Transcripts
1. Introduction: So when someone comes into a website or they've
interacted with your product, does your brand make them feel happy or makes
them feel playful? Or sometime it just might
make you feel peaceful. And that's all depends
on what your brand is trying to pass on
to your customer. Hi, my name is Alicia, so is-a and I'm an illustrator based out of Bangalore, India. I work as a freelance
illustrator and I also have my own company beverage
manufacturer offers merchandise. I've been running my online
store for about a decade now, if not a little bit more. And I've sold
hundreds of products. Once I got my online
store off and running, I could reach out
to my audience way more easily and everything
was at my fingertips. As an artist, it can be daunting to start
an online store. There are many more
aspects to the business, which is not only
about the join on for, but it also involves the logistics of finances to make sure you're
making a profit, pricing the product is rightly and also making sure that
I've worked for you. In this class, I will teach you how to start an online store as an artist died from crafting
your story to your finances, logistics, and
bilinear social media, and finally your website. You will leave this sauce with
the basics of business and things to think about to help kickstart you on your journey. Are you ready to get
started? Let's talk.
2. Getting Started: I've always loved
making my own products. I've made a lot of DIY products. I used to make these
products that I could like iron on t-shirt and
I found them so, so fun to do and also so fun
to carry around and use. My first experience of
selling products was at a flea market that
happened a decade ago, and he did really well. That's when I
realized that I have to start an online store. Seemed like a really
great opportunity. And my journey of selling my merchandise online
started there. So how do we get started? Make a note of what you have in mind and what's the
vision for your brand. Because this is going
to affect decisions based on how much money
you're going to put in, that is your investments,
how much you want to grow, and how much is going to
impact your day-to-day life. Let's start with how much
do you want to grow? I started very small where I had very limited number of products and that was part of
the charm of the store. It also affected
the language I use on my website and
on my social media. For example, when I
run out of products, I could say I run a real
products. I'm so sorry. Thank you so much
for your orders. It just being a generic
message of sold out. One of the things to do is also define what success
looks like to you. Growth and businesses,
usually numbers, but success need not be. It can be so much more. Are you able to freelance on the side if that's
what you want to do. Well, you able to bring
value to your audience. Are you able to have
a personal life? This is important to think about before you start
your online store, just so it gives you an idea of what your
life is going to look like after you stop
your online stores. But one more thing
to address is do you want this business to
support your livelihood? Or is it just going to
be sustainable business that generates enough for profit while you work on
the side as an artist, when I started my business, it was just a
sustainable business where it was not really
supporting my livelihood, but I just loved
having the products out there and it all changed
when I met my partner. I didn't involve into a
much bigger business. That brings me to
the next point. Do you want to? But now, when I was running my online store solo by also working as a freelance
illustrator file, it actually did
get overwhelming. It was just too many
projects and I couldn't find time to run
my online store. And I actually did consider
almost shutting it down at 1. That was until I met
my boss. No sorrow. Who handles the
logistics for me, there are many pros
to having a partner. The biggest chunk is obviously helping you with a
lot of the parts of the business that
are time-consuming for you and might not
just be your forte. They also Julie help with the mental stress of
running an online store. If you're ever ill, or whether there's a time
you want to take off there, someone else who will be able
to hold the reins for you. They are suppose some funds. One of the biggest ones is Buchner conflicts
when you're not on the same page
with your partner. So a lot of businesses shut
because of partner conflicts. So this is something you
have to dress initially before you even get
a partner on board. Having someone who
can complement your work style or
things that you do to support the business is the best part about
having a partner. And if we find someone like
that, nothing like it. The downside to stuffing
an online store as well. Of course, it takes time, energy, and money to
start an online store. It can take a few years before
it becomes commercially viable and before it generates
enough a profit for you. Having said that,
there's absolutely nothing like having
customers who send you Julie joyful
notes about using your products and just seeing your products
come out into the world. Lastly, I'm just going to
address for a little bit, values and ethics are
running a business, just knowing that
you're manufacturing. John is ethically made a
really nice thing to do. And the second thing is understanding environmental friendliness of the whole thing. Sometimes you can't avoid using plastic but seeing
how you can avoid it. Atomos, seeing the most
sustainable way of putting a product out there is something
to definitely look at. I think looking at it before
you start your online stores would be better and easier
than doing it midway through. Once you start, you'll be working with a lot of
manufacturers and you will come across decisions
where you will have to address working conditions
that labor will go through. We live in a world today
where I think these things have to wear a dress as
you go into this class. I just want to let you
know that I'm gonna be touching all the broad points about starting the online store. But don't shy away from doing your own research because
it can be super helpful. A lot of things are
also dependent on where you stay in the world. Sometimes it's simple.
