I have a friend who sells handmade goods on both Etsy and Amazon. Whenever we chat, she tells me how frustrated she is because one platform or the other has changed the rules on her again; a new fee assessed, a new rule implemented, a new feature stripped away — slow death by a thousand cuts.

No matter how many times I’ve tried to convince her that she deserves to own her shop outright, she continues her dedication to these platforms that see her as nothing more than a tiny data point in their shareholder report.

She was forced to change the image aspect ratio and resolution on her entire catalog of products (hundreds of listings because Amazon changed their mind on what works for their needs.

She was forced into mandatory off-site advertising to the tune of 15% of her annual revenue by Etsy because sellers weren’t buying in, but Etsy shareholders wanted to see more profit.

• Does she get access to all of her data?

• Does she get the email addresses of her customers so she can continue the relationship?

• Is she shielded from thievery by overseas sellers who steal her designs and replicate her shop using AI?

• Does she have the security of knowing that her store cannot be threatened by malicious competitors reporting her shop to the gunshy corporate overlords ready to ban anyone who threatens their legal status?

Those are rhetorical questions because you know the answers.

Etsy, Amazon, or any other marketplaces do not have her best interests at heart, yet when I suggest she start a Shopify store to build something on her terms, she shrugs it off because her perception of the sunk costs in these platforms outweigh the potential. Too many SKUs to manage, too many potential customers to lose, and Shopify is too expensive.

Is it though?

Confession Time

Two facts about my current situation with Shopify* and Lost Mixtape.

1. I’ve made precisely $348 dollars in gross sales since I opened in November.

2. Because I’m not making sales yet (more on that in a moment), everything I do behind the scenes is filled with second-guessing and self-doubt.

Neither of those things will stop me from switching away from Shopify. I’ve done it before; went looking for greener pastures, but, this valley is the richest around, even if I’m still waiting for the Spring melt.

The money I spend on my Shopify fees right now are the investment I make until I build out my promotional efforts. I’ve shared before that I’m not satisfied with my product catalog yet, and part of that was because I wasn’t comfortable with the items I was making. That’s shifting right now and soon I’ll have enough items in the shop to feel good about promoting it.

– RELATED READING –

I know others who have bailed on Shopify because it was too expensive, too difficult to manage, and not bringing in the sales. Let’s talk about all of those.

↦ No Sales

You are correct, Shopify will not help you with sales at all. Every dollar earned is done through your own efforts. That means advertising, promotion, social media engagement, etc. It’s work, but that’s business. Only those who believe in miracles, magic, and the manipulative marketing of corporate marketplaces believe differently.

Your time, energy, and money will dwindle at first. You may have to sit in the hole for a bit while you build up the brand, which is exactly what any brick-n-mortar business does at first in order to eventually get you as a customer. This is the job and believing any different is a fairy tale.

↦ Difficult Technology

There is a learning curve, and Shopify is so robust, it can be overwhelming, but if you find yourself hyperventilating in the dashboard, let me grab you a paper bag and some reassurance. If you’ve used any selling platform ever, the basics of Shopify are the same.

The interface may be different, but the simplicity of connecting your bank account, adding a product, add shipping options and then turning on the OPEN sign is not that different from any other platform you’ve seen.

NOTE: I will share my thoughts on best practices within the Shopify dashboard in future updates, but there are so many great tutorial videos on YouTube, it’s impossible to remain uninformed on the topic.

↦ Too Expensive

In a word, STOP! You can test Shopify store for free for two weeks,* and then the next three months for $1 a month. There’s absolutely no reason you couldn’t have several items for sale and promoting them to potential customers in that period.

After the trial period, the monthly fee is $29 (basic tier) plus less-than 3% processing fees. If the margin on your product is $10, can you sell three or more items per month to cover those costs?

Whether you sell several or dozens of products each month, your profit margin stays consistent and you’re not subjected to any random fees or advertising you have no control over.

However, if we compare to Etsy; they have their initial .20 cent listing fee, then each sale comes with a 6.5% transaction fee + a 3%+ processing fee. Also add on the 15% offline ads fee. That $10 profit just fell to $7. Sell more than ten items on Etsy at that margin and you’ve lost more than what Shopify costs.

But really, the point isn’t whether Shopify is inexpensive or not, but that the objections were NEVER about money. They were about fear.

• Fear of not knowing what comes next because you somehow believe that any of us know that.

• Fear of unknown technology because you’ve convinced yourself you cannot learn new things

• Fear of time and energy needed to get started because comfort is better than freedom

• Fear of not knowing how to grow without corporate interference

• Fear of being responsible for your own well-being

My friend above; I love her like a sister, but sometimes I feel she doesn’t want the responsibility of what happens next. Despite being well educated and incredibly enterprising, she relies entirely on the promotional efforts of the marketplaces. Switching to Shopify will put all that on her and I don’t think she wants it. I stopped trying to convert her, but I remain hopeful she’s switch it up someday.

You, on the other hand; you can do this, and I’m here to add guard rails. This space is for stories, questions, and lifting each other up.

PRO TIP: Don’t close your shop! If you’re on Etsy and considering switching to Shopify, use the testing period to try it out. Carry over your items and start sharing the new link with your audience, but keep the Etsy operating in the background to keep you floating as long as it takes.

Another Confession

Open up the booth, Padre. I’ve got my rosary and I’m spilling my guts today. It’s been seven days since my last confession.

I’ve been holding back on the promotional efforts of Lost Mixtape because I plan on running ads on Meta and Pinterest, and yet, I’m scared to lose money doing it.

I’m no different than you, but I’m changing my mindset around that, looking at this as a learning experiment that will help me grow. Again, sometimes we have to spend money and sit in the hole for a bit before the profit line starts moving up and to the right.

Which brings me back to you. Everything I do in my process, and I believe will be important for others, gets shared here. If I fail at advertising, you’ll know when it happens and why. I’m not the guy to sugar coat my experiences, and if you want to learn from my tough lessons, stick around.

So what do you say?

Tell me where you’re at in your platform journey and what’s the thing standing between you and making the move to more fre? How can I help make those fears a little less intimidating for you?

