Sell Your Art: How to Build a Brand and Start an Online Shop

1. An Intro: Here's What To Expect!: Hi, welcome to my class. We will be talking about selling your art, how to start a brand of your own and how to start an online shop. Have you ever thought like, Wow, this is really overwhelming. I have no idea where to begin. What Could I even do? That's normal. That's completely fine. I started out with those questions of my own, and I've been doing this for nine years now. My name is Natasha L, and I am an illustrator, content producer, and entrepreneur. I own a brand called Set frames. Yes, you heard that right. I have my own online shop with a line of merchandise, accessories, apparel. I also work on digital content on social media like YouTube, Patri on, Instagram, and I work on plenty of illustration projects with different clients. So I guess I'll say I know a thing or two about being a full time or freelance creative. I have always loved drawing, creating, and keeping my hands busy. So I knew that I wanted to create a creative career out of whatever I was. Class, I will take you through the key steps of building a foundation so that you can get started on your very own projects. This course can be for anyone who's interested in getting into e commerce into selling your work online or any budding creative that has no idea where to start. The only thing you'll need for this class is something to take notes on. That's about it. I remember feeling this way when I first started out. It can be a pretty lonely and overwhelming process just trying to figure things out at the start. Which is why I want to share with you what I've learned throughout the years so that you don't have to go through the same things that I did. We're going to find out what works for you, how to choose the right products, building a brand creating and managing an online store and finally sharing it with the world. At the end of this class, you'll be asked to submit a link to your new brand page or an online shop that you've created. It doesn't have to be complete. As long as you use this class to get started somewhere, that's good enough. Okay, that's about it. I'll see you in the very first lesson. 2. Finding What Works For You: Hi, welcome to your first lesson. Let's find out what works for you. Some general advice for starters, this is just a short course. So it's going to give you the basic flow and ideas that you need to get started, but you're going to have to do some of the work yourself. I will be presenting a lot of options to you throughout the course, so it's up to you to choose what works best for you, but there is no right or wrong way to do it. I totally depends on what you like. Like I said in the trailer, taking notes will be great, but if you already have an idea in mind of what you want to do, while you follow this course, it's going to make things even easier. Okay, so let's dive right in into what selling your art means. Starting an online shop could really mean anything. There are so many ways for you to sell your art and start making money out of the things that you create. For example, you could have an independent website. You could also be doing print on demand websites where you don't have to do your own fulfillment. You can work on commissions, freelance work. Also a wholesale, which I feel like it's really overlooked and consignments. All of this can be handled through your website or not. It's up to you how much you want to put on that website. I know people who make a website and all in one thing where they can reach out via email, where they can also access their portfolio at the same time. There's also a way for customers to leave their details, or it can really be just a shop. We will definitely be diving deeper into what all of this means in the later lessons, but we got to start off with what we want to make. So let's talk about making art and choosing the right products that we sell in the next lesson. 3. Make Art and Make Products That Sell: In this lesson, we will be discussing products and how to choose the products that are going to sell. I won't be teaching you how to make art in this class because that's a whole different ballgame, and that's for you to take your art. But what I can do is take all of that amazing art that you've already created and turn it into something profitable. There are literally so many different types of products that you can consider. Sometimes I don't know where to start. There are so many things I want to create in this lifetime that I have not, as well. So let me give you a few options. Firstly, I think it's good to start out by discussing the difference between physical and digital products. Physical products are things that are literally physical that you will have to mail out. You will have to think about packaging. You have to think about fulfillment and how to send this out to your customers. That's something physical. A digital reward is something that you could be making on your iPad, on your computer, which people don't have to receive physically. They can just download it off your website and then receive something. That is a digital product. List is literally endless under these two categories. But I would suggest having a mixture of both. It's always good to offer both options. The feedback that I've gotten from people who love digital products is that they don't like to pay for shipping, or shipping matters are really complicated in their country. So in order to support the artists that they like or just be able to get a little something, they like digital products. Thinking about the kind of physical products that you want to make will also affect couple of things down the road. Like, how are you going to ship it out, right, the packaging for it. So think about how big your items are, how much space you have to work with before deciding what you want to make. If you have a warehouse, if you have an empty room in your apartment and you're able to create bigger items like sweatshirts or hoodies or even big physical items like shoes or home goods, then go ahead. But I would guess that most of us starting out want to step with something safe, something small. So please consider that. And then let's think about trendy products versus evergreen products. Trendy products are products that are trending. And these are doing really good right now. If you're on social media, if you're online and you