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how to sell digital art

Jan 17
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first sale on etsy

Got My First Sale On Etsy!

By etsy, how to sell digital art

Got My First Sale On Etsy!

How To Sell Art On Etsy | From Zero to ??? – Part 3

I Got My First Sale On Etsy!!

Holy $#%t it works!

Sorry.  Pardon me…for the language.  This is a family friendly post.

But OH MY GOODNESS I got my first sale on Etsy!

I know it’s only been about 2 weeks since I opened up shop on Etsy and I did say that I didn’t expect to get a sale for like 6 months but it sure is nice to see a result!  Even though I knew that I was not expecting to get any sales there is always that little voice in your head, you have to strangle at times, that is telling you that this whole Etsy thing is a stupid idea.

Don’t listen to that voice!!

I know what you are thinking…IT’S JUST ONE SALE!  And yes I know there is still lots of work to be done, and no I can’t retire yet, but if I can impart anything to you about whatever journey you are taking to your larger goal it would be this – Celebrate the small wins along the way.

Let’s face it there is going to be a lot of blood, sweat and tears in doing this.  You gotta enjoy the process and celebrating the small wins makes doing that so much easier.

What I Have Learned About Etsy So Far

It is hard for even me to believe how much I have learned about Etsy in the two weeks since I have started.  Let me highlight some of the gems.

There is No One Tool That is Going To Skyrocket Your Etsy Sales

At least not that I have found yet! I know it’s only been two weeks!

Now don’t get me wrong, I think tools are great and they can be very helpful but just because you found a new tool to help your Etsy sales that doesn’t mean you can sit back and the sales will roll in.

I’ll talk about Erank.com here because that is the tool I have been using here at the start of my journey.  I have been in that thing everyday, using it and trying to figure out how it works.  I mean don’t get me wrong on the surface it’s not that complicated to use but I think by using a tool over and over again you learn new things about how to use it and you start to gain a better understanding of what it’s strong points and limitations are.

I think this is a good thing because it allows you to be more efficient.  For instance, I was told to look for keywords with low competition that had some search volume.  Now at the beginning all I seemed to find was keywords that erank said had no searches but super high competition or high competition and high search volume.

At first this made me question how accurate erank was.

Now I’m going to say that probably no 3rd party tool that gives you search term traffic is a 100 percent right but at least it gives you an idea.  This brings me to my next point…

Trial and Error Is Your Friend

You can watch all the videos and take all the courses on how to do something you want but there is no better teacher than experience.  It is smart to gain as much knowledge as you can before opening your Etsy store and putting up your first listing.

If you are waiting to know everything before posting your first listing is will never get posted because there is always something else to learn.  And there are so many things you can only learn about Etsy and how it works unless you start posting listings.  I have already, rightly or wrongly, changed titles and rewritten descriptions multiple times in the first two weeks.

Of course more seasoned Etsy shop owners may tell me that is the wrong thing to do but I won’t know unless I play around on Etsy and figure out what seems to work.  Here is another trick I learned…

Make multiple listings to test keywords

I had no idea you could do this but I learned about it from watching a video.  You can duplicate a listing and just change the keywords and tags to see if you can rank for a different keyword or if which keyword is more likely to convert to sales.

I also learned that you can duplicate a listing and then put the duplicated one with a new thumbnail image.  This allows you to A/B split test if people are more drawn to one image over the other.  Isn’t that cool!

More is More

The last thing I will ramble about today is the other thing I am learning, which is that I think the more listings on your store that better.  What I mean by that is the more listings you have the more ways potential customers on Etsy can find you.

As a store owner I have no idea which listing Etsy is going to rank or which listing is going to be a big seller.  If I have lots of listings I have more chance of one of my listings becoming popular.  Once a lot of people find one of my products they will be exposed to all of my other products and they might buy them.

Again, you and me both know this is a grind but that is part of the fun, which reminds me…I gotta go put up more Etsy listings in my store!

Okay…

So I have 157 view, 72 visits, 1 sale and 11 listings in my first two weeks.  No idea if this is good or bad, I’m just learning as I go.  If you have any tips or tricks to share with me drop me a line in the contact section.

