General Advice Post: Declining a Commission and/or a Trade

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

Be it their reputation, their attitude or just the overall theme of what they want you to draw for them - we as artists and people have the right to say 'no' to offers placed upon our plates.

The question is, how does one say 'no' in such a way that it is purely professional and has that weight of finality to it that doesn't allow for weasel room. Lets figure out the best way to create a standard of etiquette for declining inquiries we don't want to handle!

I'm opening the floor to the community on this. Please feel free to advise or suggest ways to professionally bow out of offers for commissions or trades.

If you recall someone making a post or a comment regarding this in the past, and felt it was a big help to you; please link to it for everyone's reference!

Comments

[growly.livejournal.com]

What would you propose? My dilemma is that if you come up with excuses, they'll find ways around it, if you say "no" without any sort of reasoning, they'll still argue and/or rant about it.

[zaulankris.livejournal.com]

"No, but thank you. I appreciate your interest." If they keep pestering, block them or stop responding. If they are annoying now, they will be annoying later.

The way I did my first batch of commissions was I told people from the get-go that I would contact those I was interested in. I got a flood of requests, I quite frankly don't have time to talk to people who I won't be working with anyway.

[marus-puppy.livejournal.com]

Your other suggestions were perfectly fine, I can just see too many things going wrong with saying "Thanks, but I've heard that you've got a bad history of doing business in the past so I'm going to have to decline." I'm sure no matter how tactful you are, you really can't get around how that would sound insulting...