Leave a comment

* I’m a Shopify partner, have been for years, and any links to them are affiliate links. I only share affiliate links to businesses I’ve used and trust. By using them, you’re supporting my work here.

➡️ IMPORTANT NOTE - PLEASE READ!

I’ve added a new section to Manual Transmission specifically to talk about the apps I use for creating my brand. That includes Shopify, Printify, OmniSend(ify), and others.

I’m calling this new section Shopidaddy: Fatherly advice on Shopify, Printify, and Third-Party apps for building a creative brand. Don't touch the thermostat!

If you DO NOT want to read those posts or get emails about those topics, and only get the fun-loving stories about the artist’s struggle you’re used to seeing from me, you can change your settings for Manual Transmission below.

Manage Your MT Settings

Making the jump from Etsy over to Shopify was the best decision I’ve ever made. I honestly believe there is no better online solution than Shopify and it’s my mission to bring others to the table — I’m a fanatic… drink the Kool Aid.

For real though, I want people everywhere to have the creative freedom to build a shop where they make the rules, establish real relationships with buyers, and keep all the money, but…

Making the Jump Wasn’t Easy

Back when I first got fed up with Etsy (2015, maybe), a friend talked me into checking out Shopify, while also sharing all the typical caveats you’d expect about switching from a marketplace to a stand-alone platform.

• There’s a monthly/annual fee.

• You’ll have to drive your own traffic to the site.

• There’s no recommendation engine like on Etsy.

• It’s way more robust (read as complicated AF).

• Migrating my products was an absolute nightmare.

Shopify said they would make it easy, and my products did switch over, but it was a hot mess. The image ratios were wrong, the text formatted weird, and the absurd amount of tags I had for my products completely flooded the system.

Fixing my titles was the worst part, because I didn’t have the forethought to change them before the migration.

Etsy’s SEO relies heavily on making sure the product titles and description include elements to help buyer’s search. They search by categories, react by images, but what got one product in front of them over another is often the keywords used in the titles.

Imagine popping into your favorite online shop and seeing titles like that one above.

Worse, imagine the mess it does to your shop’s SEO integration, specifically your URL (which gets created when you publish a product listing)

Also, Google does not appreciate keyword stuffing and will rap you across the snout with a rolled up newspaper for doing it. Etsy can get away with it, because they have their internal SEO, but you cannot.

But yeah, Hasty Dave did exactly that and then had to go back through all of my products, one at a time, to change the titles and URLs. I finished many days later, and was so burned out, I didn’t want to touch my shop for a while (at least not without a stiff cocktail).

Like Geese on a Mexican Vacation…We’re Migrating

First, this post is not meant to be a play-by-play on how to move away from Etsy; Shopify has an excellent article that does a much better job of helping. Bookmark it.

Instead, I want to help by sharing what I believe are the important experience tips I didn’t receive (and you won’t find in that article) to make the transition as smooth as possible for you.

Mise en Place

If you haven’t set up your Shopify* template yet, DO THIS FIRST! I do this with any new shop I create, even without migrating products. Having things in the right place will go long distances to making your international migration easier.

1. Find a good tutorial on YouTube to help you get through the initial scary tech stuff. Brendan Gillen has a great tutorial walkthrough for beginners — bookmark it and watch as needed.

2. Add two or three product listings with images to the shop before doing anything else. Don’t worry about perfection yet; just get the items in the shop so you have a visual representation.

3. Create your first collection. Make it broad, generic, and representational of your items (Art, Jewelry, Pottery, Mens, Womens, Accessories, etc.). Add your products to that collection.

4. When customizing your homepage, focus first on two things: Featured Products and Featured Collections. Add them as “sections” to your home page and fill them with the products and collection you just created.

5. Look at your images first. Do you like the images aspect ratio? If not, then you can change it. Here’s some good info on how to think about image sizes.

6. Check your product listing. Click on one of your products and see how it looks. Take in what you believe are the important things that will migrate over from Etsy. The more you familiarize with the layout of your pages, the better this will be for you.

Altering Your Export

You’re going to export a .CSV file (spreadsheet database) from Etsy and you’re going to open it. You’re going to freak the eff out because, holy crap, that’s a lot of data… I’m scared… hold me!

Then, you’re going to pull up your big kid pants, stop shaking in fear, and wipe your eyes.

1. SAVE A SEPARATE VERSION OF YOUR CSV FILE - DO IT! Do not work from your original file, ever. I mean it, only work with your newly saved version. Please for the love of everything holy and natural, do not work from your source file.

2. Go through every one of your listing and change the title to something more human. Try to think about the random customer who knows nothing about your brand. How would they like to read your listings?

3. Do not worry about descriptions yet. We’re focusing on elements that will have and effect on your shop’s SEO first, and the descriptions are third in line to titles and… you guessed it, tags.

4. Find the TAGS column in your CSV, and this will also scare some of you, but make note of how the tags are separated (probably commas), then erase/clear out all the tags.

WARNING: Do not delete the tag column in the spreadsheet!

4. Fill in the now empty cell with three to five tags (comma separated? I haven’t done this in a while—double check your work). Copy and paste them across the different products listings that make sense. Change the tags as needed for your products, but keep it simple.

5. SAVE YOUR FILE. Do NOT save over your source file.

6. Import your entire livelihood into Shopify.

IMPORTANT: If you use Printify* for your print-on-demand listings in Etsy. DO NOT IMPORT those listings — delete those rows (because you were smart enough to save as a different file, right).

You can import your print-on-demand products more smoothly within Printify’s interface (which you can now do within Shopify’s interface… more to come on that). Watch this TikTok video to see what I mean.

@hey.itsteaaHow to transfer Etsy listings to Shopify with Printify #printondemand #etsyshop #etsyshoptips #etsysecrets #etsyprintondemand #helpwithetsy #etsyshopowner #etsytiktok #etsybusiness #sidehustletips #sidehustlehacks #sidehustlemom #podshop #podbusiness #printondemanddesigns #tshirtbusiness #printifytutorial #shopify #shopifytips #shopifytutorial #shopifyprintondemand

Tiktok failed to load.

