It’s been a few weeks now since sending out my most recent mailers, and since I have not received any bites yet I am getting increasingly antsy and wanting to expand into some other means of marketing. I know a few weeks isn’t a lot when it comes to getting responses from promo cards, but that– combined with the fact that I never received anything from my cards in December (and that the only response I ever got from my dummy book was one rejection)– is just a little disheartening. I don’t want to sit around sulking though, so I’m considering some other avenues for promotion.

My goal until now has been to spend as little as possible on marketing, simply because I don’t have a bunch of $ floating around, but I am finally understanding the whole “you have to spend money to make money” thing and I’d like to try it out with a paid portfolio site (not right now, but in the semi-near future when I feel my portfolio is as strong as it can be). The trouble is finding sites that are actually worth it. It seems better to spend more on a successful site, then spend less on a site nobody goes to, but I am having trouble finding out which ones those are. There are so many! I’m listing the ones I’ve seen… let me know if you’ve heard of any other promising ones!

The I Spot - I heard a lot about The I Spot during college, with professors (don’t remember which) saying that once you can afford it it’s important to get there because everyone goes there, and every big illustrator has a portfolio there. When I checked out the site, though, I found it to be extremely lacking in the navigation area. I wanted to test how easy it was to find images, so I decided to put some terms into the search box. When I searched “cat,” I got 0 results. Seriously. Whaaaaat? So I searched “animal” and again got 0 results. I honestly thought I must have been doing something wrong. Next I searched “woman” with 0 results, and I was further confused. When I started typing “people,” though, a little box came up under the search bar that offered to finish the word for me. With that search I got over 5000 results. After a while more of tinkering, I learned how the I Spot handled search, and that it was completely counter-intuitive. It appears that what they have is like 25 keywords which you can use to label your images. If someone happens to search for one of these 25 keywords, they get results. If you search for the other zillions of words in the english language, though, you get absolutely no results. How does this make any sense? If you only have an option of 25 or so keywords to look through, why is there is a search bar at all? Why not just categories you can click?

I can’t imagine how anyone would ever find my work over someone else’s, with such a horrible labeling and search system. I can’t picture myself spending $750 to be on such a poorly designed site, unless all the art directors already know something I don’t about searching The I Spot. If anyone reading this has a portfolio there, please, let me know if you get jobs from it! I’m really wary from what I’ve seen, even with the rave reviews of my professor.

The other sites I am looking at are ChildrensIllustrators.com, Picture-Book.com, Altpick.com, and FolioPlanet.com. But how on earth do you determine which one art directors go to most? The only thing they seem to have in common is being expensive.

I know this is something I want to do fairly soon, but with the cost and the risk it’s hard to make a choice. I know that just one good project would pay for the whole year of hosting at these sites, but which ones actually get you projects?

I’m thinking about waiting a bit to take the plunge on sites SO costly, and starting out with one of the less expensive, but still paid, sites. I’ve got a few nibbles from my free Creative Hotlist portfolio, and for $70 a year they offer better stuff (like actual pictures) and improved search ranking. They are run by Communication Arts, so people trust them, and it might be a good place to start.

If any of you guys are paid members of ANY portfolio site, I’d love to hear your thoughts about whether it’s been worth it! This stuff is so overwhelming.

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In other news, I ordered some awesome rounded postcards from OvernightPrints.com to use as notecards to sell. I used the coupon code BC100 to get $10 off the order, so it was super cheap. If any of you guys need to order your summer mailers or business cards or something, these postcards came out amazing. They are really thick, and the satin matte finish is gorgeous. Also, rounded corners = automatic awesome. I have more on the way of 5 or so different art pieces, and I think I’ll be back for my next promo mailers, too. I’ll be selling them here, and at the Market Bazaar!

Ack! My poor blog has been neglected recently– I’ve been focusing my efforts the last couple weeks on making a bunch of stuff for the craft fairs that were coming up, and the new SOI shop at the Savannah Mall.  I made so many dolls and was scared they would not be bought, but people seemed to really like them. An unfortunate side-effect is that I’m totally sick of sewing tiny legs and cat ears, but hopefully that will pass soon.

I’ve been wanting to practice my vector skills and expand my portfolio in that area, so lately I have been doing freelance work creating logos/mascots etc. for various Etsy members as a good way to get some new pieces. The fun thing is that via Etsy’s “Alchemy” request section, I can only bid on the requests that actually sound like fun… mainly adorable things! Once I’m totally comfortable with designing little characters and logos in Illustrator, I hope to move on to doing some graphic design projects as a way to get a design portfolio necessary for book design fellowship I REALLY want to apply to this December.

