What are you waiting for?
Hey, dear artist. This post was written to motivate you to do and not to just wait.
We’ve noticed a trend in our small period of existence. We contact a lot of artists on a daily basis. More than 20 per day. Everybody seems excited and everybody loves the idea of having their own stickers shop where they can sell their artwork as stickers, phone skins and tablet or laptop covers. That’s just great, but…
Let’s see what happens next — the author gets his 90% payout rate account (instead of the standard 60%), as promised and even though we mail all the authors after establishing their shops with more details, instructions and a link to the author guidelines page, a very few of them publish artwork. And then… it all stops there.
And you are expecting sales?! :)
No, guys and girls, miracles don’t just happen. It’s all about hard work if you want to succeed.
I think it’s time to get some things cleared out:
What Stickers Pub does for you?
- Offers an environment where you can receive money — all the transactions happen online without requiring your input. There are a lot of things going on the “back-stage”. We worked a lot so you can get funds in your balance, all secured, via PayPal or by credit / debit card (Stripe). So basically we did everything we can for you to receive payments from everybody in this world. Secured payments.
- There are a lot of devices. And not everybody has iPhones. So we continue measuring and adding new devices to our supported devices list. That means getting that device, measuring it and cutting several templates until we get it right with a 0.1 mm precission. We did that for 44 devices already.
- We optimize all the product pages for search engines. Yes — we put a lot of effort in each one so your product appears in search results after a while. For example honda crz stickers is on the 5th place (and was added yesterday on stickers.pub), helvetica stickers — 7th place, moldova stickers is on second place and land cruiser stickers is on the 5th place. Yes — that’s amazing. And these are just a few random examples.
- We invested in having the right equipment to produce quality stickers. These aren’t decals (which basically are low quality materials color vynils cut by a contour). Each of our sticker consists from 3 parts: 1. the German (Orafol) vynil dedicated for high-quality print series (Orajet) with a high quality repositionable adhesive (when applying for the first time — you can reposition it if you haven’t got it right from the start and also doesn’t leave dirt upon removal), RapidAir technology (air bubble release system) for flat and bended surfaces. 2. The print is done on a Roland machine (the industry leading brand) using eco-solvent original Roland inks and the contour cutting process is done on a Roland machine too 3. And additional protective lamination film layer applied on top after printing (Orafol Oraguard 290) which is a extreme durability lamination film. That means the inks are well protected over time, the sticker is waterproof (of course), scratch resistant and has 5+ years UV protection. So — yes — we produce at the highest quality standards for this industry. And you, as the stickers shop owner, don’t have to spend anything for the equipment (which is really expensive), location, qualified personnel, logistics, shipment, etc. More than this — you make money from each sale — isn’t that awesome?
- We do everything related to production and delivery of the stickers to the final clients. That involves a lot of processes for each order. From getting the design source adapted for a certain device / size, printing it, laminating it, cutting, packing it up and shipping.
- We adapt each of your designs to the right device template when we receive an order, so you don’t have to prepare all of them for 40+ devices.
- Did you know that DHL has 6 zones for all the countries and the Standard Priority Mail service has only 2 with different costs for different weights? Yes — we automated all that so you don’t have to worry.
- Also, did you know that for different quantities and sizes there are different manufacturing costs (as a lot of material gets just thrown away for small quantities)? We had to figure all that out and set the prices properly. All these are on us and you have nothing to worry about.
Now, let’s think...
When you create a design, you certainly create it for some reason and for a specific audience. And you’re the one who knows best the audience, not us.
So what’s more probable?:
- somebody sees the design on stickers.pub while browsing and chooses your design versus others and buys it
- a person from the audience you target with your sticker design, sees that sticker design from you and buys it.
The answer is quite obvious. Isn’t it?
The Honda CR-Z Example
To make things more clear, let me give you a real example of doing and not just waiting.
For a few weeks one of our teammates drove a Honda CR-Z.
He decided to create an account on a dedicated forum for that specific audience — crzforum.com. He saw an oportunity there. After the introduction post, which hasn’t received the best feedback :) he decided to create some Honda CR-Z related stickers designs. Because the forum moderators deleted his post about the stickers, he searched on facebook for Honda CR-Z related groups. Found one, joined it.
After another new member introduction post, here is his second post:
How about that?
Not just expressing excitement in an email … and submitting one or two designs to stickers.pub and waiting for miracles.
But doing something — searching groups / audiences which have the same interest (cars, occupation, travel, etc.) and designing something specifically for them and promoting that design to that audience.
And yes — that generated some sales in the first 24 hours (because at the time of writing this post only 24 hours passed). Not to mention about the awareness and people’s interest.
Now you may say that you can’t do that… because you can’t print the stickers. Guys and girls — tell us and we’ll print and send photos with them so you can work with your audience. The problem is that you haven’t tried to do that yet.
It’s not the point if you have those stickers printed or not. The point is to find a specific group and create an interest for your designs. Only this way you’ll have sales.
As sad and harsh it may sound, it’s true. Take for example this one:
Who will buy it randomly? Nobody (sorry Shir). The author has to promote it to the audience he created it for. And if that doesn’t happen, then don’t expect sales.
Think about it well — a random person won’t buy your art (exceptions are your friends and family or a cause, which only you have access to, not us — and they are your audience too) if you haven’t targeted his interests / occupations.
At least use all the channels you have — your website, behance, dribbble, facebook, instagram, pinterest, etc. accounts and reach all your friends and followers.
So…
Stickers.Pub is a great platform which offers you a lot of things for free and, more than this, pays you each time you have a sale. It gives you an oportunity which you can use or not (by just waiting).
So our advice to you is: stop waiting and start working.
Of course… in case you want results.
Close this window immediately choose some trends, start creating, upload and promote your work!