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In order to work with Printify*, you will need to integrate the app into your Shopify. This is relatively easy, and of course, here’s a video to help you. I will also talk more about the Printify/Shopify combo in the future.

Breathe. Meditate. Continue.

Remember that technology breaks and there might be some broken parts, but if you did this well, your SEO will be intact, and I promise you, that means a lot.

You will have to adjust images. You will want to change up your product pages. You will tweak the hell out of your home page a thousand times and still never be happy with it — trust me on this.

However, you will have gained something amazing; a sense of pride for having a big, scary, online shop that nobody can take away from you. Now you can start bringing in new customers and collecting email addresses instead of having them stolen by the large corporate marketplace.

And if you join Shopify today, you can get your first two weeks free, and the next three months for only $1 per month. That’s 90 days to experiment, play, and get yourself settled.

And if stay subbed to this Shopidaddy segment, you’ll get all the info I have inside me to help you along.

* Notes affiliate links. If you use them, you’ll be helping me keep content like this free for everyone, and it never affects your costs in any way – Thanks for your support.

I made the wrong choice.

I decided to start selling physical and digital goods, and I needed to pick an e-commerce platform that could handle all of it. By the end of this, you’ll know the hoops I’ve jumped through and where I finally landed.

The short story is that I landed on a platform called Fourthwall that promised to do a lot of what I needed, and when I decided to use Fourthwall, there were some deal breakers from the list that I skipped over.

This is everything I wanted out of an e-commerce platform:

• Ability to sell both digital and physical products

• Allows for digital products of 500MB or greater in size

• Video and other media types are ok

• Must have print-on-demand options or third-party plugins

• Allows me to export customer email addresses

• Has sophisticated fulfillment and reporting technology

• Needs to be cost-effective until I can prove my concept works

(Some links below are affiliate links; help me keep the lights on. When you use them, you’re supporting this publication at no additional cost.)

SPOILER ALERT: There is NOT a single platform anywhere in the world that does all these things

Fourthwall does a lot of these things well, but there were two critical areas where they fail terribly.

❌ - Fulfillment

First, they do not offer any shipping solutions within the app, and the only shipping integration they have is with Shipstation, which is an extra $9 a month I wasn’t expecting to pay.

Also, whenever an order is completed, I cannot mark it complete. Instead, I have to download a CSV file of all open orders, manually add information to the CSV file, and then re-upload the CSV file for the system to mark things complete.

I’M NOT DOING THAT SHIT EVERY TIME I GET AN ORDER!

❌ - Email Marketing

There is no way to download my customer’s email list from Fourthwall without a separate account with Klaviyo, Kit, Mailchimp, or others—no Substack option (I have yet to find a single app or platform that natively works with Substack).

I still have a Kit.com account, but I’m using it for a different project, and it’s not a good idea to mix lists within that app; something I wish Kit would fix, but I’m sure it doesn’t make financial sense for them.

So I’m packing my bags and heading to another platform that does what I need, but sacrifices will need to be made.

The semi-definitive guide to finding the right e-commerce platform for you-ish

As I said above, there is not a single platform that does all of these things. You’d think someone would have made one by now, but nobody wants to be the absolute all-in-one solution. My instincts tell me that it would be too much technology to manage all of these things well, which is why many of the platforms have third-party apps do some of the heavy lifting.

However, below is a somewhat helpful guide to help you pick a platform that works best for you. I’m keeping it simple by giving the names of apps that work in the categories and which ones to avoid.

Physical Products

• Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, Big Cartel, Etsy, Fourthwall, Sellfy, Gumroad

• AVOID: Stan Store, Kit.com

You can create product listings on Stan and Kit, but there’s no inherent fulfillment option and collecting mailing addresses takes an excessive amount of data management.

Digital Products (small files)

• Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, Etsy, Fourthwall, Sellfy, Gumroad, Stan Store, Kit.com

• AVOID: Big Cartel

The only way to offer digital products with Big Cartel is with a third-party app called Pulley.

Digital Products (large files)

• Shopify, Wix, Fourthwall, Sellfy, Gumroad, Stan Store

• AVOID: Etsy, Squarespace, Big Cartel, Kit.com

Kit can handle large files up to 500 mb, but it’s not the most elegant solution, especially if you’re offering video.

Fulfillment Focused

• Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, Big Cartel, Etsy,

• AVOID: Fourthwall, Sellfy, Gumroad, Stan Store, Kit.com

Email List Focused

• Squarespace, Stan Store, Kit.com

• AVOID: Etsy, Fourthwall, Sellfy, Shopify, Wix*, Big Cartel*, Gumroad*

* I don’t know enough about these apps to say one way or another

Did you miss this?

Last week, I launched the Pieced Together Asset Library, where I have all stories and digital goods sectioned off for easy perusal.

And the winner is…

If all things were equal for all platforms as far as physical and digital goods, then the deal breaker would be customer service, which includes communication, customer segmentation, and fulfillment. If I cannot do those things well, I’m not providing the best experience for my customers.

With those things in mind, and given the uneven playing field between physical and digital goods, the answer is clear to me.

After over six months since I closed my Shopify account, I am going back.

Shopify allows me to offer everything I want to my customers, with the exception of an elegant way to deliver video tutorials. However, I’m cooking up a different plan for those.

The only x-factor in this decision is email. Shopify is great at sending simple confirmation and recommendation emails to customers when they are related to specific products, but the platform is absolute trash when it comes to email marketing. Most people on Shopify use Klaviyo for email marketing, which is another tidy expense I’m not willing to take on, primarily when Substack works great for me.

Instead, I will manually migrate email addresses over to Substack from Shopify on a regular basis. It’s tedious, but not enough to make me go a more expensive route, at least not right now. Besides, most of the people who buy from me probably got to my shop from my Substack account anyway.

Looking for the perfect all-in-one solution is a fool’s errand, and yes, I have been that fool many times in recent years, but I hope my calamitous tumble through these platforms saves you time and energy and keeps you focused on more important things.