Here are two I just finished, with another on the way!

I just wanted to share this doll because I find her adorable… trying to make some specials for Easter! I should really be doing some more illustrations but sometimes you just wanna make dolls. I really need a brighter lamp…

I’m fascinated by totally weird stuff, and this Etsy seller I found today is a definite winner! Though I don’t see anything dirty about clay women’s peepees, some may find it NSFW so click “Read the rest of this entry” to, uh, read the rest of the entry!

Read the rest of this entry »

I just received a batch of buttons for including as freebies with my Etsy sales– I love them so much I wish I could keep them all! I’m hoping people will like them enough to use them or give them as gifts, and as they have my web sites on them it could be a good way to spread the word.

The best thing is that I didn’t pay a penny for these buttons. The absolutely awesome guys at Purebuttons.com have an affiliate program where you place a link to their site on your blog or website and you get some free buttons! I’ve actually bought buttons from them before getting free ones (and will continue to do so), and it was fast and super high quality so I have no problem recommending them to you guys!

In other news, I found a very twisted Etsy seller today (actually she found me!) and since it is full of cats and boobied goodness I wanted to share! Her name is Anna and she creates freaking weird ACEOs and other art, bags, and dolls. She even has a whole section for animal girlies *love* Check her out at her Etsy shop! Here are a couple of her cat ladies:

Though I have absolutely zero experience with vinyl toys, I couldn’t resist joining in when I heard the SCAD Illustration club was doing a Munny show. (Actually, I couldn’t resist when I heard that the Munnys were half off!) We are to paint a Munny and make a 12″ illustration to go along side it for a show.

The Munnys finally came in today and we had a super fun time trading the random accessories that came with them. I started out with a wrench, shuriken, beard, and lightning bolt… and ended up with a poop, another poop, another poop, and a teddy bear. Sweet!

I have no idea what to make, but have been trying to tell myself “No cats…no cats…no cats…no cats…!” How will I resist though, with three poops right there for a litter box? Hmmm..

Here he/she is in all his/her blank glory (and really awful lighting):

If you guys have any idea on what it should become feel free to comment!

Here are C and D of my ACEO animal alphabet! C is (Who could guess?!) Cat and D is Dog. Pretty mundane animals but you know I couldn’t pass up Cat and Dog was a good opportunity for butt-sniffin’. These can be purchased from my Etsy shop as well! They’re only 2.5″x3.5″ and the small space is a nice challenge in learning new techniques to increase painting speed.

“C is for Cat” Print Available

“D is for Dog” Print Available

To try to get back on track, I’ve decided to do an ACEO (2.5×3.5 mini-art) for an animal of each letter of the alphabet! Just something to make sure I draw SOMETHING every day, and also fill up my Etsy shop. These are just for fun… I’m not really trying to make any profound statements. Just hoping people might want to collect them on Etsy, which you can by visiting my shop! I swear they won’t ALL be so vacant… but Axolotl’s and fruit bats both give off distinct “empty” vibes when I look at them.

A is for Axolotl - Original - Print

B is for Bat - Original - Print

I’ve been trying to think of new pieces for my portfolio, and have not been able to decide between doing what I love (children’s stories) to get an awesome and full children’s book portfolio, or doing what I am lacking in numbers (editorial.) I want to separate the sections of my portfolio so that the boobz aren’t on the same page as the kid stuff, but I’m worried it will look empty as I don’t have 100s of pieces yet.

Well, typing to myself has got me decided– I’ll try to do another editorial piece or two, so it WON’T look empty when I separate everything, and then I’ll work on some children’s stuff I’ve been wanting to do (Alice in Wonderland, and the Jungle Book… maybe the Jungle book first as ethnic boys are always a plus in portfolios)

Wow. Anyone who made it through that stream-of-consciousness heap shows perseverance! But it was helpful to me!

*scurries off to find a magazine article interesting enough to illustrate*

Always scouring the web for free ways to promote my web sites, I recently came across this link, netting people who sign up for Visa Business Networks $100 in Facebook Advertising Credit. Sweet! Considering I had nothing to lose, I decided to try using the money to make some Facebook Ads of my own.

Now, I had absolutely no idea how to use Facebook Ads, but I figured that messing around with it for a while might eventually give good results (especially since ad credits don’t feel like REAL money..). I decided to do two ads: One advertising my Portfolio website, and the other advertising my Etsy shop.

