#i have this on inprnt and my society6 for prints and shirts :3 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

portablecity · 2 years

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I made a BIG ol' post today, on my patreon, about why and how to start selling things online, that is half kick in the pants, half resources, so I thought I'd copy it here and see if it helps some folks:

[editor's note: I tweeted this out in a huge thread, here, and I lightly cleaned it up for Patreon here! If you know anyone who might make use of this advice, you're welcome to link to wherever is more useful for them, no worries!]

This is the time of year I remind all my friends who make art, and zines, and games, and toys, and anything, digital or physical, that it is WORTH IT to list them for sale as long as you cover the cost of getting the product to the person who wants it - printing, shipping, hosting, fees... and the good news is that there's lots of low fee/no upfront cost ways to let folks pay what they want for digital assets like PDFs and more - things like gumroad and itch.io let you set PWYW prices and they take fees from the sale, not from you ahead of time, and deliver your file.

If you've got physical things in your home or studio right now to sell - zines, shirts, cross-stitch kits, prints, any of it - then pack one of each up, go to the post office and get shipping quotes for 3-5 locations, one local, one national, one continental, one international, you get it. Note weight especially. Beat the holiday shipping rush, and do it now! Every post office is different, but google tracks busy times, so if you find their listing on google maps you can probably figure out the best time to go to avoid the crowd and lineup.

If you wish you had physical things to sell but no time to make them, use a dropshipper! Artofwhere, Printful, Printify, Gooten, PrintedMint - there's a ton of them out there, I've used a bunch, and they will make and ship custom shirts, prints, mugs, you name it, for you. You have to list the products on your own store, but they plug into many, many storefronts; and because of that you get to list your own sale price. They explain turnaround times, base price, shipping prices and more on their sites, so you can accurately price things in your shop.

This does mean you need your own storefront, gumroad/itch/bigcartel/shopify/wherever, though. If that's not gonna happen right now, no worries; consider doing a test run of a few products on Redbubble or Society6 or Threadless or Teepublic or INprnt or similar print-on-demand storefront websites! In terms of profit margin, those storefront POD sites have the lowest actual earning for you, but they cost literally nothing but time, and they're a great way to test run an audience. But if you have a shop or the wherewithal to set one up, he profit margin is usually noticeably higher on the dropship sites, and they also have no overhead cost.

If you can order something in bulk, store it at your home or work, pack it yourself and ship it yourself, that is for sure the best way to make the most profit per sale, but it might be a bit late to set that up right now, and also, it's a LOT of work with a huge overhead cost of purchasing the product in bulk in the first place.

(this, specifically, is what kickstarter is for - balances out the risk of dropping all that cash up front by getting preorders, essentially)

But Shel, you may say, I've tried Redbubble/Teepublic/Society6 and I didn't sell enough to get a payout. It was a huge waste of time making all those things. I am so done with this shit.

If you're open to advice? I do have some. And it applies to all selling online, not just Society6.

First off, I wasn't kidding about the time cost. This is a side hustle that takes time and energy on top of making things, and if that's just so extremely not your jam then I super respect that! This advice is for folks who are curious/considering/nervous but tempted.

Anyways my advice is: literally no one knows you're selling things. You gotta tell them. And you gotta tell them a LOT.

A TINY percentage of the people who follow you see any given tweet/insta post/fb post/etc. You need to post constantly, so much. Whatever you're thinking? Way more.

What you post is also important! A line of text that says "i've got some pdfs up on itch" and then the link itself is not really effective - you gotta give folks more info. Be more specific. Have at least one image for everything you sell, so you can share it around! I find picking one thing or a small set of related things per message about my stuff is the most effective. People probably have some idea what I do, but they are only going to know they want what I make if I literally show it to them, one thing at a time - and that's reasonable!

So if you've got some mug designs up on S6, pick 1 or 2, make a tweet with images and a tagline about these specific designs, and follow that with a link. Better images are better, so if you have samples or products with you in your house, take some fun staged photos with thematic props or simple and clear photos on a solid coloured tablecloth! But almost any image is better than no image, even somewhat janky generated mock-ups. They're still helpful!

And be prepared to repeat yourself. A lot. Over and over again, with a few words changed, with a different but very similar mockup, with different groupings of 1-4 items. It will take time - sometimes weeks - for folks to go from seeing you mention something once, again, three times, to clicking on a link to learn more.

