Do yourself a favor and install Muzli. It’s a browser plugin that shows design inspirations every time you open a new tab.
Just yesterday I wrote about why you might not see your designs on Threadless. And now I see that Jake Nickell, who is the founder of Threadless, made two videos that explain it better:
They plan to post more useful videos, subscribe here.
You followed all the steps:
And yet, when you go to Threadless main page and search for your designs you can’t find them. You search by title, or by tags, or just browse all the designs, and you don’t see your designs anywhere. Why?
Your Artist Shop is separate from the Threadless main store. Your design can be added to the Threadless Marketplace but they are not added by default.
If you don’t see your designs on Threadless then the first thing to do is to make sure that you allowed your products to be visible in the Threadless Marketplace. Go to your Artist Shop settings and set “Allow my shop’s products to be considered in the Threadless Marketplace”:
However, even if you set that option and allow for your products to be visible in the Threadless Marketplace it’s still possible that your shop won’t be visible in the Threadless Marketplace and that your designs won’t be available in the Threadless site search.
Why? Because Threadless doesn’t show all the designs from all artist’s shop on their main page. They explain it best in their FAQ:
While each Artist Shop is separate from the Threadless catalog, designs may or may not automatically be included in the Threadless marketplace and search. Inclusion into the Threadless marketplace and Threadless search depends on a combination of design quality and commercial viability for the Threadless market, marketplace and Artist Shop sales and activity, product tagging, and search relevancy.
–About the Threadless Marketplace
So, if you want people to find your designs on Threadless, you need to create designs that Threadless customers might be interested in. If Threadless decides that your designs might interest people visiting the website then your designs will be visible to them. This is because Threadless is a curated store. If all the designs from all the artist shops were visible there, then it would be a mess.
It might be discouraging not to see your designs in the Threadless Marketplace — you added your designs, and yet the customers who visit the site don’t even see them and can’t buy them. But, if your designs are good, then Threadless will most likely add them to their Marketplace and then customers will see them.
My store is visible in the Threadless Marketplace. I wrote some advice that will help you get your designs noticed by the Threadless team:
I can’t believe it’s been a week since my last Weekly Notes, it feels as if I wrote them two days ago. I don’t know how is it possible that times run so fast.
Today my family came over, we made a pizza and ate a lot of cheesecake made by my mom’s partner. We will need to establish some kind of limits on how much food everyone is allowed to bring next time. Though, I admit that I am the person most responsible for the surplus of ingredients for the pizza as I bought thrice as much as was needed.
I drew another space design and added it to my Threadless Shop. This is the first of two designs that I had planned for this week. Though I truly don’t know if I manage to draw the second one because tomorrow my whole family comes over and we are making pizza.
A few weeks ago I subscribed to yet another newsletter called The Imperfectionist. It’s written by Oliver Burkeman.
There have so far — since I subscribed — been just 3 emails sent, but it feels like each one is tailored to me. I know it sounds ridiculous — but I swear, each one answered one of the issues that I struggled with at the moment.
The first one, titled “How to make writing less hard” had 3 tips on writing. Even if you aren’t subscribed to the newsletter, you can view the email online.
The second one, “Are we there yet?”, starts with a story about Sam Harris, I am going to quote it here:
Sam Harris recalls being in the middle of a long session of moaning to a friend, about all the crap he was dealing with at the time, when she interrupted him. “Hold on,” she said (or words to this effect). “Are you still under the illusion that you’ll one day reach a point in your life where you no longer have any problems?”
It’s like it’s directed at me. I have always thought that once I am more disciplined and organized and finish some of my projects that drag on, I will have it finally all under control. It has only recently occurred to me that I will maybe never be in a state where I have everything figured out.
It reminded me of a tweet I once saw:
And the latest mail, sent yesterday, was about constantly having too many things to read, it’s called “Too many needles”.
The Imperfectionist is one of my favorite newsletters now. You can subscribe here if you want.
Today I saw this tweet:
Stefan von Imhof wrote that 97% of all blogs are defunct after 3 years. I tried to check if it’s true but the only data I found was that 95% of blogs are abandoned.
The main reason that people give as to why they stopped blogging:
I guess the odds are against me, there’s a 95-97% chance that I will stop blogging within the next 3 years. We will see.
I write a lot about my successful designs. I mentioned my most popular design a few times, and other designs that earned me a lot of money. It might seem that whatever I draw sells well and brings me regular income, but that’s not the case. Far from it. A lot of my designs don’t earn even a few dollars. There are about 30 designs that so far haven’t earned anything.
This is a design that earned me just $10 so far:
It was supposed to be a cat that did something silly like chased a raccoon or stayed up all night at a party when they had work in the morning.
Yet, apparently, people don’t find it funny or cute, or maybe they just don’t like it. I don’t know. I never know anything. I just keep drawing. And sometimes a design gets popular, and I earn money.
Last day of the week for me is Sunday. But apparently for a lot of people Sunday is the first day of the week.
It’s so strange to think of Sunday as the first day. I’ve tried it for a few minutes — I actively wanted to convince myself that Sunday, not Monday, is the first day. But it doesn’t work. It must be so ingrained that thinking to oneself: “Today is the first day of the week” is not enough to change anything.