Of course you can get all Kris’s artwork here.  If you want to check out the Etsy store you can see it here.

Jan 09
Love0
how to make an etsy listing

How to make an Etsy Listing

By etsy, how to sell digital art, sell clipart

How to make an Etsy Listing the right way– Without Losing Your Mind!

How To Sell Art On Etsy | From Zero to ??? – Part 2

 

On the surface making an Etsy Listing is actually not that hard.  In fact, some might say slapping up an Etsy listing is downright easy.

So why am I feeling overwhelmed you ask?

The reason you are feeling overwhelmed is because there are so many things that “the experts” say you need to get right on your Etsy listing.  The great thing about your Etsy listings is that if you don’t get it right the first time you can go back as many times as you like to edit your listing.

And that brings us to my first point on how to make an Etsy Listing the right way without losing your mind.

Don’t Stress if you don’t get everything correct right away

I have got 4 listings up so far.  If you haven’t read my last post on starting my Etsy store you can check it out here.

Anywho, originally I thought my Etsy listings were just fine but then I started watching some videos on how to “properly” make an Etsy listing.  As the old saying goes, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” – and when you do you realize how much you don’t know.

That’s how it was for me.  As I started to learn about all the things I should be doing in my Etsy listings I realized how much I didn’t know.  Like I said, the good news is you can go back and edit your Etsy listings as much as you want so no reason to stress if you don’t get it all right the first time.

So, allow me to save you some time and pass on what I have learned about the right way to make an Etsy listing.  Besides, it’s always more fun to learn together!

Create Quality Photos or Images for Your Previews

Your main image is what is going to catch the eye of the people searching for what you are selling.  When it comes to images, the no brainer stuff is that you want to use the proper dimensions and the right dpi settings.  Since I am making images and not photos I set my dimensions at 2000 X 2000 and 300dpi so I have a high quality image.

Come Up with a Title That is Compelling

After all the research I have done all the “experts” say to put the main keyword you want to show up for at the beginning of your title but DO NOT stuff your title with keywords.  Now, this makes perfect sense to me and is what I have done for my listings.  However, when I look at listings of Etsy shops that I admire and are doing well I see that some of them are pretty much keyword stuffing in the titles of their listings.

For now, I am going to follow the experts advice and not just put a bunch of keywords in my title but I may try it with a couple of listings and see if I notice those ones doing better than my other listings or not.

So for a good title start with the keyword you are wanting to show for and then the rest of the title could include how your product could be used or what events it would be good for.  The main thing when writing your title is to think about the what and the why your ideal customer would be searching for and include that in your title.

Start Your Description With the Main Keyword You are Targeting

After you have your title nailed down the next thing you should focus on is writing a good description.  Your description should start with your main keyword and maybe a quick sentence on what events or uses your product would be good for.  I like to stuff a few more keywords in this part of the description right at the top.

Obviously, you want to clearly describe what the customer is going to get when they purchase your product.  Since I am selling clipart collections I like to put what is included in the package,  instructions on what the end user can do with the art and a link to where they can buy a commercial license if they are using the art to make another product that they intend to sell.

If your product is part of a greater collection of related products that you sell then by all means include links to those other products in the description.

Use All The Tags for Additional Keywords You Want Your Listing to Show For

After you have chosen the category that your product would fall under you will scroll down to the tags section.  This is where you can add more keywords that are relevant to your product.  You can add up to 13 tags.  Now the mistake I see some people make is they don’t use all 13 tags that are available to them.

Make sure to use them all!  Think of 13 different keywords or keyword phrases that someone would use to find what you are selling and put them in.  It sounds easy but trust me it can be harder than you think!  I find that sometimes I get stuck on the initial keyword I have thought of and can’t seem to think of any other phrases because my mind just goes blank.

Thankfully, there is something to help you with that!

Use Erank to Help You Figure Out Keywords You Might Actually Have a Chance Showing For.

To help with brain freeze when thinking of keywords you can go to erank.com.  In fact, Etsy is set up to integrate erank.com with your shop.  Just go to your dashboard and click on integrations and scroll down and you will see the erank.com icon.  Sign up for a free account and then use the keyword research tool to get further suggestions for your main keyword.

