Money

$4.71

The dark side of freelancing is — unstable income.

I like being an independent artist and programmer. I wouldn’t want to work in someone else’s firm. But there’s one thing that people new to freelancing have a hard time dealing with. It’s the fact that income is so unstable that some months you might not even earn anything.

I’ve already written about the fact that February is a bad month for designers. For example, one of the websites just paid me $4.71 for my designs sold during the past month.

But unstable income also means that there are months when you earn way more than you would earn in your standard employment. Remember, it just takes a while to get to that point. Don’t quit halfway.

Sales are worth it

Websites, where I sell my designs, run site-wide sales every few weeks. Everything is discounted, sometimes as much as 50%.

I know some artists complain about it. When there’s no sale we earn around 25% of the price of an item. When there is a sale we get less, often as low as 10%.

But sales bring in more customers, so more items are sold. In fact, we all earn more money during sales, even though we get paid less per item.

Unfortunately, none of the apparel websites show sales graphs so we can’t see clearly that sales are worth it. It would be great if they implemented it. But for now, I can show you a sales graph for games sold on Steam.

This is a graph showing units sold of all our games:

Steam Sales Data for Manic Hyena games — Manic Hyena games – units sold

Each spike is during a sale. The first spike is the Summer Sale – it’s one of two big events during the year. The smaller spikes are during less significant events, like Weekly Deal. But even the smaller sales bring in a 5x increase in the volume of sold games.

A graph for apparel sales would look similar. I will see if I can export the data and create my own graphs. Stay tuned.

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 apparel and 3D art for our games. We are not illustrators, we have never illustrated a book before.
We don’t have a publisher yet. We don’t know if we are going to find one.
We have never done anything like this before. We have no experience in making or publishing books. So if we are doing something wrong, we don’t know it.
At first, we wanted to make a simple book but soon decided to draw rich and beautiful illustrations — and that takes a lot of time.
From what I know, books don’t bring a lot of income. At times, it feels like we should be working and earning money instead of making a book.

Why make a book then? Our time would be better spent making a new game or starting another apparel store. We have experience with those so we would know how to make them profitable. But that would mean working on something that we are familiar with and staying in our comfort zone. That’s not good. It’s better to challenge yourself, work on something difficult, and learn in the process.

There’s another reason why it’s a good idea to have different projects — income diversification. If you have just one income source, then you are vulnerable. If that income source dries up, then you have to scramble to find work and might be forced to accept unfavorable terms. But if you have two or three income sources, then you are in a more secure position. Even if you lose one of your income streams, you are not going to be desperate. You will have time to figure things out, search for other opportunities.

You never know how successful your project is going to be. It’s a risk to work on something new, it might not work out at all. We had some failed attempts. But we worked on so many things that at least some of them became profitable.

There’s a risk that our book won’t get published or won’t get many sales. There’s also a chance that it will get published and become another passive income source.

“Spacing Out” design sales stats

I plan to share sales data of all my designs. Everyone always asks how much you can earn. Today, let’s see sales stats for “Spacing Out”.

"Spacing Out" by Justyna Dorsz — “Spacing Out”

Sales Stats

Average Monthly Earnings: $16

Total Earned: $655

It earns me only $16 per month. Not much. But that’s the thing about passive income — you make a design once and then it keeps earning you money without you doing anything else. And when you have 30 designs, or 50, or 100, and each one brings in a small passive income — well, you do the math.

As with many of my designs, when I drew it, I wasn’t sure if I should publish it. But I did, and now I have an additional $655 that I wouldn’t have, had I not submitted it to Threadless.

“Zen Maze” design sales stats

I think it might be interesting to share how much each of my designs has earned. For today I have selected “Zen Maze”.

“Zen Maze” is a moderately successful design, which means the sales are somewhat in the middle among my designs.

Sales Stats

Average Monthly Earnings: $58

Total Earned: $755

How long did it take to make?

It took me 2 hours to make and another 1 hour to modify it for different products.

The design on apparel is slightly different than the design on most other items. I didn’t want it to be a regular rectangle when printed on clothes, so I erased some parts and made it irregular:

But on other items it looks best when it takes up all the space:

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 buy a Huion Graphic Tablet, which is good and cheap.