My Etsy Ad

I decided to create my first ad to advertise my Etsy shop. I chose a picture of my cutest item, a Kitty Girl doll, and since Facebook Ads allow awesomely specific targeting I decided to target my ad to women ages 18-30 who like “anime.” My logic was, anime chicks often like super cute things, so they might like my Kitty Girl dolls. Genius, correct?

Here’s the final ad. I decided to offer a discount to entice people into my Etsy lair:

Now, Facebook is considered by most to be one of the worst places possible for advertising. This is because people on Facebook are so absorbed in poking and slaying monsters that they don’t bother with the ads. I hoped, though, that with such targeted marketing anime chicks would still see that adorable little doll face and go ^_^ in joy, hopefully leading to a click. I was right! Overall, I got over 120 new clicks to my Etsy shop with the ad showing around 40,000 times. That might not sound like a lot, but it is a good percentage clickthough rating for an ad! I got a sale the next day in my shop as well, but they did not use my discount code so I have no idea if this sale came from the ad. For just using free credits, however, this is nice!

My Portfolio Ad

I also wanted to promote my web site. My web site front page is mostly just to show possible clients considering my work, so I wasn’t sure what I could do to entice people to actually DO something once they clicked through. This led me to start up a mailing list. Hopefully, if people clicked through the ad and liked what they saw, they could join my web site mailing list for updates and I would have some new names. So I added the mailing list (I picked Google Groups– feel free to join my list in the sidebar of this blog!) and mentioned it in the ad.

For this ad, I targeted it to men and women 22 and older who hold a position of “Art Director.” Art Director where? No idea! But I was hoping my ad would make it into view of someone looking to hire illustrators. Here’s the final ad. Since the images have to be tiny I tried to just choose a colorful cropping of a common subject–women:

I got less click-through on this one, but I was kind of expecting it as my targeted audience was much smaller. Still, I received over 50 new clicks in one day with the ad showing a bit over 30,000 times, and that’s 50 clicks I didn’t have before! Only one person joined my mailing list, but I am hoping that some art directors at least bookmarked my site.

My Conclusion

I think my ads were successful, at least for the couple days I had them running. Since I was just getting the hang of it, I used up more credits than I think would be necessary now– setting your bidding price and choosing between paying a cost per click or a cost per 1,000 shows is a game you need to get used to. At first I did cost per click, since I didn’t want to pay for the ad showing if nobody clicked, and I think that is good to start testing the waters. But eventually I noticed that I was getting multiple clicks per 1,000 views, and I think if I did it again I would pay for the views, hoping for the clicks, and pay less than half what I did. All in all though, Facebook Ads seem like a good avenue for certain marketing. I’m going to scrounge together some more free credit deals once mine are gone and keep on advertising!

FEBRUARY 8TH UPDATE: I’ve now had more time to play around with Facebook Ads, and my results are getting better and better. I now officially have at least one sale directly from the ad (the person applied the coupon code) and the new results for my most recent Etsy ad are 72,531 impressions, 147 clicks, total cost of $9.00 which is about 6 cents per click. Such an improvement from before when I was paying per click rather than per impression as I am now.  So far, definitely worth it!

(I put up an ad advertising a web host just to see about that, and so far there are NO clicks there. So I think people are much more likely to click on something like a cute product, than someone trying to sell you web space or other more boring ads. So paying per impression definitely only works in some circumstances!)

With all the work I’ve been doing on the business side of art, I have been sad to note that I haven’t really created any new art and, having been sick and cruddy feeling the last week, I haven’t really had any inspiration to boot! But when I saw the huge numbers of people creating ACEO art on Etsy, I decided to use it as a way to get back in the flow! Since they are so tiny, I’m going to try to make one every few days between other things I am working on, without worrying about subject matter (i.e they’ll probably all be cats :P), to see if it brings some inspiration back to make some true portfolio pieces.

ACEO stands for Art Cards, Editions and Originals. They are small trading-card sized works of art so people who normally couldn’t afford original art can still be collectors. You can sell prints or originals, or trade them like Artist Trading Cards! It’s a lot of fun.

Anyway, here is the first one… The Litter Lady.

The Litter Lady was not always such a sorry sight; she was once a world-class cat trainer! Unfortunately, her kitty obsession eventually got the best of her. Now she spends her time burbling in the litter box with her beloved companions forever near–that is, sewed to her head!

You can check out the original at Etsy by clicking here, or the print by clicking here.