a new and separate Proposal to Client for written approval" before any work starts (AIGA).

AIGA's own commentary on that clause supplies the number most contracts leave blank: it advises defining a substantive change as "anything that exceeds a certain percentage of the original schedule or budget (such as 10 percent) or a certain dollar amount (such as $1,000), whichever is greater" (AIGA, Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services, Fifth Edition). An illustration commission can borrow the structure in miniature: in-scope tweak, out-of-scope hourly change, or a re-quote.

FanBell editorial guidance, not a surveyed finding: collapsing in-scope revisions and out-of-scope new requests into a single "revision" unit is the most common way a stated revision limit stops functioning, because every incoming request then arrives pre-labeled as included.

Should a minor tweak cost the same as a redo?

No — a minor tweak (recolor a prop, nudge an expression) and a full redo (new pose, new composition) are different amounts of work and should be counted or priced differently. AIGA's Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services makes the same split, separating hourly "General Changes" in Section 4.1 from "Substantive Changes" in Section 4.2.

One workable split: minor tweaks (color, small detail, text swap) count as a lighter revision or are free within the first round; structural changes (pose, composition, added elements) count as a full revision round or move into a new priced request. Writing the tweak-versus-structural distinction into the listing description removes the guesswork at the moment a client asks for a change.

Every "included" treatment in the table above applies only while the stated revision rounds remain unused. Once the limit is reached, minor tweaks and structural revisions alike move to the hourly rate with a stated minimum described in the next section.

How much should you charge for a revision past the included limit?

Charge extra revisions on a time-and-materials basis at a stated hourly rate with a written minimum, then re-quote the piece once a request gets large. That two-tier rule is how the AIGA Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services, Fifth Edition, handles it: Section 4.1 bills by the hour, Section 4.2 triggers a fresh proposal.

"Unless otherwise provided in the Proposal, and except as otherwise provided for herein, Client shall pay additional charges for changes requested by Client which are outside the scope of the Services on a time and materials basis, at Designer's standard hourly rate of ___ per hour." — AIGA, Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services, Fifth Edition, Section 4.1 General Changes

Three concrete rules fall out of that clause:

1. Publish an hourly rate, not a vague "extra fees may apply." For a floor reference, the median hourly wage for Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators (SOC 27-1013) was $26.68 in the May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data (O*NET OnLine, drawing on BLS OEWS). That is an employee wage, so a freelance rate has to sit above it to absorb self-employment tax, software, and unpaid admin time — treat it as a floor, not a target.
2. Set a per-round minimum so a 20-minute tweak is still worth invoicing. AIGA's guidance is that each out-of-scope change should get its own change order, which the association describes as "essentially a mini-proposal," invoiced separately as the work is completed (AIGA, Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services, Fifth Edition).
3. Re-quote instead of billing hourly once the change crosses 10% of the original time or budget, or $1,000 — whichever is greater. That is AIGA's own suggested substantive-change threshold, and it is the cleanest published number to copy into a commission page.

Worked example, illustrative only and not a FanBell-set price: on a $150 character commission at a self-set $45/hour rate, a second full revision round that takes 90 minutes prices at $67.50 — 45% of the base commission. A second revision round costing 45% of the base commission is the argument for putting that round behind a stated fee rather than inside the base price.

What happens when revisions go past the included limit?

Once a request passes the included revision limit, a creator either prices the extra round and gets written agreement before starting, or declines it and points to what the listing covers. Section 4.2 of the AIGA Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services requires "a fully signed revised Proposal" before work on revised services begins, for exactly this reason.

On FanBell, a Creator Service carries a price and a turnaround window that the fan sees and pays before anything starts, and a creator can decline and refund a request that falls outside what the listing describes (how it works). That makes "this is outside the two included rounds — here's what an extra round costs" a pre-agreed response rather than a mid-project renegotiation.

Where should a revision policy live on a commission page?

A revision policy should live in two places: a short line on the individual commission listing ("includes one revision round") and a fuller explanation in a general commission terms page linked from the bio. The listing sets expectations at the point of payment; the terms page covers edge cases without cluttering every product description.

Digital illustration commission slots and waitlist setup covers structuring the intake side of a queue; a linked commission TOS is the natural home for the fuller revision policy, referenced from each listing rather than rewritten in each one. Keeping the detailed policy in one place also makes it easier to update later without touching every product. Placement matters because the buyer-facing deadline is short: on Fiverr a delivered order auto-completes after 3 days for standard and hourly orders if the client neither requests revisions nor accepts, so a policy a client only finds after delivery is found too late. Upwork's fixed-price contracts run a longer clock: "After you submit, your client has 14 days to approve or request changes" (Upwork Support), which is a reasonable outer bound for how long to leave a revision window open.

