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Does anybody here make any money from the made to order print sites like Redbubble and Society6? I was considering dusting off my ancient Rebubble account and trying again.
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May 22, 2022 15:29
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Turbinosamente posted:Does anybody here make any money from the made to order print sites like Redbubble and Society6? I was considering dusting off my ancient Rebubble account and trying again. They're all about volume. I have a small Threadless store that I haven't updated in a couple years, I only get approximately 20% of each sale there - a $40 hoodie earns me $8, a $20 t-shirt earns me $4. Unless I actively advertise it or post to friends/family on social media about it, it never gets a single sale. Those sites will not provide any marketing for your product, if it's available in their main browsable storefront at all it will be buried where people will never find it. That means it's up to you to market those products (posting to your followers if you have a large non-bot internet following, buying ad space on social media or google ads or whatever if not). If you market a product well and it sells fast, it becomes a bit of a snowball effect because that's what will start getting it (and your other products) featured in primary storefronts or chosen for partnerships or whatever - Threadless for example supplies a lot of retail outlets and they find new designs for that from within artist stores. But you're not even going to show up on their radar unless the products sell well without their involvement and I'm not sure what kind of payout you get in that case (might just be a few hundred bucks). If you can do the work to create products/ads and have money to throw into an ads budget to get some traffic then it's not bad considering they do all the printing/shipping and you just collect dollars, but at the same time if you just put a little bit more work/money into it you could create your own storefront, print a small inventory and not have to pay an 80% store cut. (just don't pre-print t-shirts or anything else that comes in multiple sizes/colors when you're starting out) e: If you're interested in selling your designs out of your own inventory I'd recommend checking https://www.stickermule.com/deals every monday, Stickermule runs a different sale every monday where you can get a small run of a certain product for prices closer to what you'd usually pay for bulk orders - like 50 3"x3" stickers for $29. You can turn around and sell for $2-3+ each through your own website or SA Mart or whatever and you only need to sell 10 to break even. I've been doing that for a couple years and even putting extremely minimal effort into selling those stickers, I'm pretty sure every one has made at least a little money. But if you want to get serious about that, definitely look for a local print shop, my local shop can offer me prints for a fraction of what anywhere on the internet charges. I just don't sell enough to justify big orders  deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 03:13 on May 23, 2022 |
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May 23, 2022 03:02
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Thanks for the advice! And for answering my second question of where to get professional prints made  It sounds like I would be better off opening an etsy and printing and shipping myself. Plus with etsy I could sell originals, 3d work, the occasional vintage item. It'd keep it consolidated at least. I'd also have physical prints on hand to sell in person this way too.
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May 23, 2022 12:34
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Stickermule is Trumpfy, so I don’t love them, but a heads up - they have 50 stickers for $9 right now. You aren’t going to find a better deal than that if you want to try vinyl stickers. I have an Etsy where I print my own with an Epson r2000 ancient giclee printer. I don’t think I have had any sales this year, but I also haven’t done any in person shows which usually drive a little traffic to my site. I also have a Society6 and Fine Art America. I think Peat Moss is right that bo matter what storefront you have, you need to do a lot of outside hustling to get traffic there.
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May 25, 2022 15:03
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Not suprised at having to do outside hustling, I guess I was just idly wondering out loud if whether my efforts should be focused on one online storefront versus two. Etsy and a tax number seems to cover the most opprotunities for me, both things I'd have to go get set up. As compared to my existing dead Redbubble from an attempt years ago to sell prints of my photography. Last I looked at RB it seemed to be accidentally geared itself toward tshirts, which none of my work is suited for anyways.