just are seeing these products everywhere and people are really enjoying them. There's a lot of buzz around it. Then these are obviously safe choices. Depending on the model of your business, you could be going for a cash grab, just making something in the moment of time to go with the flow, to get that audience and interest going, but you cannot depend on trendy products to survive because trends change all the time. So that's not sustainable. Hm. Some examples I can think of that will be considered trendy products would be squishis if you've ever heard of squishis. They're like these toys. People just obsessed about collecting them, and these were really profitable at one point of time. Something that is still ongoing that has been a trend for a while is slime. I'm sure you've seen slime everywhere, maybe fidget toys. Yeah, something like that. You know, those items that you've seen all over the Internet that just pop out somehow and become really huge. Those are trendy items. But you never know when that's going to end. So let's look at the items that are going to be ever green. And these items would say there's less of an up and down. These are going to be more stable, a bit safer, it will be a better foundation for you to grow your business upon if you want to do this for a long time. Could spend an entire day sitting down and listing down products that you could choose from or things that you can possibly make with your art, but I can't. Let me present you with a couple of categories, a bunch of example items so that you can pick and choose. It really depends on the specialty of your shop. For example, are you a print shop? Are you a painter that only wants to create photocopy prints or scan prints of your art? Or are you going to take that same art and put it on a whole bunch of other things? It could be a specialty print shop or it could be a general lifestyle shop. So let's take the first category, for example, prints. You could do prints in different sizes. Small prints, postcards. You could do big posters. You could also do museum grade archival prints, GclePrints. It could be risograph, it could be greeting cards, they could be bookmarks. These are just all printed on paper. You could also do accessories. Now, this is really wide. You can take your design. You can actually put them on jewelry. If you're looking at that kind of accessory. You can make acrylic charms. And under acrylic charms, there are so many different effects that you could apply. Are they going to be glittery? Are they going to be shiny? Are they going to be metallic? These acrylic charms can also be bad charms. They can be key chains. They could be phone charms. They can be shaker charms. If you're not doing acrylic, you could be doing enamel. So these are where your enamel pins come in, not just a pin. You could also do an enamel keychain. The possibilities are endless. After doing this for a couple of years, you try to find out what products are popular and these are standard across the board. The products are smaller, easy to manage. The capital or the costs needed to create these samples aren't too massive as well. That's why these products are popular because they're easy to start with. What if you do home goods? You could apply your art onto things that you could use around the house? Something that people can use in their physical spaces. For example, you could print cushion covers. You could make Carpets, blankets. Little mugs for the kitchen. Coasters. And under coasters, you can make plastic ones, acrylic ones, metal ones, even wooden cork ones. And if you're not interested in your home goods, you could do lifestyle goods. These are pretty up and coming, I believe, 'cause people want things they can actually use in their everyday lives. To me, lifestyle products are things that you can easily grab and go that are easily accessible. I would think a water bottle, for example. You can make a small water bottle or a big one, print your art around it. You can make lanyards to hold carts and tags, even little pouches or eco bags that people can take out, anything that you would use in real life. Going back to paper goods, I think stationery is a big category. You could be printing your art on memo pads, on papers, little sticky notes, washy tape. Washi tapes are always popular. You could be making notebooks. Your art is on the cover, blank. It could be a sketchbook type notebook. And then if you want to do something even bigger, stock wise, just in terms of the stock. You can do apparel. I love making apparel because I'm into fashion. So for me, it feels fulfilling to wear something that I've made. And apparel in itself is easily collectible, and everyone needs clothes. You're going into apparel, then think of yourself as a fashion brand. You could be doing t shirts, you could be doing socks, you could be doing scarves, hoodies, baby Ts. Baby Ts are big right now. Could do crop tops, jackets. But I think t shirts are a great way to start. T shirts are the gateway into fashion. Anyone can pull off T shirts. So those are just some examples of physical products that you can consider for your store. Now, if you don't want to ship anything out and you don't want to deal with physical products, you can have your online shop B completely about digital products. Ideas off the top of my head. You can always make wallpaper, and wallpaper can be from different devices. So you could put different listings for mobile wallpapers, for maybe tablets for your iPads or for your desktop and computer screens. So those, for example, are already three listings, three different products that you can offer. Apart from wallpapers, you can also provide your customers with something that they can download and physically print out on their own. People like printed matter, but like I said, if you consider shipping and everything, it's easier to just print it out themselves. Even though you don't have control of the quality, it has to be a file that you've properly prepared and you're ready to just accept the fact that it might not come out exactly how you want. Still, the control is in the consumer's hand and they'll be able to use this product however they. I have made digital products like memo paper, where people can just print it out and create their own little memo pad, you could also make digital calendars. These are really popular, especially on places like Etsy. It kind of blew up as