Does a revision limit affect turnaround time?

Yes — each revision round adds both drawing time and client reply time, so a revision limit controls total turnaround as much as it controls total work. A listing offering two revision rounds has to fit two review-and-reply cycles inside the promised delivery window, not just the initial drawing time.

The exact ceiling matters on FanBell: a Creator Services or shoutout delivery window is capped at 120 hours — exactly 5 days — which is the longest value the listing accepts, and every included revision round has to fit inside it (Creator Services, how it works). Client-side review deadlines are usually shorter than the delivery window itself: Fiverr gives the client "three days to accept the delivery, request revisions, or request an extension to the review period" — a useful benchmark for how quickly a client is expected to respond once a draft lands. Cutting a policy from three rounds to one is the most direct way to keep turnaround inside a 120-hour window without changing the price — the separate lever for buyers who want a faster window instead of fewer rounds is a rush fee, covered in how to price a rush order.

Do illustration artists need a written revision policy?

No rule FanBell could find requires an illustrator to publish a revision policy specifically, and this page is not legal advice. Consumer law in the UK and EU does require a trader to disclose a service's main characteristics before a consumer is bound, and a written revision limit is the plainest evidence of what a client actually paid for.

The UK's Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 require a trader, before a consumer is bound by a distance contract, to give "the main characteristics of the goods or services, to the extent appropriate to the medium of communication and to the goods or services" (Schedule 2(a), legislation.gov.uk). Nothing in that schedule names revisions, and requirements differ by country, so treat a written revision limit as part of describing what a paid commission covers rather than as a named legal obligation. A verbal "sure, I'll take a look" in a DM does not carry the same weight as a listed policy that a client paid against.

Scale is the reason a written policy reads as ordinary professional practice rather than as an unusual formality. Upwork's Freelance Forward 2023 research report found that 64 million Americans performed freelance work that year — 38% of the U.S. workforce — contributing an estimated $1.27 trillion in annual earnings to the U.S. economy. Upwork's Freelance Forward survey covers the United States only, so creators elsewhere should read that figure as context rather than as a measure of their own market.

Pay levels are the second reason to protect revision time. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median annual wage of $55,290 for craft and fine artists as of May 2025, and the same handbook projects employment for craft and fine artists to decline 1% from 2025 to 2035, with about 4,300 openings a year mostly from workers leaving the occupation (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Uncapped free revisions compress an illustrator's effective hourly rate further by converting paid working hours into unpaid ones, so commission work priced and scoped in writing stays one of the few levers an individual artist controls directly.

Frequently asked questions

How many revisions is normal for a commission?

There is no published industry standard. One to two included rounds, with clearly priced extra rounds beyond that, is FanBell's editorial recommendation rather than a surveyed figure. Marketplaces make the number a seller-set field rather than a platform default — Fiverr's Help Center states it "depends on what's included in your Gig package or agreed-upon order scope".

What should I charge for an extra revision round?

Bill it on a time-and-materials basis at your published hourly rate with a stated minimum, per AIGA's Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services, Section 4.1. When the change exceeds roughly 10% of the original schedule or budget — or $1,000, whichever is greater — AIGA advises issuing a new proposal instead of a revision fee.

What if a client keeps asking for "just one more small thing"?

Decide in advance whether small changes count against the revision limit or are handled as free minor tweaks, then apply that rule consistently. If a request changes the brief rather than adjusting it, treat it as a new priced request rather than a revision.

Can a creator decline a revision request on FanBell?

Yes. A Creator Service can be declined and refunded if a request falls outside what the listing describes, rather than requiring the creator to complete unscoped work.

Is a revision limit the same as a rush fee?

No. A revision limit caps how many rounds of changes are included in a commission's base price; a rush fee is a separate charge for faster-than-standard turnaround. Both are configured through the same price-and-turnaround Creator Services listing, but they solve different problems.

What does FanBell charge to sell illustration commissions?

FanBell is free to start with no monthly fee and takes a 12% platform fee only when a fan pays. Stripe's typical U.S. domestic online-card processing (2.9% + $0.30) applies separately, on top of the platform fee (Stripe pricing); rates differ for international cards and non-U.S. accounts.

Create your free FanBell page and set a Creator Services listing where the price, turnaround, and revision limit are all part of the offer a fan sees before they pay.