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May 25, 2022 15:44
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HungryMedusa posted:Stickermule is Trumpfy  I didn't know that. That sucks!Re: Online storefronts Disclaimer: I am both an ex employee of this company and disagree with their overall business model but... Square has a solid online storefront option that can be used entirely for free (minus their transaction fee, and upgrades for optional features) https://square.online/ Pros: Easy to set up, no required out of pocket costs, processes credit cards right out the gate, builds the storefront for you. Don't have to pay Etsy's listing fees. You can order a free card reader from them and use that to take card payments at physical events like art fairs and it will all tie into this same account, including tracking stock/marking sold items as sold, etc. Has some (painful to set up, sometimes) integrations with social media platforms, like Instagram Shopping, which can make your art shoppable directly from your Instagram posts. Cons: Not SEO-friendly, not great for building entire websites, just a barebones ecommerce storefront. Limited design options. Doesn't accept Paypal payments without paying for upgrades. Not very good at calculating shipping costs without paying for upgrades. Their entire business model is being free in order to catch all the startup businesses, trapping them in an ecosystem of Square services and products (which tbf are solid services and products) but it makes it difficult for any of them who become big to move away from any square services/products without affecting the entire business (If you're just throwing a page together to sell art on, this won't affect you though). Doesn't aggregate you with other merchants that can all be searched together like Etsy does. I'm not familiar with Etsy specifically so I don't know what benefits it offers and can't really compare the two 1:1 (I'd love to hear about it if anyone is more familiar!), but here's an example of a very low-effort storefront I slapped together to sell my art on through Square. Just uhh, ignore things like the bad product photos that don't show the full image and the lack of organization, that's all on me and my laziness. (This isn't an ad, please don't shop here I'm not equipped for shipping at the moment and the prices on the website are more than double what I charge goons when I sell my art in sa-mart!!) deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 16:49 on May 25, 2022 |
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May 25, 2022 16:35
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Good to know at any rate, thanks! I'm still at the stage of debating if I have time to put in the effort and make this a full business, and start up costs are a concern too. The cost will be there it's a question of how large it could be. I'm still unsure of the viability of my products as well. I've gotten good feed back on the collages I have done (which is why I was thinking of having prints made of some) but just because family and friends think they're cool doesn't mean there's a market for them. Shopify is also a popular back end for online stores anyone have experience with them? I'm sure they're expensive and have some drawbacks as well. I do have a domain that I've squatted for years from back when I first thought of selling online but chickened out and got lazy about the idea back then, so that's covered.
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May 25, 2022 18:08
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Etsy has a number of well-documented problems (google the etsy strike), but if you don't have your own pre-existing marketing channel I don't think there's a better option for getting eyes on your stuff. You won't get a lot of eyes and the conversion rate isn't great, but I don't think it can be beat when you're starting from scratch. Look into local art and craft markets. If you can get into those you'll probably do way better than on an online storefront, if you want to deal with the physical location logistics.
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May 25, 2022 18:19
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Lincoln posted:Mac OS, using Adobe CC: Go to Window > Application Frame. You may have to snap some of your toolbars to the left and right side or re enable them but it should work.
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May 25, 2022 18:28
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deep dish peat moss posted:
Yeah, it's a bummer. I've mostly switched to StickerApp and I've been pretty satisfied. Still testing the UV resistance of their stuff (StickerMule's is great).
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May 25, 2022 18:51
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Turbinosamente posted:Shopify is also a popular back end for online stores anyone have experience with them? I'm sure they're expensive and have some drawbacks as well. I do have a domain that I've squatted for years from back when I first thought of selling online but chickened out and got lazy about the idea back then, so that's covered. Hi, I'm a web developer. Shopify is the best ecommerce platform out there besides one you pay someone a ton of money to build for you. They aren't terribly expensive assuming you do a fair amount of business ($29/mo). The biggest differences between Shopify and Etsy, imo, is that with Etsy you have the added benefit of showing up in Etsy search results, whereas with Shopify you have a ton of control over how your shop looks, and you can use it to build out non-ecommerce pages if you like.