This is great because erank.com also shows you how many listings there are for each keyword phrase.  You will probably want to steer away from the ones that have over 2000 listings.  Aiming for terms that have less listings means that your product has more of a chance to show up on the first page of results when someone searches that term.

And we all know that the majority of us only look at what is on the first page anyways so that is where you want to be.

Ultimately, what you want when you are picking search terms is something with a low amount of listings and a high amount of searches.  Now that is easier said than done.  If you want to go after higher competition terms you may have do some paid advertising to get your product to show on the first page of results.

Paid advertising will be a topic for another day!

Publish Your Listing

After everything looks good go ahead and hit the publish button to make your listing go live!  Additionally, tweet, pin, shout, Instagram and whatever other social media you have your listing so people know about it!

Now don’t expect to make one listing and watch the sales roll in.  Now that you have your first listing under your belt go make a whole bunch more because the more listings you have the more chances people have to find your shop!

P.S.  So it’s been 4 days since I last posted.  I now have 4 listings live and have 34 visits and and 48 total views in the last 30 days.

Things are look up!!

Hey, if you got a tip or trick I may have missed drop me a line by clicking on the contact form and let me know.  I’m just learning too!

Jan 06
Love0
how to sell art on etsy

Sell Art On Etsy

By etsy, how to sell digital art, sell clipart

How To Sell Art On Etsy | From Zero to ??? – Part 1

Starting An Etsy Store From Scratch

Hey everyone, Matt here.

Ah yes, New Year’s resolutions!  Those things we make that we already break first week in! 

So, I figured for 2020 I would start selling Pretty Little Lines Clipart on Etsy.  Now this is not a New Year’s resolution.  It is actually a year 3 part, of a 5 year plan.  Not that it really matters to you but the main point is, it is not a New Year’s resolution – so I won’t be breaking it in the first week!  Ha ha!

Anywho – the plan is for Pretty Little Lines to grow this year and, in addition to other things, Kris and I thought Etsy might be one way to help with that.

Now I know pretty much nothing about Etsy.  I mean I get that you sell stuff on it but other than that I really don’t know anything about the nuts and bolts of how it all works.  I do know there are lots of people on Etsy and it has a ton of traffic.  I am willing to bet there is a good amount of that traffic that is looking for the type of illustrations and clipart that Pretty Little Lines sells.  This begs the question of why not open a shop on Etsy?

That pretty much brings us to where we are now which is opening a shop on Etsy selling digital clipart products.  What I thought I would do is sort of do a series of blog posts on my Etsy journey.  You know, sort of a birds eye view of how I set it up and what I am doing to generate sales and how it’s going.  That way you can learn from my mistakes and successes and, who knows, maybe give me a few pointers here and there!

Initial Thoughts About Etsy Shop Setup

 

Now I’ll be upfront that I had Kris setup the Etsy Shop.  I mean obviously, she wants it to have a certain look, and I can’t do all that stuff so she set it up and then turned it over to me.  I will be listing all the products, doing the write ups, making the previews and generally trying to figure out the Etsy puzzle of how to get your listings in front of the people that are looking for what you are offering.

Now I think my feelings of being overwhelmed have to do with already having a bunch of products to put up on Etsy and not being able to get them up fast enough.  I could see if I just had one product it wouldn’t be so bad.  At first I thought it would just be a simple case of listing what is already on our primary website and slapping it up on Etsy.

That is not the case!  Etsy has totally different parameters so basically one product on prettylittlelines.com has to be broken into at least 4 smaller products with new preview images for each product.  That is actually a lot of work! 

Don’t get me wrong – I am guessing that is a good problem to have but it is somewhat tedious and not my favorite thing to do.  I know, I know…cry me a river right?

In addition to that, what I find overwhelming is all the keywords, tags, writeups and such that need to be done.  From what I gather from my research is that with anything on the internet there is an SEO component to it and Etsy is no different.  It’s just another search engine and if you want to be seen you have to think like your customer, in terms of what they would search for to find your listing, and optimize your listings for those search terms.