The best part about going back to Shopify, though, is it’s like they knew I’d be back. I logged back into my old account, and everything was still intact, just as I had left it. It needs new furniture, and there’s still a big hole in the wall where I punched it before I left, but it’s still standing and ready for the next round.

Link Parade

(I need a better name for this section.)

• The pre-order for Substrate, my new digital collage art zine, just went live, and the first twenty get signed copies (this link may be broken soon when I switch back to Shopify. Someone please remind me).

• This post by Adi Dick (specifically the second image in the carousel) is so inspiring to me.

• is an illustrator with a dynamic style, and though I dig his art very much, I’m even more turned on by his lettering.

• I met a couple of years ago on Threads. He’s a genuine dude and a talented printmaker. Again, the fastest way to my heart is to use letterforms in unique ways.

• Solid advice from for any online project, especially newsletters.

What's Ahead

• Society6 is charging artists for the service

• The subscription-ization of everything

• My predictions for the future

• What I'm changing in my business because of it

You may have heard me ranting on Threads about it, got an email, or have yet to read about Society6 moving away from its free-for-all strategy and opting for a ​tiered premium membership​ approach.

Society6 claims this change is to eliminate the glut of low-quality designs and inactive artists, and I can see how this change could help with that problem, but are they also working to find more revenue in a market in which they have been falling behind?

As one of the more prominent print-on-demand marketplace companies, will this move have ripple effects across other marketplaces? Earlier this year, RedBubble made a similar announcement about ​artist tiers​ where, at the point of purchase, they are ​charging artists differently​ depending on which tier they fall in.

The Beginning of the End

RedBubble's strategy has been fraught with controversy because sellers who assumed they would be in the top tier based on performance were placed in the lowest tier and paying the most. New and less experienced artists were placed in the top tier.

Some sellers speculated that RedBubble wanted to maximize its fee earnings off the best-selling artists because they made the most money. And there were claims from sellers having their accounts shut down if they questioned their tier ranking.

Society6's approach is less controversial because the seller gets to opt-in to one of the tier levels. Is it worth $12.99 a month to sell at the Pro level? It's a minor inconvenience to pay a monthly fee for something they previously got for free, and with the discounted base product price, they can recoup their expenses quickly.

This strategy is an attempt for Society6 to clean up the mess of low-quality art that has permeated the platform in the last few years. I always saw the site as the premier print-on-demand marketplace because of the level of art and artists selling there.

This change has already taken effect for new users, and legacy users must choose by November 30, 2023, or be placed in the free tier automatically, limiting designs to 10.

There will be thousands of artists who missed or ignored the update and have a lot of designs that sell reasonably well and will have the shock of their lives on December 1st when their accounts are downgraded.

A Finger on the Domino

I don't know if Society6's decision is enough to start a wave across creative platforms, but this shift, along with RedBubble's changes, other platforms will undoubtedly be paying attention. But this is also nothing new because we've seen the subscriptionization of every service and entertainment platform since Amazon Prime added streaming video.

News, entertainment, SaaS (software as a service) companies, social media, offline services, video games, and now creative marketplaces have joined the fray of things that tax your debit card monthly.

If I subscribed to every service, news, and entertainment channel I wanted to use, I'd need to refinance my home to pay for it. That's not happening—have you seen the interest rates?

Some Predictions

I'm not enough of a thought leader to claim I know where things are heading, but the writing is definitely on the wall for some things.

Etsy

Did you know that Etsy has a ​Plus​ level? I did, and I forgot about it. Most of their sellers do not use the service as it doesn't provide enough rewards to make the $10 monthly fee worthwhile.

I do not doubt that Etsy is already rethinking its premium services, and within the next 8 to 12 months, it will similarly announce these news tiers as Society6.

The current standard will become the Plus tier for $10 a month, adding a little more functionality than most sellers currently get.

The Pro tier will cost $29 a month and give you all that's currently offered with Plus but with some added functionality (who knows what that means—probably AI of some sort).

Anyone who doesn't join the Plus or Pro tier will be remanded to the basic level, which will look like the current standard except limited to 24 listings.

Other Creative Marketplaces

Once Etsy doubles down on subscriptions, other platforms will either lean the other direction (maybe to their detriment) and market themselves as the free alternative to subscription services, only offering a paid tier strictly for customer service capabilities.

Most popular marketplaces will follow suit and offer extended services to compete with Etsy, RedBubble, and the ever-present shadow of Amazon Prime.

Any less-known marketplaces will struggle to keep pace with the larger sites, and many will fold into obscurity.

E-Commerce

With Meta, Twitter, TikTok, and even Amazon trying to create an everything app where you spend all your time in that space, you can bet that they will all double down on e-commerce soon.

TikTok recently opened its Shops to all North American users, and they are pushing it hard because they want to capitalize on its popularity to pull some of the e-commerce market share away from the other players.

Right now, it's free to use TikTok Shops, but it would not surprise me if they eventually add a Pro level to the business model, but not until they've secured a much more significant portion of the market.

In other words, if you're using TikTok, now is an excellent time to take advantage of the service because the algorithm works in the favor of TT shops. Seize the opportunity to ride their slipstream.

Shopify

As the leader in the personal e-commerce area, Shopify knows precisely where the winds are heading. I don't see them adding new tiers or options to their service because they don't want to upset the shopping cart when their users soon have more options from frenemies like Meta and TikTok.

If I were to predict anything about Shopify, they would also lean into AI technology to improve user experience. They dabbled in it with product descriptions and copy editing. Still, they could add AI to the design aspects and even collaborate with Open-AI or Midjourney for image creation. These will likely be another app that can be integrated within Shopify, and almost all Shopify app developers use the freemium model.

Creative Software

Adobe will continue to raise prices at a rate of 5% (or more) every two years. Figma users will be dismayed sometime in the next few years when the service gets rolled into Adobe Creative Cloud.

Adobe's ascent as the defacto AI creative tool will become even more evident at Adobe Max 2024, making Midjourney and Dall-E nearly obsolete by comparison.

Alternative creative software like Affinity will continue to fall further behind because they don't have the talent or revenue to compete with big boys.