Google search helps asking people who also started
businesses helped a ton. Your student project for
this class is to get your ideas together to start
your own online store. Next, we're going to talk about the basics of
starting a business.
3. Launching Your Business: Let's talk about
the nitty-gritties of starting a business. It's a bit boring, but it's super essential when
you're just starting. First thing you do is
register your business. So you can do this
online by yourself. You can get a child
accountant to do it for you, or you can even get businesses to do the whole thing
for you as well. In India, there's one
called clear tax. Next thing you do
is buy a domain. And you can do this via websites
like GoDaddy or Google, or even Shopify, which we're going to talk
about later as well. Next thing is you registered
trademark, coffee logo, and just sell for GST, which is your taxes
that you can do online. All your CA will be able
to handle it as well. Next thing you do is go to the bank and get a bank account. Once you get that, you'll be able to get your
payment gateway, which is a gateway to
get all the money in one someone faces and auto
popular ones in India, recipe and CC Avenue and internationally PayPal
is really popular. One more thing you can
talk to the bank about is being able to get foreign idempotence
if you're going to get international orders. I know this seems like a lot, but now that
everything's online, It's so much easier
than it used to be. A simple Google search can help you or any of these points. Once you're done with
all the documentation, then comes the fun thought of getting your
products together. This is the best
part. Of course, you can make a list
on a piece of paper or Excel sheet or even make
a presentation for yourself. This includes the
manufacturing, the sampling, and the packaging
of products that you want to bring out
into your collection. And I've addressed this in another Skillshare class setup, come up with
something you can do is make walks of
all the products. It's also really
important to get a physical samples to supposedly see if it works as a product. Something also to look at with all your product to see if they work together as
a cohesive line. If jelly pumps you up to see your whole brand
come together on for your student exercise. For this lesson is
to make list of all the products that
they're going to have as your post-launch. In the next lesson,
we're going to discuss everyone's favorite
pot finances.
4. Managing Your Finances: There are lots of
different aspects to planning your finances. But first, let's start with
doing your market research. So firstly, you want to figure
out who your customers. This will help you understand who you expect to
buy your products, what they expect
from your products, and what they expect to
pay for your product. Then you research other
brands in this area, their pricing and
their position. Next is pricing your product, which includes the cost price of manufacturing your product, the packaging costs, the career
cost, and storage costs. There are also some hidden
costs that you may not account for when you're
just starting out. But it's important
to consider things like breakages and returns. Then there's also
marketing costs. I feel an artist
you may be able to handle the visual branding of which includes the logo and the other branding things
that go along with it. We might be to hire photographer to
photograph your products. There's also the
content writing. If you're writing
for your website, that might be something you
don't have to spend for. But also getting a
content writer is another great thing you can do, but will be a cost
to account for. You might also have social media costs if you
want to pay for advertising or if
you want a PAC and influenza who wants to
push your brand forward? Say if you're giving
something for free or you're running
a competition, you might of course
have to pay for the product and also
ship it out for free. You don't have to invest in a lot of doing the expensive production
you're starting out. I think I started out by making just the bare minimum
and small numbers, but being able to
refresh this design, I think people really
appreciated that. I think that's a really
nice fetal status. But if you don't have an idea of how you're going to
sell a 100 numbers, even if it's adequate of
price and might be worth spending a lot more
for just ten numbers, but still sustainable to sell these products
at that price. Just because you don't want
to be stuck with dead stock, which you're not sure
how you're going to sell and which you don't
have means to sell. What might be really
helpful is to get a really
trustworthy accountant, might be able to help you
with the financial planning, but more so with the taxes, but you might not
completely understand. It was really helpful
for me to have an accountant who
could help me out with my taxes and the
financial funding because they unlock things
I was not aware of. He showed me all the
tax implications that would have been a problem
if had not noticed upfront. And it might be useful to have someone like that
with you on board. Your student access
for this lesson is to plan your finances. I've provided a worksheet
that might be a little helpful for you to plan the
pricing of your products. And our next lesson is about
logistics and operations.