Also, you're going to need to repeat yourself, like, so much. You gotta tweet and post and share the same things over, and over, and over again, before people really notice them, internalize them, find them sticking in their minds...

...

You get it.

So, a few things in response to concerns I've heard in the past:

1) you can leave stuff up for sale for years

2) you can change your prices if you need to

3) it's unlikely you will make bank on day one, but DO NOT QUIT, this is a long game

4) you will never get 100% of the money

To expand:

1) You can leave your stuff up for sale for years! People will 100% come back months or years later for something they got really excited about in the past, and that's just how life is - sometimes we can't buy today but we will remember in future! Remember that literally NO ONE needs to know how many of any one thing you're selling, so even if you feel embarrassed about having an underperforming product this month, no one else knows that and it might be worth keeping it up in the shop a little longer! Confusingly, it is also worth it to retire things and make room for new ones, but do NOT let shame drive you, it's a TRAP. Make that decision by thinking about your brand, your interests, and what kind of creator you want to present online through your shop.

2) You can change your prices if you need to! I do recommend pricing higher than you think you should, because it is nicer to put something on sale than to raise the price, but you CAN raise prices if you need or want to - and there's lots of reasons to need to! Such as our old friend, inflation. I say this as someone who's done both, up and down, with and without fanfare. It's fine. Folks who make you feel bad about reassessing how much you need to charge are not, themselves, aware of all of it costs to offer it in the first place.

If you want to make your customers feel loved, give them warning - "two weeks to get this at the old price! on X day the price is going up! don't miss it!" OR "sale coming on friday! stay tuned for the discount code!" - this also is a great excuse to talk about stuff, so, y'know, make it work for you!

3) It's unlikely you will make bank on day one, but DO NOT QUIT, this is a long game.

Friends I have been selling shit seriously on the internet since, like, July 2009? Like, remember when cafepress launched and it was terrible but it was full of potential? Yeah, I'm that old. I have never tried to make selling stuff online into a full time job, but I have always kept myself in the green, which means I can keep doing it even through the lean times, the slow times, the years of few sales. And I really think that has been worthwhile!

I know that shouting into the void is exhausting, and I'm not telling you to be in 100% promo mode all the time! But don't pull your stuff off sale because the first month was slow. As I said above, people can take time to decide they want to make a purchase - I've had folks take years to buy a book or a print! Life's unpredictable, don't totally bail on people who might've wishlisted you for future flush times. And don't assume those folks don't exist. That voice in your head is imposter syndrome, shame, or frustration, and it's not helpful.

Slowly building up a library of game pdfs; or a selection of themed shirt designs; or a stack of comic zines; you know that making those things takes time and builds slowly - now trust that your shop can work the same way. And remember, every new thing you list is an excuse to talk about everything you currently have listed!

4) You will never get 100% of the money.

This kinda sucks, but, unlike selling things for cash at a con or a fair or an art show in your friend's bar, if you sell stuff online you will always, always be paying some of that money to payment processing and service fees. Anyone who processes credit cards will have fixed fees for those transactions; y'all know about paypal's fees; anyone on Etsy can tell you about listing fees and expiring listings and that whole system. Stripe, square, patreon, gumroad - they all take fees. Any brick and mortar shop that takes debit or credit deals with the same fees. It is part of the structure of selling and it's shitty and it's unavoidable. Getting mad about it is fair! But letting it block you from getting your stuff out there is shooting yourself in the foot. Consider these as part of your costs, and they won't screw you over.

And this doesn't even touch on taxes. Sorry. They're real and you gotta pay those too. All of these services I have mentioned keep receipts with costs and fees broken down and it is totally possible to assemble beautiful tax spreadsheets with them. Talk to an accountant.

So now, to bring it back to my starting point: it is absolutely worth it to sell your stuff at whatever scale or scope you are comfortable, AS LONG AS YOUR COSTS ARE FULLY COVERED. You need to figure out what those costs are, and you need to price higher.

You will burn yourself out if you do not do this - you will put yourself into debt if you do not do this - you will hate everyone who buys something from you if you do not do this. Price. Higher. Than. Your. Costs.

