Sell Your Art

TeePublic

Wed, Apr 8, 2020

Want to sell your art but not sure where to begin? Here are our 7 best tips on how to decide what’s right for you.

1. Don't Hold Back!

Now is a great time to take stock of your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of selling your art. Take 10 minutes out of your day to journal on this topic. What comes up? Review what you've written and note any patterns you see. Fears that you see repeating in your journal entry are the ones you should be focusing on. The more fearless you are at facing yourself, the more you'll feel in control when you put your art into the world.

If cost, holding stock, or fear of commitment keep cropping up, Print-on-Demand (POD) might be right for you.

Look, we get it, selling art can be a risky biz. You might be thinking:
- What if the money I front for my business doesn't get paid back?
- What if I order a bunch of [x item], and I misjudge what people actually want?
- What if I decide that I hate my design and want to sell something else instead?

Sure, all these questions spring from a helpful place. But these concerns are optional when print-on-demand is in the picture. If you sign up for a TeePublic shop, you don't have to pay for a single thing. You can offer as many products for sale as you want. And there's no limit to the number of designs for sale in your shop. This makes you a much more agile business owner because you can sell products and designs according to what your audience likes. Plus, the platform couldn't be easier! You get paid every time someone buys a piece of your work. That's it!

2. Now onto your designs...find your niche!

Once you've sorted out what's holding you back, time to start focusing on what you'd like to sell.

What makes you happiest? What do you find yourself drawing again and again? Is there a fandom around it? If you have shared your work before, what kind of feedback did you receive from your audience? How will that shape what you draw?

The answers to these questions will help dictate your niche. With that sorted, it's time to make some art!

3. What's your market?

Once you decide what your special niche is, it's time to make some art! Upload your art to the kind of site that will best suit your needs. First, consider your demographic. Then, consider what kinds of products they might like. Keep in mind that every POD site has different audiences and that some sites offer different products. If you decide that TeePublic's the spot for you, go ahead and upload on as many products as you'd like! We suggest uploading your work to all our available products since that will mean more "real estate" on our site, but it's up to you.

4. Diversify your selling platforms!

Now that you've made a home base on one selling platform...time to diversify! Like the point above, every POD site/marketplace has a different audience. So it's a good idea to reach them all! Your task is getting your work in front of the right people who will want to buy your work, at the right time. How better to do that than getting your work on all your available options? It's a good rule of thumb that your brand will grow as your name gets out there.

5. Become Your Own Best Advocate: Get A Website!

Having a place to centralize your shop(s) and portfolio is a great idea. It also gives your fans the gift of having one link to select to find your work. Not sure where to begin? Check out this blog entry on how to start a website. Now you can shout your work out all across the internet! Which brings us to our next point...

6. Become Your Own Best Advocate, Part 2: Learn Basic Marketing and Social Media

So you've got one (or a few!) shop(s), and you've started a website. Incredible work! Now your job is to figure out the best places to advertise. Same as before: Look on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, etc. Then, search terms pertinent to your art. If you find any threads, forums, or groups associated with your art, join them! See if you can post your work there for feedback. Also, take a good look at what other people post or like; this is market research, and you should do as much of this as possible. It can help guide the look, feel and content of your brand.

Pro-tip: It's always a great idea to learn basic marketing and social media. Having this knowledge will make you savvier business owner and it will allow you to traverse the e-commerce world a bit more easily than before.

7. Let Us Help!

We saved our best tip for last: Let us help!

We know none of this stuff is self-explanatory or particularly easy. That's where we come in: We can help you with all these steps above! Our Community team is standing by to help you make your time on the site as successful as possible. If you don't know your SEOs from your ABCs, no sweat! We're here for you.

With that, we hope that these 7 steps will help you get your art from your brain and into a store.