I have to be honest…I already looked into hiring an Etsy virtual assistant expert to help me with all this but decided not to yet as I want to learn all of this myself first.  Anyhow, if I do end up hiring someone to help me I will let you know in a future post and document what I did.

For now, I have decided that the only way to eat the elephant is one bite at a time.  So what I will do is just focus on getting up one listing at a time and seeing where that takes me.  I already have a couple of listings up and no sales yet – Wait! What?

With most of the things, actually pretty much all of the things, I have had success with on the internet I have discovered there is no secret sauce to quick success.  The things that have been successful have been so because of a willingness to grind it out and stick with it producing content or implementing your system everyday.

I expect Etsy to be no different.

It wouldn’t surprise me to not have a sale in the first six months even if I can post 100 products in the first six months.  Now some of you with more Etsy experience than me might say that’s crazy but remember I have no Etsy experience and I am just basing things off of my other experiences of starting to sell something on a marketplace from scratch.  I think it is hard to know whether you are going to have success on a marketplace or not.  I think the key is to keep going or at least fail as fast as you can.

I like that idea of failing your way to success!

Currently, I am wondering about listing titles and keywords.  Some very successful Etsy shops I see seem to stuff their listings with keyword phrases and some do not.  Since I will have a lot of products to put up as listings I will probably try both ways and see which listings I see better results from in terms of impressions and where they show up in the Etsy search rankings for particular keywords.

If you have any Etsy tips and tricks for me drop me a line using the contact form.  That would be so much appreciated.

I’ll leave it at that for now but check back in as I will be posting about what I have done and how it is going.

For reference sake so far I have 2 products up – not including the commercial license – and in the 30 days I have 15 visits, listings viewed 11 times and 0 orders.  I have done zero promotion other than put up 2 products on our Etsy store so I can’t say I really expected anything to be honest.

The good news is there is only one way to go and that is up!

P.S. – If you want, check out our Etsy shop.

May 06
Love0
how to sell digital art

How To Sell Digital Art And Keep Your Sanity

By how to sell digital art

How To Sell Digital Art And Keep Your Sanity: Build An Audience

Marketing for Creatives…It’s the burning question of every illustrator or Etsy store owner.

 

“How do I get my products seen?”

“Why is nobody buying my product?”

“I thought as long as I just focused on making really good digital art the sales would start to roll in?”

“How do you sell digital art online anyway?”

Ever found yourself thinking any of these?

Let me paint you a picture.  You’ve illustrated this absolutely amazing package of digital art that you are going to put on your website or creative marketplace or two.  You are really excited about how good your final product is.  Family and friends may have even told you how great it is.  You upload it to all the sites you are going to sell it on annnnnd…

CRICKETS!

NOTHING.

ZIP!

NADA!

Before you read on everyone needs something to brighten their day!  How about some hand drawn, whimsical, stunning FREE clipart for your next creative project?  Join my mail list and as my thank you I will give you a Free Goodie Bag full of all sorts of stunning illustrations!

Get Your Goodie Bag!

How To Sell Digital Art

The self doubt starts to seep in and you might start to have the following thoughts go through your head.

“Maybe my art isn’t good enough?”

“Maybe nobody likes my stuff?”

“You are so stupid for even thinking people would want to buy your artwork and that this would even work!”

A Side Note:

If you have thought any of those things do yourself a favor and stop that voice immediately.  That is a not a winning mindset and you are a winner after all!

Think about if your best friend tried to pursue their dream of starting a new business and had a failure along the way.  Would you say something like, “Oh my goodness you are such a pathetic loser!  Nobody likes your art and it was a stupid idea to begin with!”.  Of course you wouldn’t!  So why would you talk like that to yourself?

Instead, you would encourage your friend to learn from the failure, figure out what changes to make and to keep going because they have what it takes. And so do you by the way!  So why wouldn’t you talk like that to yourself?

 

If Nobody Sees It Nobody Buys it!

You Need an Audience!

The reason nobody bought your adorable, cute, stunning (insert your own descriptive word here) illustrated product is because nobody saw it.

How much traffic does your website get?  Anybody visiting your stores on the creative marketplaces you’re apart of?  Do you have an email list?