The only competition Adobe will have is Canva (which also has premium tiers), and the market will be divided. All the professional artists, designers, and video editors will continue to be shackled to Adobe, while Canva will cater to the remaining casual users.

Stock Imagery and Digital Assets

In the next two years, Creative Market, Envato, Design Cuts, and others will struggle to retain relevancy because of improved AI capabilities. Why pay for these services when Adobe can craft images from scratch out of a trash pile photo, turning them into award-winning work?

The only exception I see here is fonts. AI cannot craft typography with any accuracy or consistency. This may change in the future, but even if Adobe does figure this out, we will still need the typefaces as a reference to the type style we need for the designs.

Social Media + Commerce

Earlier this year, Meta announced that sellers who use Meta's shop services on Facebook and Instagram will be forced to sell directly through the native consumer marketplace.

Currently, legacy users could use an e-commerce solution like Shopify or Big Cartel, and any sales through Instagram would be processed through those services. By April 2024, that will no longer be possible.

Meta's objective is to keep people on the platform as much as possible, and the money they make on transactions in their shopping areas is small potatoes compared to their advertising revenue.

Instagram/Threads has already implemented a Verified program where people pay for the blue check mark and get access to support. That will likely carry across to all Meta apps eventually. Could there be more tiers in the future? I wouldn't bet against it.

Making the Most of the Dystopia

If this is our future, what are budget-conscious creatives to do? Unfortunately, there will never be a single solution for everyone because your priorities differ from mine, and the nuances will dictate where we invest our money.

I plan to scrutinize all future subscriptions, asking myself some important questions.

1. Is this a personal or professional expense?

2. If it's a personal expense, does it bring me joy or help my family in any way?

3. If it's a professional expense, does it help me make money?

If the answer to those last two questions is no, I cancel or pause the service.

The caveat is that some expenses may not directly impact my revenue, but they help in secondary ways. For instance, I don't earn any money from some of my news subscriptions, but they keep me informed, and I can share the most important stories with you.

I could justify why I don't need Spotify, but it brings me joy and helps me in my business because I use it as brain fuel while I'm creating. I'm listening to music as I write this (Tell Me Why I Don't Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats if you're interested).

On the other hand, I had a Teachable account hosting some training, but I wasn't getting much traction on them. I kept the pricy subscription for a long time, but it wasn't serving me. I worried that someone would find the broken link and be upset if I canceled it.

I cannot live based on an assumed perception from people I don't know, so I cut out Teachable last year. I've heard no complaints.

If there is a service I want to add to my business, but I'm unsure if it's worth the investment, I come up with a responsible use case for the service.

I dive in if I have the time to use the service and earn enough from it to at least make back my investment. If I can't make the case, then I don't invest.

This is not a black-and-white solution; there is some wiggle room in either direction. The trick is not to get caught in the gray.

Not Adding to the Problem

Yes, I see the irony of talking about memberships and subscriptions this way, knowing I have a membership of my own.

Well, Society6's decision to change its business model made me rethink my view on memberships.

There is an honest place for paid memberships, but if I'm being frank with you and myself, I struggled to find the appropriate use case for my membership program.

Effective immediately, I'm dissolving The Makers, and everything published on The Hungry will be free for everyone.

Tell your friends!

The Hungry was built to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. The object of The Hungry is to empower creative people to see the opportunities available, and I don't think that information should be kept behind a paywall.

This decision affects my ability to earn revenue in the short term, but I'm looking at the long game now.

When everyone else charges you a monthly chit to sit at the cool kid's table, The Hungry will be at the large, family-style table, and all artsy types are welcome.

Please pass the mashed potatoes.

But since it’s a few days before I leave for my trip, I decided to share some thoughts with you and then take next week off to enjoy the Aloha.

Speaking of the aloha spirit, the people of Maui still need lots of help. If you can see it in your heart to donate, one program I’ve contributed to is the Maui Strong Fund.

Free Download: Marketplace Mastery

When I return from my trip, one of the first things on my agenda is to finish up a project I started this week. The purpose of the project is to help anyone that sells through marketplaces like Etsy, RedBubble, SaatchiArt, and other places by providing a simple punch list of tasks to help those sellers retain customers.

I’ve written many times about how the shoppers on marketplaces are not your customers but the customers of the marketplace, but there are ways to bring those individuals over so you can continue your relationship with them. Marketplace Mastery will help with that, and it is 100% free!

Along with the task list, I’ll be sharing a video giving more context to all the elements, and I have plans to include a couple of other sheets to help with content and social media ideas.

For now, though, you can download the punch list and get started today.

Marketplace Mastery

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IMPORTANT: In a week, I’ll be deleting this segment from the post because I want this to remain an exclusive for subscribers. If you miss it, reply to this message directly, and I’ll send it to you.

PARTNER

Shopify is the Answer

Recently I did some independent research on a few e-commerce solutions, some saying that cater specifically to artists. The only thing I found is they cannot compete with Shopify.

Yes, I am biased, but for a reason. I’ve been at this game for a while now and tried many different solutions, but none have provided the same level of security, assurance, capability, and service as Shopify and for a fraction of the cost of those other storefronts that hide their pricing.

As a bonus, you can test Shopify for $1 a month for the first 3 months. That’s $3 for 90 days’ worth of business. There is no better deal out there, especially for a tool as powerful as Shopify.

Compare Shopify to other providers

The Poet and the Killer

David Ogilvy was a creative genius and an advertising industry juggernaut, his agency was responsible for some of the most memorable ads of all time, and he was not one to mince words when giving advice.

“Most good copywriters fall into two categories. Poets. And killers. Poets see an ad as an end. Killers as a means to an end. If you are both a killer and a poet, you get rich.” - David Olgilvy, Olgilvy on Advertising

Olgilvy was talking about the advertising world, but his thoughts transcend. Poets are creative souls who live to make art. Killers are strategists who know when and how to seize an opportunity.

If we aim to earn substantial amounts of money from our art, we must embrace both sides.

Prediction: Some people have already checked out and deleted this post from their inbox because the thought of the killer is so antithetical to their nature the concept repulses them. However, that doesn’t make it any less necessary for success.

