Herro! I am very happy to announce that I have a shop page up already. Yay!

hazelong.com/shop

Well, it’s not really a shop but every product links to RedBubble where you can see all the merchandise with my art on it. Initially, I was quite hesitant about this cuz if you think about it, it’s quite petty. Haha.

My redbubble page at redbubble.com/hazelong

 

I mean you do a few designs, put it up in Redbubble where all they do is market a bit, manufacture the merchandises(shirts, phone cases, stickers, calendars,etc) and they give you a cut of the profit. The cut is about 5 USD for every tshirt sold, a dollar every greeting card sold and so on. In return, you have to promote Redbubble with your ass off. I mean it, if you don’t promote, no one knows about you. It’s like expecting people to know exactly what page you are at in a phone book. And as a web developer, why should I drive traffic to this other website when I could sell it in my website. My website deserve to get the traffic and I deserve to get full profit right?

Not really. It all boils down to passiveness or laziness. By doing the art and publicity for them makes this a passive income. If I do everything, I won’t have time for any other thing. So I guess I am forfeiting part of the profit for more time on my hand. But if  you are not doing anything else other than selling your art, it’s definitely more worth it to build your own brand and shop. Sure, it’s more difficult in the beginning to get the traction going but it’s worth it in the long run. Unless of course, you are lazy. :p

In the beginning, it was really difficult for me to even create a collection of design or art. I have this habit of only launching things when they are perfect, in the end I almost always ended up not launching or doing it in fear of the heavy commitment involved. That or I simply taroh and launch it half assed, ignoring all criticisms of it cuz I hate it myself anyway. I ended up with a solution of setting a deadline, and focus on getting the quality that is acceptable for that particular time frame. Then I won’t go crazy and expect to build a mountain in 3 days when I can build a really pretty tree house in 3 days.

And initially when I first launched my first collection, I was demotivated cuz there weren’t any sales. I know, I read beforehand in Redbubble’s forums that if you sold something within a week of uploading, its a miracle. If you sold something within 3 months, that’s darn good. But then the sales start trickling in and now during festive seasons, it’s peaking so I am very happy.

So if you are thinking about trying Redbubble or Society 6, do bear in mind that you need to do alot more than create oh-sum art. Promoting is a big part of it. Here’s my promotion strategy, if any :

  1. Facebook photo album upload
  2. An upload of a design everyday in Instagram, tied to Twitter
  3. Blogged about it
  4. Posted in RedBubble forum
  5. Reddit it
  6. Pinterest each design
  7. Created a shop page

And some more promotion, if you are thick-skinned enough to do it. I just can’t. I promise I will do it the next collection I upload. I just need to kick myself to do it.

  1. Submit to art/design curated websites/blogs
  2. Post in more art and design forums
  3. Upload to 9gag, fourchan

Just realized if I can’t get myself to do it, I could ask someone to do it on my behalf. 😀