Selling on the internet is largely a numbers game.  If you don’t have the numbers, in terms of eyeballs seeing your wares, then you will not get any sales no matter how cute and adorable your products are.  You have heard the old saying does a tree that falls in the forest make a sound? (At least I think it goes something like that)   Well if no one is there to see and hear it no one really knows!

 

The Best Marketers Are The Best Artists!

Have you ever looked at other people’s digital art products, especially popular ones that sell a lot, and thought your own art was just as good or better?

Let me tell you a little secret.  The artists that are the biggest in terms of how much they sell and make isn’t always because they are the best artists.  It may be they sell the most and make the most money because they are the best marketers.  These artists know how to get their products in front of eyeballs…a lot of eyeballs!

 

What’s Your Niche?

How do I get my product in front of eyeballs you ask?

Before we get into how to get your product in front of people you will first have to focus on what is your niche?  You see the trick is to get your products seen by people who are interested in what you are selling.  If you create whimsical illustrations of fairies or sell mugs and t-shirts with prints of fairies on them it probably won’t do you any good to get your product seen by a bunch of people who are not interested in that niche.  You are looking for people that just looove everything about fairies!  Those people will love your products because they already love fairies and a certain percentage of them will purchase your product.

So before you go trying to do Facebook ads or create a bunch of content to attract people to your store you need to clearly define your style, your niche or what part of the market you are going to go after and exactly who your customer is.  Ask yourself what would my perfect customer look like?  Try and figure out everything about them.  Who are they? Where do they hang out?  What do they like to do? What are the problems they are encountering?

If you can figure out where they hang out online then you can go hang out there too.  This could be a forum or Facebook group or somewhere else.  Start to frequent that place yourself and contribute to the community and you will learn what your potential customers want and what problems they might have that perhaps you can solve.  Once you figure those things out it will give you a lot more direction in how to attract customers and give your customers what they want.

It’s like when you were in high school learning how to write a thesis statement for an essay.  Once you have your thesis statement it acts as a roadmap for the rest of your essay.  Without a good thesis statement your essay is kind of all over the place but with a good thesis statement your essay is focused and coherent.

You want your efforts in marketing your products to be coherent and knowing who your customer is makes that possible.

 

Create Content To Attract Customers

You know who your customer is, what they want and what problems they might need solved in your niche.  Now you must create content that addresses those problems or wants, to attract customers in your niche and eventually show them your cute and adorable products so they can buy them!

I know what you are thinking, especially if you are an illustrator…creating the illustrations and clipart packages is time consuming enough!  What other kind of content am I talking about?

There are really only 3 foundations, we’ll call them, out of which all other content, like social media posts, can flow.

They are:

Articles

Podcasts

Videos

People like to consume information either by seeing, hearing or reading.  The great thing about articles, podcasts and videos is that you make them once and then they can serve to answer a problem your customers might have over and over and over again.

The question you need to ask yourself is what is more natural for you to do to create content.  Will you be more comfortable writing articles, making podcasts or creating videos?  No matter what you choose at the beginning the content you create will not be the best.  The only way you will get better at creating content in the medium you choose is by doing it repeatedly for a period of time.

If you are at all familiar with business or marketing systems you may have heard of such a thing as a 90-day plan.  Miles Beckler, internet marketer, is a big proponent of 90-day plans.  Essentially, what a 90-day plan will look like is you committing to putting out a piece of content in the medium you chose every day for 90 days.  Pick one of the three mediums.  If it is articles, then commit to posting an article every day for 90 days.  This is how long it will take you to get good at putting out this kind of content and for it to become easy because at the beginning it will be hard!

 

Start With One!

One of the temptations many of us face is to try and do it all at once.  You listen to one person who says you have got to be writing articles everyday, another says you absolutely must be putting out content on youtube, while another says you must be podcasting, pinning, building an Instagram following etc.  Because you are a big picture woman you just decide to start doing it all.  DON’T!

Trying to do it all at once just means you are spinning your tires in a bunch of different areas but not really getting anywhere.  In addition to that, you are not focused on just one thing that you can do consistently for 90 days and become really good at.  It is better to do one thing, in terms of creating content, consistently and build up momentum in that area before you start to add another medium of content creation into your routine.