5. Producing & Shipping Products: Logistics and operations include ordering the product from your vendor to getting
the products packaged. Then working with
a courier company to get your products
to your customer. And also integrating that with
your online store just so that they have information about when the product is actually
going to reach them. So just a bit about
the courier company. There are various, various
types of them here and there you get very local
delivery companies. You get bigger ones
like a FedEx and UPS. And you also get
courier aggregates. We use a career aggregate who delivers via different courier
companies so that they can reach to different parts
of India without actually worrying about not being able
to reach certain PIN codes. They are amazing ones like your FedEx is way
more expensive, but also has great
customer service. And if that is something your
customers don't fret about, painful, it is something
you can totally look into giving your
customer as an option. You can also have options like
salt and delivery methods have things like cash on delivery with some courier
companies don't accept. There are some companies which actually handle a lot
of the logistics, which includes
having your product at hand and storing it for you. And whenever an order comes in, they handled the packaging and the delivery and the customer
service for it as well. Again, of course that
is a cost implication. But if it works
for you, amazing, the company that we
use for asha pain is a courier aggregate
called pico. One of the biggest
problems we face with Korea companies is
the customer service, because once the product
is out of our hands, it's all up to them to
get it to our customer really well and secure and
also with great service. And also within the
given timeline. Now with Amazon people expecting you to
do really quickly, even though you mentioned
on your website that you need an example of
days to be delivered. Now how you pick your
career companies will affect this factor. And there are ways you can
see if this works for you. And that is to experience
either if Korea reached you and
visually good and you can see who the
Curia partner is. And also when you start
using a courier company, you can see what the feedback is from your customer as well. Another possible operations is putting the products
on your store, keeping the numbers of how
much stock you have at hand and having a buffer is also part of the
logistics process. I use Shopify and I will
address this later as well. You can also put your products on third-party websites as well, like Amazon and eBay and Etsy, amongst the many
others that are there, they do charge of
consignment and that can be anywhere around 20
to 40 per cent. There are benefits to having your products on places
other than your website. And that includes having different audience looking at your products and
learning about you. But it's also absolutely
great to have your own website because it'll be great for your branding. And it's also really nice to have your own storefront so that your products look really nice
together all in one place. I sent my products on
my website, of course, but also on other third-party
websites like Amazon. Does Julie worked
for me because I had a bunch of new customers who will actually looking for
a product exceed a phantom. They found my panel on
Amazon and they will go to buy it and then reached
my website after that. Your student exercise for this
lesson is to go out and do the research about what career options are available
and what works for you. In the next lesson,
we're gonna be talking about creating your
brand identity.