a side hustle type of product. It's where the cult of passive income comes into play. These products are everywhere on the Internet, but I don't believe in anything being too saturated. There's always going to be space for new art and new creators. So don't feel intimidated by that. If you want to make digital calendars and digital monthly spreads, do it. You could do weekly planners, daily to do lists, shopping, grocery lists. Yeah, just go crazy with it. They can download it. They can use it and have a piece of your art with them. If you're looking to also create digital products that are just, you know, for fun, less practical and more for self care days, you could also make things like connect the dots. Color by numbers. You could design your very own adult coloring book. Coloring spreads are a great way to get everyone involved and interact with people. Sometimes people don't want an entire book from a bookstore. They just want to print out your art and color it. If you're feeling adventurous, you can also come up with three D models and have people print it out so they can cut up the model and fold it into their very own figurine. It's possible. Here's to just say that the limit does not exist with digital products. Now that you've been given a couple of options and you have a better idea of what's trendy, what kind of products you want to make, what kind of products you can consider for the kind of shop that you want to create, let's gather those ideas and focus on creating a brand in the next lesson. 4. Let's Build a Brand: Okay, now we're going to take the ideas that you have just decided on together with the products that you want to make and build a brand around it. The key is consistency, my friends. I know. I know. Yeah. Consistency will make or break your brand. Think about what you want people to know you for. When people think or they look at your brand, what is it that they feel? A good brand will be able to value air into their customers' lives by creating a feeling, by creating a vibe, you want to be able to connect with your customers, especially if you're doing something creative. Art is so subjective, and for many of us, it's going to be very personal. So in order to create something like that and connect with an audience, you have to be consistent consistency will be applied across whatever you create, not just your social media management, not just in the art that you create, but it's about the entire experience with the brand. An experience that I believe is overlooked by many people is the shopping experience. There's something about going to a physical store, of course, right, and trying on closing and seeing the physical stationery products and then connecting with it and wanting to buy it. For us, having a physical store is the next level. When you have to pay rent and you just think about the logistics and all that, we're not thinking about that right now. We're thinking about an online store. Just because it's online, just because you don't physically see people does not mean that you don't have to create a shopping experience. Is your website easy to shop on? Does it look consistent with the rest of the art that you're making? How about branding for the packaging? Packaging is huge. To me, it's a huge deal because when someone receives a product, at the branding, it really solidifies the experience and builds that connection because it means that you cared for every single step of the process, and that's an art in itself. So I want you to think about the work and the art that you're creating across platforms, across everything that you make products, packaging, your website, your social media content, your pictures. I know it's easier said than done, and it can be very overwhelming to think about what consistency even means. But if you're thinking about it and putting in that effort, you're going to be okay. Let's take that brand identity and that brand experience and create an online shop. This is the step where you will finally be able to sell your art. 5. Creating and Managing an Online Store: I know. Starting a website can be a very intimidating process, especially if you're anything like me and you just want to make art and do the creative aspects of things, then this might be the most challenging step. With modern day tools, it has become a lot more simplified. Thank goodness. I'm a certified tech dummy here. So if I can do it, you got this, too. There are going to be some things you will have to consider in order to get those sales rolling in. There are different types of online stores, and they each have their own pros and cons to them. One of the ways that you can set up shop for your brand is through print on demand services, for example, places like RID Bubble or Society six. These are going to be companies that allow you to upload your artwork online, and they will handle everything else after that. So you will have your own brand page, your own shop front, but the company handles the back end of everything else. They will print your art onto the item that a customer has purchased. It could be anything from stickers to water bottles, notebooks. Pillows, t shirts. It could be anything because there's a print on demand service. They will also handle fulfillment and shipping out. So all you have to do is upload your work and collect a commission of the sales. You could also set up shop on a website that has an existing marketplace. And by marketplace, I mean, there is an existing audience which goes to our website and they look for specific items or brands. Places like EtS, Amazon, Ebay, websites like Etsy were really big back in the day. It still could be a good starting point, but there have been some backlash and some boycotting going on with Etsy. So look into that if you're willing to take on some risk, it has a good marketplace. You're in Southeast Asia or in Asia, you could even choose Shopee, Lazada, or Taubao. There are so many options out there. Think about the places that you would personally shop from and if you would want your brand to be one of those search results. If you would, then maybe a marketplace is for you. The last option would be to create your own independent website, your very own store. I would say the big three in terms of independent websites would be Shopify, Squarespace, and WIG. I'm not an ecommerce expert. I can only speak from my own experience, and I have tried all