Paradoxes

I find it funny that when I had the time to check my shop stats incessantly, my sales felt like they pretty much plateaued. But now that I am so busy that I don't have the time to really check my shop stats incessantly (which actually might be a good thing), sales have taken off.

I suppose it could also be the convergence of many circumstances that happened at the same time: Valentine's day was coming up so it's a big sales period and I got featured on the Etsy Valentine's day card section. 2 things which external to my own efforts but were key in helping me get better sales.

Haven't had the time to blog much and I really miss having the time to sit down to just doodle and come up with new card ideas. Right now I have my plate full but once my course is over, I am going to go to an art supplies store to just soak up all the goodness of being surrounded by arts and crafts supplies. Just being in a craft store makes me happy. Also miss browsing around Etsy and seeing other people's creations and being inspired by them.

In Singapore,  I always got the sense that original arts and crafts were not valued as much as items that were cheap and decent looking. I don't know if it's got to do with the culture but I hate seeing pirated imitation goods of original works on display. They end up looking half as nice as the original, with poor quality but the worst part is there are consumers for the product which explains why it continues to exist. On the other hand, there are imitation goods that are pretty damn good looking but I don't like that it basically takes away the hard work that the original artist put into it. I don't think cheap is always better. In most cases they are but not when you are taking away the effort that someone put into designing and making that product. It's funny how this is not the case in Japan, they very much value works by original artists. I suppose it's the difference in culture, Japanese also tend to be wary of things that are too cheap while Singaporeans love a good deal.

The gf has been great about managing the store for me. I like that we get to discuss the details of managing the store together, it makes me feel like that emphasizes that we are a team even more. We already are in a relationship but we are also working as a team to manage the store. We are a team in a team, on a team!  That didn't make sense... but you get my drift.

Cards in Dulcetfig!

This is my first shop consignment and I am really excited about it. I approached the shop Dulcetfig (if you are Singapore, drop by Haji Lane to check em out) and the owner, Lovie, was kind enough to let me do a consignment with them.

All designs of my cards, except the grumpy cats and the xmas themed ones, will be stocked at Dulcetfig for the next 3 months. Please check it out if you are in the area :)

Click here for the link to my cards on Dulcetfig's FB page.

1000 views!

Holy shit! I just checked my views for January and I had just over a 1000 views! That is awesome man.

I didn't think I'd reach over a 1000 views for at least a few months but hey I'll take it any day! I figure this also has to do with the Valentine's day rush so my expectations for February itself will be tempered and I won't expect as many views.

Still though, that put a smile on my face.

Also a shout out to the gf for being so wonderful and helping me out with the store. Thank you babe!

It's not magic

Enjoyed a surge in views the past week because my card was featured on the Funny Valentine's Card section on Etsy but it's since trickled off. I also changed the photo for one of my cards and that seemed to trigger more views. I keep reading about how important it is to have good pictures. I know it is but somehow it didn't really sink in, after this experience though, it's made me think about taking better pictures more seriously.

I know a lot of times my background of choice is too heavy, too dark and somber looking but it's really tough to get just the right amount of natural lighting. I'm going to build my own little light studio and see how it goes. I found this link yesterday that was by far the easiest to understand to date, check it out.

On the marketing/SEO front, I know I could be doing a lot more but I've got my hands tied right now. Since I'm going to be abroad for awhile, I thought I'd switch from printing my cards professionally to drawing them by hand. Which basically means one copy of each design but at least I can afford the time it would take to draw onto the card stock directly. I never realized how much time it would take just to edit a file to make it print ready. I used to slack a little on my final checks of the files but I've come to realize that it makes a big difference, I learned that lesson quickly too.  A small smudge on the pic will be glaringly obvious once printed out.

Think I sort of understand what type of cards I need to design to make them more sellable. I'm not going to compromise my style and be a sell-out but tweaking it a little might help in making my products appeal to a wider audience. We will see if my assessment is right, that'll be awhile though because I'm going to go on hiatus for the next 3 months or so before I get time again to really sit down to make new cards again.

Enjoying this last weekend before mayhem starts, eyes are closing on their own, time for bed.

Featured!

I don't know if this actually counts for a feature or what the exact definition of feature is but in my mind it felt like one so I will call it as such. The gf pointed out to me that my card was on the 3rd row on the Funny Valentine's Day cards page. I went to take a look and it's so cool to see my card there. Here's the link to that page, click here! I try my best to come up with original cards and it feels like the effort I put in has paid off.


I wish I had more time to put into marketing my shop but I'm going through other stuff in my life now that has to take precedence for the next 3 months or so. I'm going to try and come up with a new card every 2-3 weeks but even that might be a bit of a squeeze.

Planning to list 3 new items soon, just got to have their photos taken nicely. Tried 2 rounds of photo taking but they all turned out pretty dismal. I know it's also because I'm taking it with my phone but I can't justify spending money to buy a nice camera just to take pics of the cards because I'm not much of a photographer in daily life.

Anyway, Friday Woot of the week is getting featured! Also being surrounded by snow during winter is an awesome plus as well.

1st batch of new cards for 2013

Had a whole bunch of ideas for cards but couldn't find the right execution for a lot of them so instead of rushing to print stuff that I'm not that crazy about, I decided to sit on it and let those ideas stew for awhile more.

I did go ahead with 4 designs that I quite like and funnily enough, my favourite turned out to be a card I wasn't too sure about. While most cards have printed out to what I had intended them to look like, some cards don't and it frustrates me a little. I realize that what I see on the computer screen won't always print out onto my cards but I wonder if there is a way I can minimize this difference. One card had tints of red show up where on my screen it looked white. I don't know if it's my screen or if it's the conversion from jpg to adobe illustrator/photoshop file format that causes the red tinge to be more obvious.

Brought the gf along to help me with picking the cardstock since she has a much better eye at these things and she made a great choice for one of the designs. That turned out to be my favourite print of the bunch. It makes such a big difference what cardstock you choose for your design. I wish we had more choices to choose from but we were short on time so we couldn't fuss around too long.

Hoping for sunny weather tomorrow so I can snap nice photos of the cards. Can't wait to list them up.

Fonts O' Rama

Variety is the spice of life, but when you have to trawl through what feels like 7612365123854 font types, you start wishing you only had to choose from 50. I know I'll say that now but when it really turns out to be 50, I'll gripe about the lack of variety. I shall just appreciate the fact that I have a whole bunch of free fonts I can choose from. 

This website seems to have amassed a good variety. Not only is the layout really easy to use, they let you type in sample words to check out how the font will look. Check it out.