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May 26, 2022 15:45
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Does anyone have advice on finding a drawing teacher? My wife is really interested in drawing and has come back off and on to it a couple times, mostly pencil but some digital wacom type stuff. I think she's mostly interested in physical drawing with pencil or pen. I've looked online by just the normal like googling "drawing lessons" and that sort of thing but it's a lot of sites that are not super helpful as far as matching you with anyone specific and a lot of it is for kids it seems like. I e-mailed a couple art teachers at a local university to see if they knew anyone like grad students or anything that might need some side money or if they knew any local resources, but neither responded. So anyway, how does one go about finding a good match for someone to basically get a drawing coach? Where should I look? I assume there's no issue with that sort of thing being done over the internet nowadays with how good cameras and such are.
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May 30, 2022 03:59
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Can she just go to university courses? She might even be able to just audit the course (i.e. can attend classes, but work doesn't get graded and you receive no course credit) for a lower or zero fee. Call up those university teachers and ask about auditing courses as an adult. Also, I've seen many artists recommend Drawabox as a good place to get started on fundamentals.
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May 30, 2022 04:15
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Godaddy bookkeeping is closing down in less than a month is there non-lovely online accounting that handles multiple etsy shops? EDIT from the future: Am using Xero with A2X, it's a lot more expensive but works Tunicate fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Jul 22, 2022 |
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May 30, 2022 04:44
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I'm trying to create a gallery on imgur (desktop site) but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do simple poo poo like add captions to images or even get a link to the gallery. Is this one of those rear end in a top hat things where they've deliberately made it unusable so you have to get the app?
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Jul 21, 2022 23:43
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I have a thread in GIP where I've been sharing some scans of handwritten accounts of my experiences in Iraq and the Army. The feedback I've been getting has been incredibly supportive and encouraging, but I still feel strange about the whole thing. They seem to think it deserves a wider audience, so I figured I'd cross post a link here (if there is a better place, let me know. Mods, if this ain't cool, please delete and let me know). Is this the right place? If not, where? I'm at a hold up on where to go, and was hoping for some "outsider" input. I know we are all goons, but it's a big forum. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4002076&pagenumber=1&perpage=40 E- I also didn't want to recreate a redundant thread bulletsponge13 fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Aug 2, 2022 |
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Aug 1, 2022 18:09
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Can she just go to university courses? She might even be able to just audit the course (i.e. can attend classes, but work doesn't get graded and you receive no course credit) for a lower or zero fee. Call up those university teachers and ask about auditing courses as an adult. I had actually came into this thread to ask how to get started with the very, very basics to starting to learn to draw so I’m gonna give this Drawbox free lesions a try, thank you! If anyone else has any other suggestions of resources I’d take them as well
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Aug 4, 2022 21:14
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I've been using Perfect Resize for about a decade now, but I understand there are much more effective image-enlargement apps out there now. What's the best option? Price doesn't really matter.
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Aug 5, 2022 15:18
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Not sure if this is the best place to post this - please yell at me if not. Does anyone have any advice for getting over the anxiety of being creative? I always have ideas for projects and get very excited about them, but when I sit down to work on them, I become extremely anxious and avoid the project. The only time this hasn't been a problem is with structured creative-ish activities, like painting models or writing role-playing scenarios. I think I get anxious because I was always told (by parents, school, friends, etc.) that creative pursuits were a waste of time, but my anxiety is a very physiological reaction. It just happens and it has little to do with what I'm thinking about at the time. Has anyone else experienced this? How can I make it stop? I'd really like to make the things I want to make.
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Aug 5, 2022 15:28
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Dr.D-O posted:Not sure if this is the best place to post this - please yell at me if not. I think anyone doing a creative hobby (or profession) gets a bit of nerves about ruining something they've already started or partially finished, but what you're describing sounds to me more of a mental health concern than an artistic one - I can't help but feel that speaking to someone about how this makes you feel would be beneficial. To directly address the root of the concern, enjoyment of life is literally the primary reason to bother going through all this other stuff as part of our daily routines. Art in the form of music, visual art of all kinds, writing, photography, my posts, etc all serve to massively increase the quality of life of anyone who partakes in them. Nothing is more noble than dedicating a part of one's life to the creation and exploration of such a medium. Indulging in the creation of art for it's own sake that will never be shared is no less noble or worthwhile. It's without question that your parents, schoolmates, and friends who shared their noxious opinion on art no doubt enjoy some form of it constantly through their days and are being hypocritical to an extreme. It may help to keep in mind or reflect on the fact that you don't require them to appreciate the creative process any more than they require you to approve of their having the worst opinions ever.