Rethinking the Process

When I was a small child, my mom would mix peas with mashed potatoes before serving them to me because she knew that the textures were the same. I know you just imagined the spoon train and made the chew-chew noises in your head—so did I.

Mom couldn’t get me to eat peas alone, but the potato was just enough buttery, starchy goodness to make the peas a willing sacrifice. The same went for cheese sauce and broccoli (I draw the line at avocado and mushrooms to this day, though).

If peas are the conversations about money and business acumen, then my goal with The Hungry Artist is to make mashed potatoes. The goal is to give you get a taste of something you like that also gives you the nourishment you need.

Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ve found the right flavor combinations yet.

The Truth Hurts

Since I started this project, I’ve been asking people to share it with friends if they found the information helpful. I’ve even created a referral program to help encourage people to share. Want to know how many referrals I’ve gotten?

That stings and I’m not sure if it’s that readers aren’t into sharing or if my content isn’t good enough for them to share. To be fair, some may have sent referrals to friends, but none of those friends have responded, which is still a problem.

I believe I’ve done a decent job presenting good information to readers, but it’s time for me to take it up a notch. I cannot control whether people will share, but I can control the quality of what gets shared.

While I’m away on my Hawaiian vacation (poi is kind of like mashed potatoes), I’ll have plenty of quiet time to spend thinking about how to step up my content game, and be forewarned; I’m aiming for killer content…mixed with some poetic artistry.

Despite those who may be repulsed by the idea of making good money from their art (who are these people, anyway?), the goal is to introduce concepts that share with them beneficial things that help them move the needle without making them feel slimy about their actions.

It’s time to lower the bar to a growth mindset, helping makers visualize the benefits of creative business strategy.

In the meantime, I’ve got some chicken katsu and mac salad calling my name. I’ll bring you back some chocolate-covered macadamia nuts.

Oh, and if I’ve guilted you enough into sharing, press the button.

Refer a friend

Small Bites

Enough here to keep you busy for a few weeks

• Connor Price has taken TikTok by storm with his adventurous approach to sharing music… but the real credit goes to his wife, Breana. The unassuming young woman is a killer, and Kris Jenner’d the shit out of Connor’s career.

• Should we work more with diligence or meaning? Read and then decide.

• Amazon Kindle is ok, but it’s not easy to find great, independent writers. I recently stumbled across Book Bub, and there’s no looking back.

• I’m not saying you should start a blog, but I recommend it because social media sucks, and writing is therapy. If you create a blog Darren Rowse from Problogger shares 25 pages you should have on that blog (one step at a time).

• Abstract artist explains why our spaces deserve art (take a lesson and share the concept).

• Should you discount your art to help it sell? The short answer is NO. The long answer is HELL NO, but there are things you can do.

• The Saatchi Art blog often talks about how to buy art. These posts are geared toward new collectors, like this one about buying prints. However, if you’re savvy, you can learn how buyers think, then use it to get them to buy from you.

• We’ve already heard enough from middle-aged white men (ahem) about how to do business. Maybe now it’s time to learn from the ladies, 6 of them in fact, and their advice about starting a creative business.

• The app formerly known as Twitter (I refuse to call it a letter, out of spite) is now throttling any tweets that feature links out to competitor apps.

• For all my ambition and platitudes about doing the work, the only thing that matters, in the end, is that everything I shared was out of love.

• My first musical crush was Leather Tuscadero (Suzi Quatro) because she is a badass. My second was Chrissie Hynde because she is also a badass. I suppose I had a type.

• Maybe your kids are back in school, or they will be soon. Perhaps you need supplies, but before you run to Walmart or Target, consider these mom-n-pop shops for your supply needs.

Dessert

• Let’s play meat or cake!

*This publication is an affiliate partner with and not directly sponsored by Shopify, Envato, Printify (and others). I am a loyal customer of all these services and would recommend them to my mom. I have—Hi, Mom.

You’re an artist, designer, or illustrator stuck in a dead-end job to keep food on the table. Your creative work has caught the attention of your friends, who keep urging you to sell your work.

Without skipping a beat, they throw out the names: Etsy, Amazon, Red Bubble, and Fine Art America.

So, you take their advice and dive headfirst into one of those marketplaces (or ::gasp:: all of them) only to realize that you’ve overlooked a fundamental lesson in business.

“Not your cow. Not your cream!”

Over the years, I’ve encountered many artists who generate decent income through online marketplaces. Still, the harsh reality is that relying solely on a marketplace is like building your empire on a rented plot of sand slowly sinking, and you must constantly pull yourself out to stay above ground.

But are marketplaces the worst thing ever? Of course not. They have their advantages, but they do have plenty of disadvantages.

Benefits of Creative Marketplaces

These platforms allow you to showcase your work to a broader audience and gain exposure to potential customers. It’s a chance to present your creations to a global community, with the possibility of attracting press and influencers constantly looking for fresh talent.

Low Barrier to Entry

Setting up shop on these marketplaces is a breeze. It’s a relatively quick process, allowing you to start selling your creations without jumping through hoops. These platforms offer a ready-made infrastructure with existing traffic and customer bases, allowing you to focus on your craft.

Sales and Revenue Generation

When selling your creative work, these marketplaces simplify the process. You can set your prices, offer discounts, and easily manage sales transactions, offering a straightforward way to earn income from your artistic endeavors.

Challenges

For all their ease of use and practicality for busy side hustlers, we can’t overlook the potential challenges and considerations that come with relying solely on creative marketplaces.

High Competition

The marketplace is a crowded space, bustling with countless artists and sellers vying for attention. Standing out amidst the competition can prove daunting, making it challenging to capture the spotlight and attract potential buyers.

Pricing and Profit Margins

Determining the correct pricing for your work while maintaining profitability is a tightrope. Striking a balance between fair pricing and ensuring your talent is appropriately valued can be challenging in a competitive marketplace.

Maintaining Artistic Integrity

Preserving your artistic vision amidst the demands of the market is essential. Balancing your passion for creating what you love with the need to cater to consumer preferences requires a delicate touch to ensure your authenticity shines through.

