My brother has resumed work on our cat book. If you don’t know what I am talking about, here is the first post I wrote about it. The book is about a house full of cats. There will be seven areas in total. We started with the kitchen. After that we worked on the library, the garden, and the attic.
Now I am working on the toy room. My brother drew the initial sketch and mapped out larger furniture:
Now it’s my job to add all the details: toys, book, stuffed animals, and dozens of cats.
I’ve seen tweets and articles proclaiming that cotton prices have hit a 9 year high and that we might soon need to pay more for clothes. So, I checked the history of cotton prices in the last 20 years, and I must say, I didn’t think cotton prices fluctuate that much.
The time before Christmas is always so busy for artists and sellers like me. I have been spending a lot of time lately uploading all my designs, adding tags, descriptions, enabling all new products and colors that were added since I last did that. It’s a lot of work.
But it will all be worth it. The Black Friday sales and Christmas shopping bring me a lot of money every year. If you are an artist, then remember to upload as many designs as you can by November. And add all the tags and promote on Pinterest or wherever you promote. We can all rest later 🙂
One of my new drawings that I just added to my store:
I found my new favorite Twitter account. It’s called Thoughts of Dog. It’s hilarious. Definitely go read it if you’re feeling down or just want something funny and wholesome to read.
You might remember that a few weeks ago I wrote a blog post for the Threadless blog, Creative Resources. My article was about how I earn money on Threadless. I shared everything I knew so that you could start and grow your store, too.
Another artist, Ink Tuesday, wrote a blog post for Threadless too. They opened their store recently and also posted a lot of short videos showing how each design was made to TikTok. It’s a very inspiring article — it must have taken a lot of courage to write it when they are just starting out and have no idea if people will like their art.
Ink Tuesday mentions me and that my blog post “lifted their spirits” which I am so happy to hear! I am glad that what I wrote helped even one person.
I’ve been reading a lot about taxes recently. And so I started a company, mostly to optimize and simplify my taxes.
There was no way for me — as an artist — to hire an accountant, because tax law is very murky and complicated regarding the taxes that artists should pay. I talked with a tax advisor first, before starting a company, and he said that the law is so unclear and can be interpreted in different ways that he couldn’t help me. Now, I have a company, and an accountant is taking care of all those tax related things and I don’t have to worry about any of that.
I will also pay less in taxes than I used to pay when I didn’t have a company. This seems like something more people should be aware of. But for a very long time I didn’t know that having a company, despite the accounting costs, is a good business decision and will save me money long term.
Instead of starting a company in Poland — my native country — I started it in Estonia. The taxes are very similar, so it’s not like I am saving any money on that, but there’s way less bureaucracy and you can deal with most things online. Also, I don’t trust the Polish government — it’s like they are set on ruining the Polish economy. I know many people who have companies in Poland and the costs, taxes, obligations, and ridiculous rules that are invented every year just to squeeze a bit more money from even the smallest companies are insane.
I would rather pay my taxes in Estonia where the government seems more capable.
I’ve realized how little I know about marketing and how to promote my designs.
I sometimes post my designs on Instagram or Pinterest. Lately I’ve been posting to Tumblr too, and every few weeks I tweet about my store or my designs. This is all a minimum effort. I feel I should do more. Many successful artists promote their art more consistently.
Once I started reading and watching YouTube videos about marketing, I realized how little I know about the topic.
For example, I watched a lot of Wholesale Ted videos – gave me a lot to think about. Particularly their analysis of niches and what sells best has been useful.
Other artists told me that it’s good to promote on Pinterest and that they get sales from there. I’ve tried that but had no success so far. And then I watched this Pinterest Guide, and I realized I was doing everything wrong and not really doing enough, anyway. Go watch it, you might learn something too.