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Aug 5, 2022 16:57
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Dr.D-O posted:Not sure if this is the best place to post this - please yell at me if not. Anxiety around creative activities is very common, but it has different roots for different people, and therefore the strategy for addressing it is going to be different. Like, for me, it was anxiety that I wouldn't be able to make something that lived up to the (entirely unrealistic) standards I wanted to hold myself to. And the solution, for me, was to experiment with clay sculpture, which was an artform where I had exactly 0 chance of achieving any specific result. Ironically, as I got more practiced with sculpture, it stopped being as useful for that purpose, but by that point I'd gotten over some of the initial hump. It sounds like you might be suffering from some degree of "blank canvas" anxiety, since you say that more structured creativity works well. Can you figure out ways to add structure to help focus your creativity? A lot of artists will put artificial constraints on their work specifically for that reason. For example, only working with a single, limited marking device (e.g. a single ballpoint pen), or refusing to look at their piece while they create it, or even more conceptual restrictions like requiring everything they draw to be a robot or something. In any case, I wish you luck.
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Aug 5, 2022 17:07
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I recommend this book often, and I'll drop it again here as it is a quick read and extremely helpful: Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking https://a.co/d/7a0laB1
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Aug 5, 2022 17:15
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Lamont posted:I'm trying to create a gallery on imgur (desktop site) but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do simple poo poo like add captions to images or even get a link to the gallery. Is this one of those rear end in a top hat things where they've deliberately made it unusable so you have to get the app? Just upload some photos, it should be fairly automatic? What have you tried?
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Aug 7, 2022 06:10
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Anyone have tips on actually getting a booth/table at a craft fair? I made a bunch of things, got a business license, and tried out a practice display so I think I'm ready for a market, but I cannot seem to find anyone that is interested in letting my sign up for a table. I've e-mailed lots of venues/market hosts and either they don't e-mail me back or they direct me to a google form and then stop replying. I honestly thought this would be easier to sign up for one of these things but maybe that was naive on my part. Or maybe my stuff isn't a good fit for the markets around here? The lack of communication or feedback is very frustrating.
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Aug 10, 2022 03:59
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Not sure the size of venue you're talking about, because obviously YMMV there. My wife used to sew baby clothes and made some displays and would sign up for local churches/schools that had craft fairs and just made contacts through that as all those people run in the same circles. Also consider it might be a community that doesn't really do great with electronic communication. Like if you need to hire a contractor and only want to talk through email/text you will never get a job completed.
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Aug 10, 2022 11:37
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Deadite posted:Anyone have tips on actually getting a booth/table at a craft fair? I made a bunch of things, got a business license, and tried out a practice display so I think I'm ready for a market, but I cannot seem to find anyone that is interested in letting my sign up for a table. I've e-mailed lots of venues/market hosts and either they don't e-mail me back or they direct me to a google form and then stop replying. You definitely want to spend some time visiting the markets to get a sense of the vibe they're cultivating since each one is different and there will be some that just won't match to you. To start off with, look for smaller ones since they might be less selective. It's real easy for these things to get swamped with submissions, so you really just have to spray-and-pray, and then slum around a bit as you get your legs.
