Very useful advice !

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No matter how much you enjoy making artwork DO NOT let under-pricing become a habit. There are other people who try to pay their bills with those little jobs. Plus there is no real reason to say no to money. If you work all day and if you are able to deliver 'passable' quality, knowing that some stranger is going to make money with it, why, why would anyone with a healthy mind do it for less than 1 $ an hour. 

I know that there is a large deal of people who don't know how to price their work, it really is very simple. It really is very simple.

There is no such thing as "am i good enough to price my work at all" Obviously if someone is asking you for your rates, they thing you are good enough.

If you don't know how much you should ask for your pictures, change hourly.What does a waitress/waiter get? Their minimum wages with tips can maybe add up to 10-15$ n hour, maybe 20 on weekend?

If they work 5 days a week that will be up to 2500 USD a month.Obviously as a inexperienced young freelance you will not be as busy as a waiter, nope. Also you need to understand that you are NOT a waiter, concept art and illustration are not some cheap ass factory labor, so you gotta charge more than 10$-15$ usd per hour to get your bills paid and if you think that living at your moms house should affect your rates coz your bills are much lower, think again, think again.

If your art is still so so and you are rather slow it might feel awkward to give your client higher rates but IT IS NOT, it is not awkward.If your clients tells you in the face that he expects you to work 8 hours on a painting for 40$, THAT is awkward. Ask him why would anyone want to work for 5$ an hour?A cashier at McDonald's gets $7.56 per hour, plus what they have is a steady job, you don't.Dishwashers are literally making a much better living than artists with those slave rates.

If some of the artists out there don't have the balls to value their own art, please at least charge decent manual labor rates.

some more tips:

- If a client asks you to work for shitty low rates with a promise to get back to you with more work in the future, it really means that he will have more jobs with shitty low rates for you. Clients do NOT give raise to dumb freelance over time, they do not.

- if you work on some big movie or game title and see your art all over the news and print media, that is exposure that has value and can get you many new doors open.painting a free poster for some random lil comic book is no exposure, please Do not delude yourself that respectable clients sit around all day and test crappy free to play games, iphone aps or dumb comics to scout new talented artist who worked for free for that awesome exposure, THEY DO NOT

- don't make unpayed test-work without having a contract signed that the client CAN NOT use your test work for any commercial purposes including pitches. That is how some of the clever guys make money, they will ask lil artists to do some test job with a promise that they might get actual work but what they really do is , they let various artists create various assets and with that free load of assets they put together a pitch and try to get some publisher or investor interested. Some don't even do the pitch for them self, they are payed by clients who outsource the graphic work for their pitch.You have your portfolio so you don't have to do test work and if you must then talk with the client and let them add some lines to the contract that they should give you a actual/usable asset as a test work and that you get payed if for it once you get the job.

- use your brain, if something sounds like a scam, it might be a scam.

- do not start doing test-work before you have discussed the rates for the actual job

- a contract is a MUST, a contract is a MUST, let all clients sign a contract.

- If a client does not want to sign a contract, do NOT make business with him. contracts are basic business but some of the scammers out there will try to make you feel like asking for a contract is a insult to them, a lack of trust and other shit. use common sense, use your brain.

-  ALWAYS ask for a deposit, regardless of how big or small the client, and set a limit to the number of revisions which you must notify the client of before beginning work. If you do NOT do those two things, you can potentially keep changing the artwork for years and then the client may disappear and you may never see your paycheck. TRUST ME it's happened to me. I charge at least 25% deposit (I try to make it a nice number) for every job and after the artwork is finished (if it is a set price) I allow 3 sessions of changes - after that the additional sessions of changes count as other jobs and have their own price.

Last but not least

If you have trouble kick-starting your freelance career it could have 2 reasons:

- your portfolio is not good enough or it does not contain what clients want to see. Your portfolio must contain EXACTLY the kind of shit you want to be hired for. if you want jobs for Character concepts and environment concepts, guess what? You need exactly that in your port and not some halfassed portraits from photos, strawberry studies and your scribbles from drawing classes

- Do not wait for clients to contact you, CONTACT the clients. There are literally many many thousands of clients on this planet, how many did you contact this month?