You can also start with just a pencil and a piece of paper:

Draw something.
Take a photo of the drawing.
Clean it up in Krita or Photoshop. Follow a tutorial on cleaning up scanned line art, like this one.
Separate linework from the background. You need to save just the line art in a PNG file. Here’s a good tutorial.
Now that you have a PNG file with a transparent background, you can submit it to your Threadless store.

Now, what to draw? Choose something that you can sketch in a few minutes. Maybe there’s a funny saying that you or your friends use? Put it on a t-shirt. Can you create a simple sketch of an animal? If you can’t draw well, then try drawing just a cat’s head, make it easy on yourself. Do you have a dog or a cat? Take a photo and then draw over it to learn.

Start with simple designs. So simple that they consist of two or three elements only. You can make a design like that quickly. Once you get better at it, you can draw something more complicated.

How 50% off sale punishes an artist

It doesn’t. But we will get to it in a moment. First, let’s see why so many artists think that it is wrong and unfair when there is a site-wide sale and items with their art are sold for a discounted price.

Every few weeks every website that sells clothes runs a sale. And when that happens artists complain about it on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. Why? Well, when there is no sale, an artist gets, let’s say, $4 or $7 in royalties from a t-shirt sold with their design, but when there is a sale, an artist gets $1 – $2.

Let’s take Threadless as an example. When there is no sale an artist gets around 25% of the price of an item. But when there is a sale they get only 10%.

Now, you may ask, “Won’t artists make more money when there is a sale since more items are sold?” Yes, they do. More t-shirts are sold so artists make much more money during the sale, even though they get paid less per item.

How is it possible, then, that artist complain about it even if they make more money?

I am going to explain it with a story about “World of Warcraft”, which, on the off chance you don’t know that, is a video game. “World of Warcraft” developers didn’t want players to play too many hours in a row. So they devised a system where players got fewer experience points the longer they played. To get the usual number of experience points players needed to take a break and come back to the game later.

Players hated it. Gaining fewer experience points the longer they played felt like a punishment. To fix that, the developers changed it and implemented a resting mechanic. This means that when players are not playing the game, they gain a resting bonus. Then, when they finally come back to the game, they get more experience points based on the bonus they accumulated. The resting bonus gets used up over time, so after a few hours, players need to take a break again to restore it.

I haven’t played “World of Warcraft” but I heard this story here:

Those are the same systems, of course. The developers themselves even stated that those were the “same numbers seen from the opposite point of view.” It makes such a huge difference to think of something as a reward instead of punishment!

Now, back to designers. Designers think that the base price is the price when the item is not on sale. Then they get 25% of the price. If there’s a sale, designers get only 10%. It feels like a punishment and artists complain in Facebook groups about being treated unfairly.

What’s wrong with this situation and how to make artists see the situation from a different point of view? Can the solution from “World of Warcraft” be used here? Here are two things that any website working with artists should realize:

First, the base price of an item is not the same for a customer and for an artist. The base price for a customer is the full price, so, when there’s a sale, they feel they are rewarded for buying an item for less money: they get the item AND save money.
The base price, in an artist’s mind, should be the discounted price, not the full price. Why? Because the sale period is when artists sell the most items.

Second, don’t hide how much artists earn. Any website that advertises to artists that they make 25% of a price is guilty of making artists feel punished when they inevitably earn only 10% from items on sale.
I love Threadless, I do, I make a lot of money there and amazing people work there. However, look at this table, where Threadless claims that you get $7, or around 25%, per t-shirt:

From blog post: “Announcing a massive increase to artist earnings”

There’s no mention of the 10% profit that an artist makes most of the time when their design is bought.

Of course, it’s not surprising that Threadless advertises the $7 that an artist makes from a $25 t-shirt. Threadless wants to pay artists a lot so that artists publish artwork on their website. And in the case of Threadless and Teepublic and a few other websites, I actually do believe that they want to pay artists fairly and support them.

The table looks nice but overpromises. Artists expect a 25% profit, but instead, when there is a sale, they earn a lot less than they thought they would, and so they feel punished.