Platform Limitations and Policies

Navigating each marketplace's rules, terms of service, and policies can be complex. Understanding and adhering to content, copyrights, and intellectual property guidelines is crucial. Additionally, customer service on these platforms can sometimes be frustrating or non-existent.

Time and Effort

Managing inventory, fulfilling orders, and providing customer service requires significant time and effort. Promoting and marketing your work to attract potential buyers demands dedication and strategic planning.

Inability to Communicate Directly with Customers

This is the most significant disadvantage, in my opinion. Handing over control of customer data and post-sale communication can be limiting. With a near complete lack of ability to talk directly to your customers, building direct relationships with your buyers becomes challenging, making it harder to establish a loyal customer base.

And if you ever leave the platform, you will leave that customer base behind.

Some Considerations

When choosing a marketplace, reflecting on your personal goals and preferences is crucial.

• Who is my target audience, and do any of these marketplaces cater to them?

• Does the platform align with my artistic style and values?

• How effectively does the marketplace meet my specific needs and requirements?

• What are each platform's associated costs, fees, and potential returns?

• Do I have the ability to communicate directly with my customers?

Best Marketplace Practices

Let’s assume you’ve carefully considered these factors and still decide to leverage a marketplace to sell your work. Here’s what I recommend to make the most of the platform:

1. Start an Email List

Focus on growing your list, even if you’re uncertain about the content you’ll share initially. That will come later.

2. Create a landing page for your email list with a custom URL

If your email provider doesn’t offer this feature, take the initiative and make your own.

3. Use your custom URL as the primary link across all platforms

Incorporate it into your marketplace profiles, social media accounts, and email signature.

4. Enhance your product packaging drop-ins

Add business cards, stickers, or other inserts that prominently display your email list’s URL with every package you send out.

5. Send out a monthly email newsletter to start

Keep it simple, informative, and fun. Focus on providing value rather than merely promoting your products. Announce new items, share sales specials, and highlight events you’re participating in, all while maintaining a personal touch.

6. Learn from successful users, but don’t overthink it

Study from others who have made good money from the platform. It’s easy to get caught up in the details and intricacies of growth strategies, but remember that your primary goal is to sell. Stay focused on that objective.

Caveat: There are a lot of would-be gurus out there telling you how successful they are. They’ll talk about how much money they made, and try to sell you on courses and programs. What they often don’t share is how much money they spent to make that money. Don’t be enticed by big numbers unless their giving all the information.

Most Important: The marketplace is a temporary venue to host your items for sale; it’s not your home.

Think about your favorite brands—they don’t limit themselves to specific stores or outlets. They advertise to you, knowing you’ll find your way to them. Apply the same mindset and use the marketplace as a stepping stone to lead customers to your platform.

Ultimately, your primary focus should be keeping your customers, followers, and subscribers within your influence. As you grow, you may leave the marketplace behind or maintain it as a complement to your branded website.

By doing the necessary groundwork, you’ll be able to inform your audience of any transitions or changes, leveraging the strength of your email list. Relying on the marketplace alone but without an email list, you’ll start from scratch or rely solely on social media to rebuild your connections.

Marketplaces are neither the ultimate solution nor the worst option for selling creative work. If you feel that a marketplace aligns with your goals, fully commit. However, do your due diligence to keep your customers within the folds of your business rather than within the confines of the marketplace.

Focusing on building your brand and maintaining direct relationships with your audience is crucial. Nurture your email list, leverage your creativity, and pursue avenues that empower you to shape your artistic journey.

Enjoyed this post? Here are some others:

Our constantly vigilant friends at Meta made a significant announcement regarding shopping on Facebook and Instagram. Currently, if you use those nifty on-screen links that you can add to your Stories and Reels, you can have people directed either to Facebook to make the purchase or send them to your e-commerce solution (Shopify/Woo Commerce).

The latter is how I run my shop because it gives me more control over managing orders and customers. I originally had it set up to run through Facebook, but following up on orders through their system was more convoluted than necessary. Also, they require fulfillment within a brief period of time, and if you don’t fulfill in that timeframe, they yell at you. Don’t hit those marks repeatedly; they can shut down your access to shopping.

Fulfilling orders in a timely fashion is an essential function of running a shop online, and it’s something I strive for. Still, when I was running the pre-order for Mag Bash, I obviously couldn’t fulfill it in the timeframe Meta deemed necessary, and I would have gotten smacked down repeatedly.

Now, according to that update, and starting next month, any new shops in the Meta ecosystem will be required to use the Checkout with Facebook/Instagram functionality. In addition, by April of 2024, legacy shops (like mine) that use outside partners (like Shopify) will be forced to switch to Checkout with Facebook or completely lose access to the service.

Meta claims, “We're focused on building a seamless shopping experience for people that helps businesses of all sizes grow.” However, knowing their track record, I believe this has more to do with collecting our customer data and maximizing Meta’s potential to market to them directly. They probably also want to capture all those precious order processing dollars.

When Meta uses the word seamless, what they mean is that they don’t want people to ever leave their platform. The longer people stay, the more data they can collect, and the more often Meta can put ads in front of them, ultimately forcing people to buy within the platforms themselves, continuing the cycle.

This is bad as someone trying to run a business on our terms. It’s another platform trying to force us into a digital sharecropping arrangement where they paint the picture of a new, more straightforward opportunity. Still, in reality, we become beholden to their terms of service. They entice us with all their bells and whistles, and once we become dependent on their services, they change the rules and tighten the reins.

For the time being, I will keep my connection to the Meta shopping system using my direct connection to my Shopify store until they tell me I can’t. Of course, this doesn’t mean I’ll stop using Instagram, but that may be a consideration, depending on how tightly they yank those reins.

In the meantime, I keep growing the newsletter, adding new and relevant items to my shop, and maintaining control over how I operate my business instead of choosing the convenience of working with a tech company that only wants to take advantage of my efforts.

I can’t stress enough how essential starting an email list is to growing a business. If you’ve been meaning to create one yourself but didn’t know when or how to start, Substack is the lowest entry barrier and can help you maintain your autonomy.

