Justyna Dorsz

Advice

DMCA takedown notice – form vs. email

My artwork is stolen so often that I need to send thousands of DMCA takedown notices each year.

To make the process as fast as possible, I use email templates. But most websites prefer to receive takedown notices via their forms. For example, every time I email a takedown notice to Etsy I receive an email asking me to submit future notices via their form.

Do they not realize that their form takes a few minutes to fill? Sending an email takes just a few seconds. I don’t want to waste my time filling out forms. I prefer to send emails wherever possible.

I can understand that Etsy prefers to receive filled out forms. They are easier to process. But I calculated that if I keep sending forms to Etsy, I will waste over a day of my life per year. And that’s just on Etsy. There are many more websites that I need to send takedown notices to.

If you need to send takedown notices, send them via email, instead of via form. Don’t waste more time than you need to.

Register artwork for $45, not $65

This is just a quick note to let you guys know that if you want to register your artwork in the US Copyright Office, then you can register it for $45. Maybe you already knew that, but I didn’t. When I was registering my first artwork I chose the Standard Application which costs $65. However, if there’s only one author, you can choose the option “Register One Work by One Author”. It wouldn’t matter that much if I only had one or two designs to register, but I have about 20.

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Register your work

If you are an artist/designer/photographer, you likely had your art stolen and used illegally. If not, it’s just a matter of time. Every day thousands of thieves try to sell artwork they have no rights to. This is an ongoing problem, and it isn’t going away anytime soon.

But one thing that’s been changing is that more and more artists are fighting back and suing the infringers. Even if you don’t plan to sue anyone yet, you can still prepare for the future when you can invest some money in lawyers.

And the first step is to register your artwork in the US Copyright Office. You should think about it even before you publish your artwork because this way you can save a lot of money. When I started making designs, I knew nothing about registering copyright. And even when I found out about it, I still hesitated for months because I thought I couldn’t afford it..

Now, when I am finally registering my designs that are already published, I need to pay $45 for each design registration. If I’d registered them before publishing, I would have paid $85 for 10 designs.

Register your work.

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!

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.

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