Why?

Just working on one area of content at a time gives these advantages:

  • Speeds up the learning curve of what works and what doesn’t in the medium you have chosen
  • Allows you to start building an audience in that medium
  • Has tremendous search engine optimization advantages
  • Allows you to build up trust with the people in your medium
  • Casts a wider net in a shorter amount of time for people to see your content and eventually become customers

Podcasting, Articles and Videos can also bring you free traffic to your site!  If you have a big budget and money to burn learning paid advertising than great!  The thing with paid advertising is that once you stop so does the traffic.  Your videos, articles and podcasts will keep bringing free traffic to you over and over again.

Yes, creating all this content for 90 days is hard and at the beginning is a grind.  Sometimes life gets in the way.  Heck I am writing this article as much for me as for anyone else but the advantages and rewards on the other end are worth it.  As you grow and start to get traction in your creatives business you can start to outsource certain tasks to free up your time.  Ultimately, we all have to ask ourselves do we want our first 90-day plan to take 90 days? 180 days? 365 days or beyond?

Well that is it for now  but if you found this information valuable drop us an email and let us know if you found this helpful as we have lots more information on this subject we would love to share if you find it useful.

Get writing, podcasting or making videos.  There are no shortcuts!

Happy 90-day plan!

Pretty Little Lines

For even more ideas check out How To Make Money With Digital Art.

Mar 06
Love0
make money with digital art

How To Make Money With Digital Art

By how to sell digital art, sell clipart

how to make money with digital art

How To Make Money With Digital Art

First off this is a big topic!  There are many ways to make money with digital art.

If you are an artist and you make your own digital art than you can make money selling your art.  If you are not an artist and don’t make your own digital art don’t fret.  You too can make money with digital art…other people’s digital art.

I’ll just assume you already know how to make digital art.

For those of you that are not artists you will need to figure out how to get digital art you can use to make money with in the first place. Go check out 7 Best Places To Buy Commercial Use Clipart Graphics.  You will find excellent places to buy lots of digital art cheap that you can use to make money yourself!

For those of you that are planning to use other people’s digital art to make money there are two main ways.  You can become an affiliate of a marketplace that sells digital art or you can use digital art you buy to make new art that you put on products to sell, either on your own site or on sites like Etsy and such.

Hey Wait!  If you like commercial use clipart free than you need to sign up for my Goodie Bag!  Once you sign up for the Goodie Bag you will have access to free clipart and lots more.   You also get access to discounts and promotions on my full collections for signing up for the Goodie Bag.

Yes I want a goodie bag

6 Tips To Make Money Online With Digital Art

Become an Affiliate

Make Money With Other People’s Digital Art.

To become an affiliate of a marketplace  go to the website of the marketplace, like Creative Market for example, and look if they have a link in their header or footer on how to become an affiliate.  Simply follow the instructions and wait to become approved.  If you become approved then you will be given an affiliate link.  In many cases you may have to sign up for an account and once you are logged in you can browse different digital art packages that you like or think will sell and, in Creative Market’s case, they will generate an affiliate link for you for that specific product that you can use.

If you have a newsletter or perhaps you own website you can drive traffic to the affiliate link you have and every time someone clicks on that link and buys something you will get a commission.  It’s pretty cool and is a great way to make money with other people’s digital art.

 

Sell Your Own Products

If you buy other people’s digital art that you can use for commercial use than you can also make money that way.  Many of the digital art packages that you will find on places like Design Cuts and Creative Market come with a variety of elements and illustrations.  You can use the elements in various combinations to make a new design like a floral bouquet, scene or logo.  The cool thing about the digital art collections on most of the marketplaces is they come with standard commercial licenses.  This means that once you have created a new design that you can usually put it on a product like a t-shirt, mug, hat, wall art, wedding invitation etc that you can sell.   The standard commercial license usually allows you to sell up to 500 units of one project.  The licensing stuff can get a little scary and if you are in doubt you can always contact the marketplace you purchased from for help or often times the artist themselves.

If In Doubt Get Professional Advice

I know it shouldn’t have to be said, but in this day and age it does, so don’t take the above as legal advice.  We are not lawyers and you should never take your legal advice from an artist.  Check with a professional!