6. Creating Your Brand Identity: The first part is of course,
creating your branding. One part is the
visual side of it, which includes your style guide, your logos and your fonts. And if you have a
specific palette that you want to adhere
to as an artist, usually these
things are lovable, easier to deal with. Artists tend to be of
course, more visual. Then there's a
non-visual thoughts which is the feel of your brand. So when someone comes
on your website, will, after they face an order or they've interacted
with your product, does your brand make
them feel happy? Or did that whole
experience makes them feel playful or bring them
back to childhood? And that all depends
on what your brand is trying to pass on
to your customer. So of course, another part of branding your whole
business is the name. This is sometimes
hard to figure out. So one thing is if you're
going to name your brand, say for example, canvases, candles, and you have
the word candles. It also represents the kind of products
you're going to make. So maybe candles and things
that go along with candles. This will give you an
idea of what products you might not be able to make. For example, maybe
dog leashes will be weird under a brand name
like canvases candles. The name also will give you an indicator of the
feel of the brand. Coming back to this example, if it was canvases, say quirky candles, it
will give you an idea of the brand being more playful and have the brand
being, of course cookie. So what I wouldn't expect from that brand is something
super serious. As an office, there's
a big chance you might name your brand
after yourself. I started my range
of products on a whim pretty much and I couldn't think
of a name fast enough, so I just ended up using
my name and stuck to it. They are prose, which are, it becomes super personal. Everyone relates to
it in a lot more. Even the voice is just my own, so I don't, you don't
have to think about it. It's easy to write copy,
but there's also the cons, which is that every time
something goes wrong, you feel personally attacked
because it's your name. Any kind of hit on the company becomes almost personally
related to you, even though it's a
business on its own, you can always
abrogate your name, but you can always make versions of your name if that suits you. But it is something to
consider because as you grow, it might not always be the best idea to have your
name floating around on all these products
and someone as being able to handle parts of it,
which doesn't involve you. Next comes crafting
your brand story. So when you go to a website, I'm pretty sure
it's not only me, but you go to the About Us page. For me, it's like my favorite
part about a website, but God tells you so
much about the brand, how sometimes it started or the inspiration behind
how it started. And that is pretty
much your backstory. Why does this business exists? And what's the story
you're telling people? Having a backstory is also really good for
adding character. It's almost like when
you pick up a book and you go out the back and you
read all about the author, it almost feels like
you're getting to know about the inside
scoop of this story. It can also include
a lot of values that your brand brings,
like women led, or is it super environmentally conscious as it's super
sustainable to the environment? Or if you really are
passionate about animal welfare and the store gives a percentage of
their profit to a shelter. Julie, Julie adds
value to that business and to customers that connect
with those kinds of values. So how do you find your story? It might be anything
from the reasons to why you started drawing
in the first place. It could be inspirations. Maybe it's one person
like your mom said, something really nice about
this drawing you made. So forever changed your vision of what he wanted to
do with your life. Or it could just be a product
that you found and you loved it so much that you
wanted to make it as well. It can be anything,
but it should just absolutely be authentic to you these stories if they
aren't real and the authentic Julie stick with customers because it builds
brand loyalty in a way where, say if it's a mom-and-pop store, I know how much goes
into a small still being run and it makes
you want to shop them. Or one of the things
to think about also is what's your USP as an office? I'll tell you personally
for my brand, I illustrate all the
products on my website. Now, your USP could
be anything from say, it being all handmade,
it's really, really good to have a USP
because it also again, fits with your branding and the recall value for customers. Your student exercise
for this lesson is to figure out your brand
story and your USP. And next we have building
your online store.
7. Building Your Online Store: One of the first things
people do when they look into a brand is of course,
look up the website. So when I started my
online store at was cool and I have to get a web
TO of all on board. It was actually
quite a long process to get each product on. Every time I had to
add a product on, I took so long. I actually remember
loading photo is going, making a coffee coming back and the focus may or may
not have loaded. It's such a big difference
to what it's like now, I use a platform which is a subscription-based
platform called Shopify. And it's so easy, It's
literally drag and drop. And it honestly changed the game and the way that
people sell online. So initially, I remember
when I did subscribe, I was a bit skeptical
because firstly, subscriptions used to be like, I don't know whether I