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Aug 10, 2022 14:34
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dupersaurus posted:You definitely want to spend some time visiting the markets to get a sense of the vibe they're cultivating since each one is different and there will be some that just won't match to you. To start off with, look for smaller ones since they might be less selective. It's real easy for these things to get swamped with submissions, so you really just have to spray-and-pray, and then slum around a bit as you get your legs. Yeah that's the impression I'm getting from these limited interactions, that I don't fit into the usual mold of craft fair people around here so it's just easier to ignore me. The whole reason I started making stuff was because I was sick of the soap/candles/artisan dog treats/clay earrings vendors that I see at all of these markets and wanted to see something different, but maybe there is a reason I've never seen something different in the first place? Also my stuff is horror-themed, and I live in an area of the US that doesn't have a regular oddities/dark market so I've been trying to find upcoming Halloween stuff.
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Aug 10, 2022 15:04
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Hi! I have a bunch of trading cards I want to display in a large picture frame. I'm experimenting with different ways of accomplishing this, and I'm curious if there's a gentle adhesive that would hold a paper card to a backing without damaging the cards. Any suggestions? (yes I know I can put them into sleeves, that's not my first choice)
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Aug 11, 2022 01:10
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The Wonder Weapon posted:Hi! I have a bunch of trading cards I want to display in a large picture frame. I'm experimenting with different ways of accomplishing this, and I'm curious if there's a gentle adhesive that would hold a paper card to a backing without damaging the cards. Any suggestions? (yes I know I can put them into sleeves, that's not my first choice) My inclination here is to just say "No". This might be possible with an acid free repositionable adhesive spray, but I think the card backs would still end up being damaged. If you don't want to damage the cards, the safest option by far is going to be to sleeve them. After that you could cut a multi-windowed mat, and tape each card sleeve in place with acid free tape from the back side of the mat, then back the whole package with acid free foam board. That would be the "correct" way to go about this. It would ensure that the cards are not directly damaged by the adhesive, and also not damaged (yellowed/embrittled) by their time spent in the frame. Cutting a multi-windowed mat like that is a big pain in the rear end if you don't have the right tools and experience, made harder as the window count increases, although at least all the windows in this case would be the same size and in a grid pattern.
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Aug 11, 2022 01:24
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I have a similar project in mind and while I haven't tried them yet, I came across these as potential solutions. No adhesive on the cards: https://www.michaels.com/lineco-mylar-archival-mounting-corners/D287433S.html Supposedly safe double-sided tape: https://www.michaels.com/magic-mounts-1%2F2in-removable-mounting-tabs-12-bundle-packs/D084609S.html https://www.michaels.com/recollections-double-sided-mounting-squares-repositionable/10377349.html But again: I have no personal experience with either.
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Aug 11, 2022 01:54
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The mounting corners are a decent idea. I really would avoid repositionable adhesives though. Edit: For context, I did professional picture framing for about 4 years, although it's been quite a while.
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Aug 11, 2022 02:10
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Hi, I'm currently looking to buy a 3rd generation ipad air tablet stand for my partner who loves to paint/draw/illustrate. I don't have any experience as an artist so my intuition on whether something is a good product or not is lacking. After some cursory searching I think that the sketchboard pro (https://sketchboardpro.com/) looks like the best option, but I wanted to ask here if anybody has experience with it or any other tablet stands/drawing tables. Ideally we would like to have one that can be used anywhere - in bed, on the couch, at a desk - but I realize that might be too much to ask. If there are any other recommendations that anybody has, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
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Aug 14, 2022 17:17
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Is it unrealistic to look for other creatives to collaborate with when I can't offer any up-front pay and can only offer revenue share from the final product? I got extremely deep in the AI Generated Art community and I've created a number of distinct styles. Now I have a library of thousands of very high quality, stylized, surreal/unique/distinct images that others can't easily recreate. They were all made using DALL-E2 which allows me unlimited commercial use of anything I generate. So I would love to put together an art book full of flash fiction inspired by some of this stuff to cash out ahead of the AI Art Craze wave, because there's probably only a year or two before "ai-generated" goes from being a novelty selling point to being a red flag of a product to avoid (especially with the quality of most of the other work people are using dall-e for  )I'm writing it myself currently but I would love to work with some other writers to get some different styles and voices involved and get an art book printed, marketed, and sold before it's too late. But I don't have the budget to pay up-front for work - the whole point of the book would be as a minimum viable product/proof of concept to seek funding for a larger project (graphic novel/longer fiction/etc). Unfortunately every job board I've found or community I've found to post it in requires up-front pay, which I don't have the budget for right now And several communities (particularly on Reddit) do not allow AI-Generated artwork or anything related to it to be posted.Is this the kind of thing where I'm going to need to just do the whole MVP/proof of concept myself to then hopefully get funding and then hire writers? Or is there somewhere on the internet I can actually look for this kind of collaboration ("neither one of us is getting paid unless we finish the project and we both get paid")?