How should this table look to make an artist feel rewarded instead of punished? There should be two columns:

one column with a 10% profit for when an item is on sale,
and another column with BONUS PROFIT for when an item is not on sale.

Threadless does an amazing thing here, which they don’t advertise at all. When an item is not on sale, they give artists a disproportionate percentage of additional profits. This is an opportunity to make artists feel rewarded.

Designers give up on passive income

Passive income from digital designs — Photo by Cristofer Jeschke on Unsplash

Two years ago I talked to a fellow designer. She told me that she opened her store on one of the websites where you can sell your art. If I remember correctly, it was Society6. But she stopped uploading her art there and I think she might have even closed her store. She said that she didn’t get any sales and that she mostly earns her money by doing freelance work.

Which is all good — you definitely can earn your living like that. Designers are very needed now, it seems everyone has a project that they need designers for: to design websites, apps, marketing materials, infographics. The problem is that if you earn money for freelance work, you only earn when you work. So there’s a limit to how much you can earn and it’s defined by how much time you have for work.

You probably don’t want to spend all your time working.

That’s why it’s so important to find other income sources. And one of them is earning passive income from your designs.

The easiest way to do that is to upload your designs to one of the websites that will sell your art and you won’t have to spend any more time on that. You will simply get paid royalties every month.

In the beginning, my royalties were $2 or $3 a month. So I get it, it’s easy to get discouraged and stop publishing your art. Or even to close your store as my friend did. I told her that a significant part of my income comes from Society6, TeePublic, Redbubble, Threadless, and convinced her to give it another try.

When you upload your designs to Society6 or anywhere else you might not get any sales at first. Just wait. And upload more art. If you keep at it, it’s only a matter of time until you get your first sale.

Make your first sale in the next 3 weeks

Tomorrow is Black Friday and after that the best 3 weeks for all the artists who sell their art online.

Everyone shops for gifts and so artists make the majority of their income in November and December.

Conversely, January and February are very slow months and I earn very little in those months. Good thing that all the income you can earn before Christmas more than makes up for it.

You need to take advantage of this busy time.

If you haven’t yet, then you definitely should open your store. I recommend:

Threadless – which is my favorite one, and
TeePublic – which has the easiest and fastest system for uploading artwork.

You can also publish your art in a few other places. Wherever you submit your designs remember to add tags!

Usually, when you open your store you have to wait for weeks or even months for your first sale. Internet is full of people who complain that they get no sales and then they get discouraged and close their shops. But if you open your store now and upload even just a few designs, you have an amazing opportunity to make your first sale in the next few days.

Can you make money on Threadless?

Friends, family, and other artists often ask me: can you make money on Threadless?

I’ve been a designer for 8 years now and I’ve been selling my art on Threadless for the past 5 years so I think I can answer that. The short answer is: Yes! You absolutely can make money on Threadless. Nearly every month I earn a substantial part of my income from Threadless.

When you are just starting selling your art online it might seem daunting. I know – I was there. So here are a few things that will help you if you want to earn money on Threadless:

Make a lot of designs. You never know which one is going to be popular.
Don’t get discouraged when no one buys your designs at first. Just keep designing and publishing.
Try to find your niche. I make a lot of designs with cats and space because that’s what I like to draw. Maybe you like dogs or hiking or pizza? Draw that.
Post about your new designs on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook. The more people see your designs the better.
Tags! Add tags to your designs so people can find them. I try to add at least 8 tags to each design. It’s a good idea to also write a short description.
Submit designs both to your Artist Store and to Design Challenges. Even if you don’t win a challenge, more people will see your designs and you will gain new followers.
When you add a design to your store make sure you enable it on other products, not only t-shirts. Customers often buy hoodies, masks, tote bags, and pillows.
If you haven’t yet opened a store, you should open one now! I have no affiliation with Threadless, I just like them a lot and earn a lot of money there. If you don’t know how to name your store, here’s a short guide.

Hope that helps. Here is my store if you want to take a look.

Money

Sales Stats

Sales Stats

How long did it take to make?

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