can afford to shell out something for a month as
opposed to something annually. But the pros outweigh
the cons in terms of even having the backend and the analytics that
was so easily accessible. One good thing about
Shopify that drew me to it, but the templates that
were available that were Julie Julie well-designed, they also templates you can purchase and that's
what we did later on. And you can also get
Trump fight experts or other web developers who
can integrate systems which you need o plugins
that you need that work with your store and forward the processes that you
have for your business. So flight also has a
14 day trial period, so you can test it out if
you want to give it a go. They always are
other websites which are visible light Shopify where you can run your online store via subscription as an artist, one of the things that
was most worrisome to me is analyse x bar of
chocolate fire drill. The provides it well
and super easily. Analytics in general
is super useful, but that's on the
website or whether it's on the backend
of social media. You can look at the
backend where they'll tell you about where your
customers came from. Besides geographically,
but also do they come from
Instagram or Facebook, or they come from an ad, they sell you the
product that's most popular and given
over a timeframe, What's the product
was sold the most? And these just help
in making decisions about what productive
and come out with mixed. There are some things to keep in mind while designing a website. I have a few tweaks that I
want to make on my website, but I thought I'll
take you through my website and show you some of the things that I
kept in mind when I was designing my
own mind stool. So I picked a template that had a slideshow
in the beginning. And then you can edit
sections that you want to bring up and maybe collections that
you want to showcase. And then you can put
categories as well. Obviously want to keep
all your important stuff that you want your
audience to see up top. So that could be maybe new
launches or maybe things that are really popular and
people reach out too fast. I think the only
thing to look for something that is
easy to navigate, both on a desktop computer
and also on mobile. And also it's really good
to try your iPad as well. These are the places
you're gonna be getting audiences
accessing them the most. But also you might want to try different browsers as well, just to see how it looks. There are a few things
just to keep in mind when it comes to
product photography, you might want to take photos of the production on a
clear background. Your products can be seen in aesthetically pleasing
setting or maybe in a real life situation
or environment. Your product on a
no-nonsense background will get your audience
to see your product perfectly clear and show all the aspects of it
that needs to be seen. For example, a book.
You might want to see how the book is bound. You might want to
see social pages is the USB off the
product as well. So this is a mock photo
of our product of mine, which is a print
on alphabet print that is mocked in a
room to show scale. And another one of
my websites on TLV, this photo for example, is really useful to see how the size of the card is in
relation to a baby's hand. This is one of our products
called the glovebox. So we take our photos of the different
aspects of the box. So first we show the dimensions. What are the extra
bits that we have like magnetic closure
and what parts are laminated just so everyone knows what to expect this
is taken so you can see how big the box
is actually if you're holding it and how
the box opens, also all the products
that come with it. We show little bits
of it as well. So something like
the photo album, just all the details of
the product and the most photos we can show to
show all those details. Another product that
I'm going to show you is a pregnancy journal. It has a magnetic closure, so I'm sure that over there
and the box when you open it, just a few inside pages as well. And also the freebies like the cards that come with
it and the sticker book. Another crucial part
of your website, the voice you're
gonna be using in the coffee for these products. Also something you
can't compromise is the details that
you want to add it, add as much detail as is needed that includes this
dimensions of a product. If you can add
weight, add weight, any other additional
details that someone you think who's
buying the product would want to know
that could be K off the product if it's
something like a material. Also how to use the
product if they are alternate ways or if
there's very specific way, how to use a product
that's great as well. Some of the king to keep in mind also on your product page, the call to actions,
things like buy it. Now we'll add to cart has
to be clearly visible. Of course, the price
has to be there. And whether you have tax
included or not included. Your About page is another Julie Julie
Julie important part. So when I created my about page, I really wanted to tell
a story about who I am. And so I looked a little bit about who I am as
an illustrator, besides also adding
a brand story of how he started the website, you could also add cool
values that you have. Like I mentioned
before, if there's something about
the store that is your USP or that you give a sudden particular profit
to an organization, or maybe that as women lead, those are the details that would be creating the about section your students exercise for this lesson is to create
your own website. And next we're going
to be learning about how to leverage
your social media.
