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Justyna Dorsz

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Advice

Don’t Panic

February 25, 2021

I see a lot of artists worried about low sales these past few weeks. Don’t panic! That’s completely normal this time of year. I’ve been a designer since 2012, and it has always been like that. February and March are just very, very slow months. Maybe this year is a bit slower than the previous…

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Tagged With: Advice, Artist Life, Threadless

Store Maintenance CHECKLIST

February 22, 2021

I have a few stores with my designs. My main store is on Threadless but I also have my Teepublic store and a few smaller ones. I could leave them as they are and I would earn some passive income from them. But my stores would decline in popularity if I didn’t maintain them properly….

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Tagged With: Advice, Checklist

What do people buy?

February 20, 2021

I’ve written a lot about why you should open your own apparel store and sell your designs. But opening a store and uploading your art is just the first step. When I started, I rarely got any sales. Once or twice a month someone bought a t-shirt with my design. The more designs I uploaded,…

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Tagged With: Advice, Threadless

Making a children’s book – some notes

February 10, 2021

A few weeks ago, my brother and I started working on our first children’s book about cats. This is a good time to write a bit about the process and why we decided on this project. From the start it was a challenge: Both my brother and I are artists, but we make designs for…

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Tagged With: Advice, Mindset, Money, Our book

One more reason to sell your art on Threadless

February 6, 2021

It’s not a secret that I like Threadless. They are my favorite company, you can earn a lot of money, and there are even more perks. I’ve just noticed that for the entire month of March Threadless runs an additional promotion for artists. For every regular t-shirt sold in your Artist Shop, you get double…

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Tagged With: Advice, Threadless

Start before you are ready

February 3, 2021

When I started making designs for apparel in 2012, I could see that my designs weren’t that good. Nevertheless, I submitted them all to Teefury. Sure enough, Teefury didn’t want them. I received rejection email after rejection email. But I kept at it and slowly improved. I sent all my designs, regardless of how I…

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Tagged With: Advice, Mindset, Rejection

You never know what’s going to be popular

January 29, 2021

You could not have missed the Bernie Sanders chair meme. I’ve seen tens of images that placed him in many strange places. This one is my favorite: What’s funny is that the photographer who took the photo, Brendan Smialowski, said in an interview for Rolling Stone that he didn’t anticipate it being as popular as…

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Tagged With: Advice

Space Botanica

January 17, 2021

You probably heard that you should choose a niche for your store and that all your designs in that store should be thematically consistent. If you want to make designs with a completely different topic or style, then you should create a new store for them. When customers visit your store or see your logo,…

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Tagged With: Advice, Artist Life, Design, Space

A note on promoting your art

January 11, 2021

Yesterday someone asked me for tips on marketing and getting traffic to your store. These questions come up often. Too bad, I can’t help with that. My strategy has always been to create good designs. I assumed that people would find their way to my designs somehow, even if I don’t promote them in any…

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Tagged With: Advice

Make your first 100 mistakes

January 1, 2021

Quality doesn’t matter, quantity does. It’s better to do 100 drawings than spend all that time on a single drawing. Starting a blog is scary, but I knew I would only get better if I wrote a lot. The first 100 designs are going to be awful, get them out of the way as soon…

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Tagged With: Advice, Productivity

Draw for fun, and sell

December 22, 2020

A few days ago, I bought a Kindle. Today I’ve been working on an image that I will then print on a case for my Kindle. This is still a work in progress and I don’t know how it will turn out but this is what I have so far: I am doing it just…

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Tagged With: Advice, Art

My Mom is wrong

December 20, 2020

True to a mentality of any generation, I think my Mom is wrong about everything. You can take any area of expertise and it seems my Mom manages to be wrong about it. Let’s take nutrition — she thinks potatoes and bread are healthy. Or managing money — she doesn’t invest, she doesn’t even save…

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Tagged With: Advice, Personal

Advice for aspiring artists

December 17, 2020

It’s an advice for aspiring actors, not for artists, but it applies anyway. Bryan Cranston is an actor, he played the main character in Breaking Bad. What he says is that you should do your job, as you can, and everything else is out of your control, so you should not even think about it….

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Tagged With: Advice, Artist Life

Passive income with one hour a day

December 9, 2020

I am having a difficult time convincing my friends that they too could make designs and earn money. They say they don’t have time. You don’t need that much time. One hour a day is enough to start. You don’t even need any tools. I use a graphic tablet, and if you want you can…

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Tagged With: Advice, Money

No sales? Read this.

November 29, 2020

I belong to a few Facebook groups for designers and there’s one topic that keeps coming up, though it’s usually asked in various ways: “No one buys my designs. Am I doing something wrong?” “How to get customers?” “I uploaded 5 designs already and no sales! Why?” “Is it even possible to sell anything? Does…

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Tagged With: Advice, Mindset, Useful

Can you make money on Threadless?

November 23, 2020

Artists often ask me: can you make money on Threadless? I’ve been selling my art on Threadless for 5 years. So I can answer that.

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Tagged With: Advice, Money, Threadless, Useful

I am lucky that my first two jobs sucked

November 18, 2020

When I was in my third year at a university, I got my first serious job as a programmer. I wasn’t very good, but I was just good enough to have my contract extended a few times so I stayed there for three years while getting my degree in computer science. The first two years…

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Tagged With: Advice

Pottery Class Story

November 11, 2020

The story goes like this: in a pottery class students were divided into two groups. Students in the first group were asked to make a perfect pot. Students in the second one were asked to make as many pots as they could. When all pots were compared it turned out that all the best pots…

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Tagged With: Advice, Mindset

4 steps for finding a name

November 7, 2020

I wrote before that the crucial thing is doing the work, not worrying about a name. But you still have to actually find a name. Here I am noting down the process that I use to find names for my stores, websites, companies, and games. There are 4 steps: 1. Write down all the words…

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Tagged With: Advice

How to name your store

November 5, 2020

When I opened one of my stores a few years ago I planned to draw little foxes and put them on t-shirts and tote bags. It was supposed to be dark and weird art, the foxes would all be alone in forests and caves, at night. And it would be winter. I named the store:…

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Tagged With: Advice, Design, Fox

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Every few weeks I write an email newsletter about design, passive income, and other things worth sharing.

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