I saw that shared an email with this title and it inspired today’s share. I haven’t read Tim’s email yet because I wanted to shoot my shot without taking from his, but I highly recommend you subscribe to because he’ll make you a smarter, more purpose-driven writer.

Zero Dollars and a Laptop

If I woke up this morning to find out someone had drained my bank account and deleted all my social media accounts, and stolen all of my art; after the initial freak-out and ugly crying, I’d crack open the Macbook and run right over to Substack.

I’ve been thinking about Substack a lot lately. Not only is it one of my personal content pillars, I believe it could become a much bigger player in the social media space soon, but that’s a topic for another update.

Day One

After I opened the Substack account, I would add the email addresses of several of my closest friends and family members. Then I’d seek out and follow several, art-related writers on the platform.

I would also add a membership tier to my account, making it really inexpensive for others to support me by becoming founding members.

I would spend most of the first day writing 3 to 5 posts in order to populate my feed, turning the final post into an email similar to this one here, letting everyone know what happened to me, sharing as much value as possible, while gracefully begging for people to support and share my posts with all their friends.

Finally, I’d write one last update for the day, an artist resource, filling it with every possible art supply, book, or online tool I could think of that helps me do my work. I would sign up for affiliate accounts in as many places as possible and turn the resource into a link farm for passive revenue.

Sidebar: In an early stage like this, it’s important to lean into credibility. I would only choose affiliate sources that I honestly believe in and trust.

I’ll spend the most time on this post, making it as content-rich and valuable as possible so I can use it as a way to get new subscribers in the door of my Substack.

Fingers tired and eyes sore from typing and staring at a computer all day, I crash into bed with anxious dreams of potential opportunity.

Day 2

I jump out of bed way too early because I couldn’t sleep from the stress of an empty bank account, I shower, make some coffee, and get cracking on opening an e-commerce store for my new art and design projects.

Most might think the best free option for artists and designers would be Etsy, but I have no interest in that website. Instead, I’m running to Shopify to start an account with their free trial. Using the knowledge that I learned from reading my own 7-Day Art Shop, I bang out the most basic and functional website possible, and I do it in a few hours (desperate times and desperate measures, you know).

Get 3 Months of Shopify for $3

Next, I start an account on Printify so I can sell a variety of products without any initial investment. I then integrate that account with my Shopify to populate my shop with new products.

Of course, I would need to make some designs, but I need to think strategically about these designs because my traditional art style may be appreciated by many, but I can admit it’s not the kind of art that inspires impulse purchases.

Instead, I would tap into trends, memes, and aspirational ideas, and put my creative spin on them. I would also work hard to design things that made people laugh and commiserate around a singular idea, and hopefully engender solidarity with like-minded folks.

To also encourage impulse buying, I’d make these initial designs available for a limited amount of time. By combining that idea with future pleas for support, I hope to gain enough attention to get people to buy and share my work.

With what few hours are remaining in the day, I spend some time interacting and commenting on posts from other Substack writers. Yes, I’m looking for eyeballs, but I also want to show the community that I’m here to be part of it.

Day 3

Woken up in the wee hours by the cha-ching sound that the Shopify app makes whenever I make a sale, I rush to see the hundreds of orders that came in the night. Ok, maybe it was only one or two, but I’ll take them.

Shower, coffee, keyboard; I start by writing a post on Substack about my experience so far. I talk about all the highs and lows, wins and fails, but instead of posting that one public, I make it a member-only post with a teaser for the public folks. If anyone has joined my Substack membership, I want them to have something new written especially for them as quickly as possible.

Join the Makers

I also would open new accounts on YouTube, TikTok, and begrudgingly, Instagram. Again, thinking strategically, I make several pieces of short-form video content to share across all channels. Some would be purposeful, sharing thoughts and videos of my process, with others being more fun.

I also start a LinkPop account so I can add several links to products, content, and other social channels. That link gets added everywhere, and it’s the only thing I share with people. I even generate a QR code that leads people directly to that. I could use that QR code with one of my cheeky designs and make stickers (a random idea that popped into my head while writing this).

Day 4

I had to turn on Do Not Disturb on my phone because of all the sales notifications! Perhaps that’s wishful thinking, but if I am making sales, I will need to reinvest all of that immediately.

I open a business account on Facebook, integrate my Instagram, and start making a couple of advertisements that drive people either to my shop, or my Substack content. I do not promote any other social channels because my only objective is to get people to places where they can buy (hunger is a powerful motivator for opportunism).

From this point forward, my main goal for each day is to create content that informs, inspires, and entertains. I’m not making new designs unless it’s to chase a time-sensitive idea. Otherwise, I’m a content machine, churning out new stuff several times a day (NOTE: this works better on some channels more than others—choose wisely).

I also tease that on Day 5 I’ll be live streaming my art process and encourage everyone to set their alarms for the event because it’s going to be epic.

Day 5

I make a bigger pot of coffee because today is going to be a long one. I’ll be doing a marathon stream all day on both YouTube and TikTok, recording every minute with the potential of creating micro-content from it later.

I make several, small, original pieces of art and as I’m making them, I post a listing on my shop for people to buy these one-of-a-kind items.

It’s an exhausting day, but worth it because I sold so many items and gained dozens of new subscribers with a few new members. I spend the rest of the evening with my family, falling asleep in the Barcalounger until they kick me out of the room for snoring.

Lather Rinse Repeat

From this point forward, I continue this process, but I ease up on the flood of content a bit. I don’t want to bludgeon anyone with my posts, and I also need to take my own sanity into consideration.

Some of that energy gets turned toward making long-form content for YouTube so I can grow the channel enough to start earning ad revenue, but that takes time.

Hopefully, my Instagram ads are converting enough to drive new sales and my Substack list is growing.

I pepper in new designs in the shop, taking down others, and occasionally adding new originals. Growth and maintenance is my objective now and I’m in for the long haul.

Perhaps this idea is oversimplified, but I believe that if I was pushed into an extreme situation such as losing all my money and all my social media accounts deleted, I’d go to extreme lengths to get back to a sustainable level.

And maybe I should be taking my own advice on some of this.

Cheers,

Dave