8. Attracting Customers: Marketing is getting
your audience to you. As an artist, you may already have an
audience to begin with. This was the case
with me as well. I'm Julie, nice way to start. And if not, that's
not a problem. The easiest way to
get an audience to your website is
through social media. Also, social media is free. So one of the social
media platforms I use the most is Instagram. The reason I use Instagram
the most is because firstly, it's the place now resonated
with the audience the most. I found that the easiest to use in terms of being
able to put out content and also get
people to respond. And it's just being generally good for me for
business as well. In some parts of
the world, you can sell your products directly on Instagram or link directly to your
website from Instagram, one of the most popular ways to market nowadays is true
influencer marketing. Influencer usually get paid
for showcasing a product. We're promoting a product
that might be a way that your products get
out there a little faster and to a different
audience as well. I do have to mention though, when you are picking people may become an influencer
who absolutely either loves your work or who just resonate with your brand. Something that's really useful, and most brands do as well, is having a social
media schedule or social media calendar and
having an understanding of what you're going to put
out when it's just easier to understand when launches are going to
come out, personally forced everyday. But having a calendar or Jolie Jolie sets the
tone of when you're going to have
something launched and not misdeeds a social
media account. They also had to remain
super organized. I'm sorry, Jerry helped me
talk to my audience a little more actively as an organic
marketing on social media, there are other ways you
can promote as well. One of the ways is to
advertise directly, say on the platform like
Instagram or Facebook. Secondly, the
AdWords which go on Google and via other websites. Then there's, of course, your newsletters, but you
can send every so often. These can be for
lunches when you're going to learn something
in the future. These are really great
once you get a number of email addresses and Julie
good for direct promotions. Another thing you can do
is directly on Instagram, have promotions that
you can put out. And that can be something as
simple as a competition or even freebies so that
not to like download doubles or maybe
a free wallpaper. And that's great to
build height overtime. You can even make
note of what worked for you for social campaigns and just generally look and feel of what you think
your audience likes. So I use Instagram
as a visual diary, and I've been using
it for ages now, most of my post
about illustrations, but I do throw in some
personal photos or videos. And one stories came into play. I started showing a lot
more behind the scenes and a lot of ways that I work. Maybe when I'm
starting to work on a drawing or when I get samples and also the process of how a drawing turns
into a product. These are things that
I think my audience loves to see and it's
always worked for me. Now, you don't really have
to post anything for us now. You can only post about your work and that's
absolutely fine. But putting a few bucks
now things like how my baby interrupts my workflow seems to be part of my
story and it just works. I started Instagram directly
for showing my artwork. So the name of my page to add my brand inevitably
is just my name. You may choose to
start a separate page just for your artwork
and your products. Because then you can have
everything in one spot and all your personal things on another spot where you
follow friends and family. Here's a product
that I made that was almost a craft thing and
everyone really liked it. So it's potentially going to be a product of just
entered in for sampling. And there are also other ways
where I just show samples. So these are sample prints
that we're gonna be making into products is just a showcase
of what's going to come. And it's really nice
way to get the audience excited and also to
know what to expect. Here is a launch of a product. So it's just an album. I think this one had a promotion
on the product itself, so I'm just showing them
the product to remind them that it's available and that
there's a problem going on. So this is a time that's often illustration that
became a pattern. As you can see, it's
just making the deal. Then this is a picture
of the sample of the book that got the
illustration on it. And this is just a sample of the journal that
was going to come. Also something nice to show is maybe how a
product is packaged. So especially if it's something like a
gift so you can send it directly to someone you know how they're
going to receive it. Another thing is to try to
make a platform work for you. So now Instagram is
going down really hard on making it
run, make videos. It's not something I
particularly like. Instead of fighting it, I have to put more videos out. It may help you explore your OT in different
ways as well. How I like to talk about Instagram is Jolie
personally like I'm talking to a group of
people that I know really well. I don't talk about
really personal things. I don't talk about
politics or religion. I only keep everything
really light and happy. I put things out that
hopefully make people smile. And that's the kind of feel I like from my
products as well. Your student exercise
for this lesson is to plan your social
media calendar, maybe a week or even a
month for your lunch.
9. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on
finishing your class. Don't forget to
share your project in the project gallery. You can check out my
website at www dot Alicia. So I'm also on Instagram and
Facebook and even LinkedIn. Now, you'll find all
the website links. Hello, I hope you took
away something from this buffalo has you on your journey to having
your own online store. Thank you so, so much and
hope to see you soon.
Alicia Souza, Illustrator | Chips connoisseur
