Justyna Dorsz

Advice

Now Page

I’ve recently created my “Now” page. It’s a page that tells a bit about what I am currently working on, my most recent projects, what I am reading, etc. I took inspiration from Derek Siver’s now page.

So many people have created their own “now” pages that Derek made a website nownownow.com that collects all those pages. You can see what other people are working on and get inspired. I’ve already read about 50 profiles for fun.

If you have a website and don’t have a “now” page, consider creating it. This is a really neat idea, and people visiting your website won’t have to scroll through tens of blog posts to see what you are up to. And when you have the page, add it to nownownow.com, so others can find you. If you are unsure of what to write on your “now” page, read this explanation.

First Sale!

Someone bought a t-shirt from my new TRUFFLEPIG store!

To give you some context — I opened my store 3 days ago and have uploaded 11 designs so far. Of course, I know it is luck — someone noticed my design among thousands and liked it and bought it. But you might be just as lucky if you open your own store. The more designs you upload, the greater chance that someone will buy something from you.

It might seem like a humble start — one t-shirt sold. However, this is exactly how it was in the beginning when I opened my Fox Shiver store. I didn’t have huge sales from the start. But one by one people visited my store and bought something. I kept adding new designs, and earnings were increasing month by month. You can do the same — open an Artist Shop and add a few designs. Don’t get discouraged by a slow start. Keep making designs, and be patient.

Back to the Gym

If the person who bought the t-shirt reads this blog — thank you!

Bad output

I stumbled upon an interesting tweet by Julian Shapiro. I know it’s a few months old but I liked it so I am sharing it here in case you find it useful too:

To finally start creating good stuff you need to create a lot of bad stuff first. It applies to writing, but also to drawing —a drawing usually needs a few tries too. You draw your first idea, see that it doesn’t quite work, iterate on it, until you arrive at something good.

Finding a niche

Everyone always says you should find your niche. But it’s not easy.

Years ago, when I started making designs, I couldn’t identify just one theme to focus on. I named my store Fox Shiver because I wanted to draw a lot of foxes. But then I also drew cats, and dogs, and gloomy birds, and space. Now my store is a mess.

I’ve been thinking, it’s possible that in 10 years I will still be making designs. I like drawing, I have a lot of ideas, I have sketches that I want to turn into designs. If I keep adding all my designs to my main store, in a few years I will have, say, 500 designs. It will be difficult for anyone to find what they want. For example, if someone who loves cats searches for a cat shirt in my store, they will have to go through 350 designs of dogs, space, trees, pigs, and other topics that they have no interest in.

I’ve decided to make a separate store for some of my designs. It will be focused on cute and funny animals. I will maybe even move some of my existing designs from the Fox Shiver store.

Now I am in the process of searching for a name for my store. I am using random word generators like this one, and this one, to search for interesting and unique words. I also check word combinations using a portmanteau generator. I write down all the words I like and look for connections. Something will jump out at me soon.

Edit (15 June, 2021): My new store is TRUFFLEPIG!

Is Threadless worth it?

I know how it is. Every few weeks, you hear about yet another website where you should be selling your designs. And you wonder, Is it worth my time?

If you have ever submitted your designs to any Print-On-Demand websites, you know that it takes a lot of time. And sometimes, after all that effort, you see no sales. Worse, some of those websites may disappear after a while and stop paying out royalties to artists. It happened to me twice.

It’s understandable that you ask yourself, Should I invest my time in yet another website? Is Threadless worth it?

If you are scanning this article to find the answer, then here it is: Yes! You absolutely should submit your designs to Threadless.

I have been selling my art on Threadless for the past 5 years. No other website has brought me as much money in passive income as Threadless. The beginning was tough — I wasn’t making much money right away. It might be the same for you. But don’t get discouraged, keep making designs — the more you submit, the more likely it is that you will be successful.

8 Tips for Selling on Threadless.
Open your Threadless Artist Shop
What happens when Threadless selects your design?

Our Cat Book – Newsletter

I made a new landing page, just with a subscribe button, using ConvertKit. ConvertKit is a service that lets you collect e-mail addresses and send newsletters.

If you want to subscribe to our newsletter about our cat book you can do it here.

ConvertKit is an alternative to Mailchimp, which I had always used before. This is the first time I’ve used ConvertKit instead of Mailchimp. Mostly I just want to see how are they different and test which one is better.

I can already tell you that ConvertKit is very easy to use. I created a landing page to let people subscribe to a newsletter about our cat book in less than 5 minutes. If you have any kind of project/book/game/whatever-else-you-are-working-on, it’s a good idea to start collecting the e-mail addresses of anyone who might be interested as soon as possible. You can go to ConvertKit and create an account — for free! — and then create a page in mere minutes. Good luck!

I would love to see anything you guys are working on, let me know here in the comments or on Twitter.

Overwhelming to-do list

My to-do list is always a few hundred items long. I am overwhelmed by it on a daily basis and constantly try to make it more manageable. Thomas Frank has just released a video “5 steps to tame your overwhelming to-do list” which, I think, drove the point across that I can’t do it all. And if something is neither important nor urgent then it needs to be deleted.

After watching the video I went through my list for the upcoming week and deleted a few items, including participating in a local art competition. I had wanted to take part but it’s neither urgent nor important, I have other things that I want to work on, so it had to go.

Welcome new people

My website statistics tell me that there’s been a 29% increase in traffic in March. That’s — wow — that’s a lot. Reader, what is the reason for your visit?

I wrote a few posts about creating designs for Threadless and other websites. If you are a new artist trying to make a living, then those might be useful to you:

However, in real life, I am not often asked about details of my work or how I earn money, or anything like that. People are more interested in my story: how did it happen that I quit my job? weren’t I scared? is it really possible to earn money on your own? what if I fail? People tell me — and believe me, this surprises me every time — that my story/life is inspiring. That they too would like to be so independent. But, for various reasons, they can’t.

I like the idea of inspiring people to quit their jobs and do their own thing. If you read my blog then I hope you at least get that much out of it — an inspiration, a little push, to quit the job that you hate, that wastes your health and time, and to put effort into finding a creative work that you like, be your own boss. If work for others, then only until you learn enough to work for yourself.

Update your collections

Updating collections in your Threadless Shop is one of the items on my Store Maintenance CHECKLIST.

Create collections and keep them up to date so that customers can easily find relevant items. I have my Ridiculous Cat Collection, Dogs, Space, Best Face Masks, Forest, a collection with Best Gift Ideas, and also my collection with Black and White Cat Designs.

Now, I’ve added a collection called New Arrivals. I will make sure it always shows my 10 to 15 most recent designs.

New Arrivals collection in my Fox Shiver store
New Arrivals collection