Do not apologize for this, do not feel ashamed of the price - you didn't set those costs, you live in society with the rest of us, you have to eat and sleep and stay healthy, and honestly, it is very likely you are HUGELY undervaluing your own work. We all are! It's built in.

This is how I think about it: pricing is a question you ask a customer. If they say "sure!" then you priced fine. Not every price is for every customer, and not every product can be made cheaply at the scale available to you; you are not a villain for not being born rich enough to give away all your work.

Again: you are not a villain for not being born rich enough to give away all your work.

You are one person, making shit they think is neat, and your first responsibility is to future you who presumably also wants to eat, sleep, be healthy, and make stuff. Put your mask on first.

If you have the ability to give away community copies, do it! If you can price high enough that paying customers subsidize PWYW customers, do it! Digital assets are by far the easiest to do this with, as they cost little to nothing to reproduce and distribute. Clothing, housewares, that art zine you lovingly hand bound every copy of with thread? Those have fixed costs to produce, fixed costs to ship to your customers. Those costs are not your fault, and they will only really reduce per unit if you explore scale and automation, both of which cost money, time, space, money, and more money.

And none of this even begins to engage with the idea that the work itself - the writing, the art, the design, the composition, the layout, the editing, the prepress, all the skills you brought together to make these personal expressions - that also has real legitimate value. People who love your comics don't love them and pay for them because you printed on nice paper with a fixed cost - they love them because they're your comics. The nice paper is a delivery mechanism.

I can't cure your imposter syndrome any more than I can cure my own, but I can tell you: if you can swallow the fear and self doubt just long enough to list a few things for sale, just while you schedule a few promo tweets, your fans and friends might really surprise you.

Now, let me pivot to a very contentious subject:

Shipping.

It's fucking expensive.

I am using an expletive because it is accurate.

This is the only cost that folks already expect to be shown up front when they buy something. Why. Would. You. Pretend. It. Isn't. Expensive.

I know people are more likely to buy something with free shipping, but at the scale that most of us are working at, this would require HUGE price increases to absorb. Why not be honest about where that chunk of money is going? Cause it's not going to you. Not a cent.

I am firmly of the opinion that you should be as honest and upfront about the shipping costs to your customers as you can be. At least at the independent creator scale.

And to wrap up this rant (and gosh I hope I'm hitting a helpful pep talk tone and not, like, a condescending mess vibe) I want to remind you one more time that you can sell digital assets! If you're in TTRPGs or music or videogames, you're probably pretty comfortable with buying and selling literal files, but I think most of my buds in other scenes are more skeptical of the appeal of digital assets. So here are some digital assets I have bought or sold:

art book pdfs

comic book pdfs

rpg gamebook pdfs

rpg supplement pdfs

fiction ebooks

nonfic ebooks

print and play maps

P&P character sheets

P&P minis/tokens

P&P card games

music in lots of formats

movies in lots of formats

craft patterns/guides

fonts

templates

magazine pdfs

videogames

discord access

patreon access

phone/desktop wallpapers

tutorials and workshops

These all cost someone time and energy to make, but the distribution for them can be very, very, VERY cheap. So if you are extremely cautious and want to dip only the very end of one toe into this Selling Stuff water, I really recommend starting with digital assets! And it doesn't matter if it's a pdf of a webcomic that's free to read online, or a print and play sheet of minis, or a pack of phone wallpapers - list it, pop a number on it or, if you like, set it to Pay What You Want on gumroad or itch, and just see if anyone is interested!

For real, please, please, if you're an artist, throw together a PDF of your scanned sketchbook pages; if you're a writer, make a chapbook of poems or short stories or fun NPCs; whatever you make, try packaging it up nicely in a digital form and just, give folks the chance to pay. Even if it's just for the holiday season. Even if it's just for a month. I know you make awesome stuff, and I know I'm not the only one who values it.

And one final note for folks who think people will be let down when they see what they've bought, which is a real feeling we all have sometimes:

If you are honest in your description of what you are offering, people aren't going to feel cheated when they pay for it, because they will have made an informed decision to pay for it.

Trust them.

#sell your stuff #for real people want it #get paid #get that money #trust your fans #trust your friends #cover your costs #dear god cover your costs #tutorial #how to guide #pep talk #life advice #i believe in you #goddammit

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