three. First started out using WIC, and I'm currently using Squarespace for a couple of years, but I've heard amazing things about Shop five from the people around me. Once you've decided where to set up your shop, you have to think about fulfillment, as well. Apart from print on demand services, you will have to be responsible for shipping out your orders. So how often are you going to be shipping out your orders? What are your return policies like on cancellations and lost mail? I would recommend you to have a frequently asked questions page just in case for the first few years, I was individually writing down every single address and packing every single envelope and bringing them to the local post office to drop them off. You can start off with something like that because it's still small scale, but eventually you might have to move onto a middleman kind of shipping platform. So this is you and your shop, and these are going to be middleman companies that connect you to the shipping companies. In the beginning, if you cut out this middleman, it's fine because you could just go to the post office and get the labels directly from there. But once the volume gets too big, you might need this middleman company to come get your orders, come pick them up, and ship them out for you. These middleman companies are always evolving, their policies are always changing, but there are a couple of big ones that you could consider companies like Chipo, EZ Ship, ShipStation, San Cloud, EZPost aftership, there are so many options. Check out what kind of rates they offer. And if they have good connections with the mailing company that you want to use, it differs from platform to platform. Once you figure out how to deal with all of these mailing logistics, it's going to be smooth sailing from here. Of course, when you think about website, you have to think about marketing. You have to think about SEEO. There's also going to be a tons of analytical data. For you to sift through. Nowadays, on these website platforms, you have access to so much data. You can even send out your own marketing emails. There's so much to discover in so many ways that you can use your website to reach out to people. The tools are all there. They're going to be accessible to you. Although it might seem overwhelming, we're just taking things one step at a time. You can focus on all the marketing and all the analytics later. Once you have a good foundation and the basis of what you want to do, then you can worry about everything else. Don't overwhelm yourself with it now, you will get to it later. Okay. The next and the last step will be to share your work with the world. Let's get your shop visible and get it online. 6. Get Visible, Get Online!: Welcome to the last lesson. You made it. We're going to focus on how to get your shop up and running online for the world to see. Ideally, you have already been posting and sharing your work online because with the Internet nowadays, we are all one viral video away from a life changing shift in our business. It's a blessing and a curse of the Internet. But it's never too late to get started. If we haven't already, we're going to start one now. That we have a brand, we have a product and we have a website. We need people to see it. I specialize in making art and content that has my personality injected into it. Which is why I'm having this class. But that doesn't have to be the case for everyone. You don't have to share your face. You don't have to inject your personal life or your personality into the art that you're making. It can be strictly art and business. Remember what we said before, as long as it's consistent, post consistently post what's in line with the brand and what you want to create. The feeling you want to invoke in other people and the community you want to surround yourself with. That's the kind of work you should be sharing. The best platform for you to share your art, I would say it's still Instagram. Twitter or threads could be an easy way for people to share your work, because unlike Instagram, it's much easier to reshare or retweet things. Of course, we cannot forget about TikTok. Short form content has the ability to grab people really quickly, and the algorithm will be able to catch a whole wide range of people that wouldn't have seen your work in the first place. I would say it's a little bit difficult to build a connection with people on TikTok because it's so quick. But if your business is a cash grab and your shop is just promoting one product, for example, slide, right? It's going to work out beautifully. Also see YouTube as a really big platform. Some would argue and say that long form content is difficult to create, but because it's long form and you spend more time with your audience, you're able to build a better brand connection. Most importantly, no matter which platform you choose to use, be consistent and always tie back to your brand. It's great to have a call to action at the end of your post, so you can lead people back to your website and direct traffic there. But in this ever changing landscape of social content, as long as you are creating a feeling, people are going to love your brand. That's about it. I will be wrapping this up by sharing some thoughts and tips, and, of course, let's discuss the class project that you have to submit. 7. Let's Wrap This Up!: Wow, that was quicker than expected. I'm so glad you made it to the end of this course. I hope you're able to come up with something that you can be proud of, whether it's a brand or a website because you've learned so much. We were able to learn how to choose the best products that work well together with the art that you make, where and how you'd like to sell your art, and then managing and growing that brand further and sharing it with the world. The last thing I would like to share is that the market is always changing. As much as we want to make money and do the right thing or the smartest thing to do, I hope you never give up on creating and making the art that you want to make. Keep doing the things that make you happy. If you'd like to submit your class project, you can submit a link to your brand new brand page, a link to your website, or a link to your brand new online shop. I come in to see what you've been working on and wish you all the best in everything that you do. Good luck, and I'll see you on the Internet. I hope you jet the class. Bye.