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….
[Continue Reading]Advice
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…
[Continue Reading]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…
[Continue Reading]Threadless explains
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.
[Continue Reading]Why you don’t see your designs on Threadless
You followed all the steps: Step 1. You opened your own shop on Threadless. Step 2. You made sure to set your store to Published. Step 3. You added your designs. Step 4. You made sure to publish your designs. And yet, when you go to Threadless main page and search for your designs you…
[Continue Reading]Red Zone
My bank warns me that my spendings this month have reached the red zone. Actually, not just “reached” — they are at the absolute top of the red zone: I don’t even remember a month when I was in the orange zone, I have always kept to the green one. But this month I had…
[Continue Reading]That was a mistake
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…
[Continue Reading]Don’t Panic
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…
[Continue Reading]Store Maintenance CHECKLIST
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….
[Continue Reading]What do people buy?
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,…
[Continue Reading]Making a children’s book – some notes
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…
[Continue Reading]One more reason to sell your art on Threadless
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…
[Continue Reading]Start before you are ready
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…
[Continue Reading]You never know what’s going to be popular
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…
[Continue Reading]Space Botanica
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,…
[Continue Reading]A note on promoting your art
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…
[Continue Reading]Make your first 100 mistakes
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…
[Continue Reading]Draw for fun, and sell
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…
[Continue Reading]My Mom is wrong
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…
[Continue Reading]Advice for aspiring artists
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….
[Continue Reading]Passive income with one hour a day
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…
[Continue Reading]No sales? Read this.
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…
[Continue Reading]Can you make money on Threadless?
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.
[Continue Reading]I am lucky that my first two jobs sucked
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…
[Continue Reading]Pottery Class Story
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…
[Continue Reading]4 steps for finding a name
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…
[Continue Reading]How to name your store
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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