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Aug 14, 2022 19:19
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deep dish peat moss posted:Is it unrealistic to look for other creatives to collaborate with when I can't offer any up-front pay and can only offer revenue share from the final product? Honestly I don't know if you've got your ear to the streets on this thing in particular but a ton of artists/creative types I know really are anti-AI art so I would be a little cautious about who you approach and how you do so. If you're finding other people on like Dall-E forums that's one thing but if you make some big public post about how you want to monetize AI art I think you'll be keelhauled.
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Aug 14, 2022 19:22
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Yeah, I totally get that. I've spent a lot of time with it and have been working on forming consistent repeatable styles that aren't explicitly based on any specific real-world artists or IPs (to my knowledge) (e.g. mojavepunk) which is something that (imo) sets this apart from a lot of other AI-Generated artwork, where people are just using it to rip off artists' styles or make fanart of their favorite anime or whatever. I still completely understand the concerns about it affecting artists' livelihood but after working with it for so long, it's really difficult to develop a consistent and unique style in and takes a lot of verbal artistry which is why I feel comfortable putting it together into something myself  As a visual artist and writer looking forward toward the future I'm personally excited by it. The way I'm using it it's a way of visually displaying vivid, unique writing instead of a replacement for traditional artists. I'm not too worried about what the visual arts community thinks because what I'm doing isn't trying to compete with them and doesn't explicitly draw from their work or artstyles.But either way, is there any creative collaboration site/community that allows discussion of collaborative commercial projects that don't involve any up-front funding? deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 19:32
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Most artists are going to be pretty leery of participating in a project where a) they aren't getting money up front, and b) they don't have a prior established relationship with anyone else in the project. I mean, the first one on its own is going to rule out 95+% of artists, but the second one is the real nail in the coffin. You can maybe convince your friends to go in with you on a project that you both think has promise, but a stranger? No chance. What you could do instead, possibly, is lead from the front. That is: start working on your stories, build up a small portfolio, demonstrate that there's potential in the idea, and start building a following. Then make it clear that you're open to collaborating with other writers/artists.
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Aug 14, 2022 22:18
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Fair enough. I just also noticed as a creative that without an established presence that it's literally impossible to find work - no one will work with an artist who's willing to work for free (I literally begged to work for exposure and never got any takers except for goons who insisted on paying anyway, lmao), and no one will pay an artist without a professional portfolio of paid work. I figured there'd be somewhere for amateur creatives to collaborate especially when the end goal is "we split any revenue 50/50" but it just all comes down to the social media lottery or heavy marketing after all It was intended to be a collaboration with a friend but they never actually did anything, so I guess I am just going to do it all myself after all  Thanks!
deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 22:57
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Wait, artists don’t get paid?
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Aug 14, 2022 23:36
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Illustrator CC, MacOS: Is there a way to have the default tolerance level for the Magic Wand tool be 1 instead of 32? I find nothing in the preferences. I can change it manually (inevitably after selecting a bunch of colors I don't want), but I'd rather have it be correct when the app launches.
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Sep 4, 2022 19:01
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This is kind of a broad question, but do any of you make use of mind mapping or journaling apps to record and organize your thoughts concerning plot and story structure (and stuff in general)? Mine is not a life reflective of an organized mind.
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Sep 5, 2022 10:07
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