For Those That Make Their Own Digital Art…

 

Build Your Portfolio

Before you go trying to get accepted to marketplaces take the time (perhaps months) to make a really fantastic portfolio.  You should have an extensive portfolio that shows off your best work and the genres of art that you are capable of.  Want to know how we know this?  Well as Kris shared in her podcast, Pretty Little Design Show, she applied to many marketplaces to sell her digital art without having a portfolio and promptly was rejected by all of them.

A Portfolio Showcases Your Talents.

As a result, she spent a few months just working on her portfolio and creating lots of art to go in it before re-applying to these marketplaces.  Once she had a healthy portfolio it was much easier to get accepted to many of the marketplaces because they could see what type of art she created and how it fit into their marketplace.

Taking time to build a portfolio can also be used to help you put together your first collection to sell at the same time.

 

Apply To Marketplaces

Here’s another piece of advice that should do you well.  Don’t wait for your digital art or portfolio to be perfect before you submit it.  Perfection is an illusion.  If you are waiting for your work to be perfect before you submit it you will never submit it because it will never be perfect!

Should it be good? Should it be WOW? YES!  Does this mean it is perfect? NO!

Once you have a portfolio that is really good it is easy to apply to have your own store on many of the different marketplaces.  So go do that!

Applying To A Marketplace Can Be Scary

Expect to apply more than once!

You may have your heart set on getting on a certain marketplace because they are the biggest and you just know you will start making money.  This is not always the case.  There is nothing wrong with getting accepted on smaller marketplaces.  You can still make sales and in some cases you will have a better chance of people even finding your art than on bigger marketplaces where there is so much to choose from that a customer seeing your work is like a person finding a needle in a haystack.

Besides, as you will find out…

often the majority of your income doesn’t just come from once place.  If you make a little from a lot of places that can really add up!

The advantage of having a store on different marketplaces is they are already doing a lot of marketing to drive traffic to their site so that means more potential of eyeballs seeing your art.  They also may take care of a lot of the other things like payment, technical stuff and helping the customer.

The downside is they take 30 to 50% of every sale you make.

 

Get Your Own Website

Maybe you can build your own website or know someone that can do it for you.  You could even set up a site on Shopify if that is easier and if you want to keep all the money for your hard work to yourself than you want to have your own website.

Your website should be used to sell your products and help build your audience.

Build Your Audience

How do you build your audience you ask?

Well it takes a lot of hard work and consistent effort over years to build an audience.  Often it requires a multi-pronged approach of blogging, Instagram, Youtube videos, facebook, cold calling and chain letters.  Well maybe not cold calling and chain letters!

I won’t get into all that can go into building an audience in this post but really what you want to do is focus on ways to drive traffic to your website and give that traffic a reason to sign up to your list and then treat those people like gold.

Traffic comes and goes…

You might get kicked off a marketplace or lose a ranking.  This is why it is important to have your own site and build a list of customers that you control.  You don’t actually control your customers but you do control your list and that can’t be taken away from you so take the time to start building your audience and your list right away.

 

Provide Value To Your Customers

This may go without saying but it is something many people overlook or don’t put enough emphasis on.  Create an offer, a free gift or a free section of your website that only people on your list have access too. This will get them on your list.  You keep them on your list by providing them with great value.  This doesn’t mean always selling to them.

Give Them Free Stuff

Sometimes give them free stuff like maybe some of your art or a tutorial perhaps.  This employs the rule of reciprocity and will make them more likely to buy from you in the future.

Your Customers Are Gold

Take time to create a relationship with the people on your list.  Think about a person you may already follow.  Would you buy something from them?  Even though you don’t know them personally you might be more likely to buy from them because you feel like you know them and can trust them since they have shared so much of themselves with you, provided you value and built trust.

Lastly, remember it’s a grind not a sprint.  That’s right.  A grind!  Make a 5 year plan and grind it out.  Compounding interest on your efforts is what will pay off huge in the long haul.

Happy grinding!

For even more kernels of wisdom on this check out How To Sell Digital Art…and keep your sanity!

Pretty Little Lines

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