The Ultimate Guide to Choosing Mini Sculpture Manufacturer

Where to sell

There isn&#;t a single answer that will work for everyone. It really depends on what you&#;re selling and how much of an audience you have. You can make you own website, or sell on a marketplace. You can do both too!

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Selling on an online marketplace

There are certainly a ton of options for selling on online marketplaces. The advantage to using a marketplace is that there is chance for someone to stumble upon your work by searching for keywords. These sites also make it pretty easy for you to create an online store easily and quickly. The downside is that these sites will want a cut of each sale. The amount you pay per transaction is small, and I think it&#;s worth the money for the ease of selling.

Etsy
Etsy is a popular site for indie artists, and I have personally sold many many items there. It&#;s an easy site to use, and since it&#;s so popular, you&#;ll get a lot of new fans. They charge 20 cents to post an item for sale, then a 3.5% fee is taken for each sale. You collect all of your sales as they come in, then pay Etsy your fees once a month.

Storenvy
Storenvy is almost too good to be true. It is 100% free for your own shop, and they charge a 10% fee if purchased item was through their marketplace. This means that if someone clicks on a direct link to your store and makes a purchase, you don&#;t pay a fee. If someone discovered your item through browsing their marketplace, you pay the 10% fee. It can also integrate with Printful, which is my personal favorite on-demand printing service.

You also might have heard of Shopify & Big Cartel as selling options. Here is a really great article that will explain the differences.

Selling on your own site

The advantage to making your own e-commerce site is that you have full control over what customers see. But, you&#;ll need a way to drive traffic to your own site and it can be a lot of work to create. It&#;s up to you to market yourself, since the chances of someone just stumbling upon your design are a lot smaller if you&#;re not on a marketplace. This is a great option if you have a huge following, but if you&#;re just starting out, I&#;d use one of the marketplace options I mentioned above.

To crowdfund or not

Crowdfunding is popular for a reason. Even though you have to share a cut of your money with Kickstarter or Indiegogo, the cost is usually worth it. Crowdfunding sites will often do as much as possible to promote campaigns (more money for you means more money for them). I have used both Indiegogo and Kickstarter, and honestly, both are great options. Indiegogo featured my project on their facebook page, which was a really nice surprise. A big difference with Indiegogo and Kickstarter is that Indiegogo will give you the option to keep the money even if you&#;re not 100% funded. With Kickstarter, you must reach your goal to collect anything. I have had great experiences with crowdfunding, and I&#;d recommend trying it to fund your projects.

Kickstarter fees: 5% of total funds + 3% + $0.20 per pledge processing fee
Indiegogo fees: 5% of total funds + 3% processing fee + other fees depending on your situation

Are you afraid of crowdfunding?
Don&#;t be. You might be concerned that you don&#;t have enough followers to have a successful crowdfunding campaign and be hesitant to try it. The worst case scenario is that you don&#;t hit your goal. Even then, you don&#;t have to pay any fees if funding is unsuccessful. If you are just trying to get enough money to order 100 pins or patches, you&#;re only going to need a few hundred dollars. Don&#;t forget that people browsing the crowdfunding sites will stumble upon your project as well. You don&#;t need a follower count in the thousands to have a successful campaign. 

Let&#;s say you want to make some patches, and you&#;ve determined that your goal should be $400. If you offer your patches for $10 a piece, you only need 40 people to pledge. It&#;s also smart to offer lower priced pledge offerings, as well as higher priced bundles. For example, it&#;s common to offer a $1 pledge in exchange for a &#;thank you&#; , or offer something like 2 patches for $18. Make sure to offer a variety of rewards in your campaign.

In my last enamel pin Kickstarter campaign, I also offered stickers. I had a pretty good mix of people who wanted a set of stickers for a lower cost, but also several people who wanted a bundle of everything I had to offer. It&#;s good idea to take some time to look at other successful campaigns and see the kinds of things they offer as rewards.

Shipping

If you&#;re going to be handling the shipping, make sure you carefully calculate the cost. Also make sure to factor in the cost of the shipping container. If you are unsure how much it will cost to send an item, the easiest thing to do is to bring the item right to the post office and have them weigh it and give you the price options. Here are some bubble mailers on Amazon that will work well for pins.

International shipping can be tricky since the prices can vary from one country to another. It can also be pricey to track packages once they leave the US. Some sellers decide to only sell in the US because of this reason. I have unfortunately had a few packages get lost while trying to ship outside of the US. It usually makes it there just fine, but lost mail does happen. FedEx and UPS are good options for international tracking, but they will cost you much more than your local post office. It&#;s up to you how much research and time you want to put into your potential international customers.

Self Promotion

Self promotion is difficult for a lot of people. It&#;s hard to strike a balance between posting too much on social media and not enough. Some people post work-in-progress shots several times a day, and some people are scared to post more than a few times a week.

Make sure that each of your social media posts are interesting and not too similar to your last one. People are interested in work-in-progress photos, but we don&#;t need to be bombarded. I&#;ve unfollowed people who went way too overboard with work-in-progress shots. I simply got sick of seeing the same drawing 10 times a day. If you don&#;t have a great update, don&#;t feel obligated to post for the sake of posting. If you&#;re afraid of posting too much, limit yourself to 1 post a day, or every other day. Whatever you feel comfortable with. 

When I was running my last kickstarter campaign, I was worried that my followers would get sick of me asking them to check out the campaign. The trick is to vary your posts enough that people don&#;t tune you out. Instead of just linking to your campaign with the same image, switch it up. Use different images, talk about your process, get happy about your progress, and talk about stretch goals. You&#;ll sound less like a broken record if you get creative. Just don&#;t become a spam bot.

Even if you&#;re not an avid Tumblr or Instagram user, there are people on those sites that should be seeing your work. Don&#;t neglect a social media account just because it&#;s not your favorite one. For pins and patches specifically, try getting featured Patchgame on Instagram. This popular account promotes awesome pins and patches. Even if you don&#;t get on their main account, use the hashtags #pingame #patchgame#pinstagram #pinsofig Tagging your work appropriately is important. Just take a look at what other accounts are using if you&#;re not sure what to do.

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Another popular tactic is to do a giveaway. Promise to give away a free item to someone who shares your post and follows you. Most people are happy to give your a free promo in exchange for a chance at free stuff. It&#;s a small price to pay for new followers and shares.

Lastly, just don&#;t be afraid to talk to people. Like and share other artist&#;s products. If you like something they did, tell them! If you don&#;t know how they made something, ask them! Make friends and join the community online. From my experience so far, the pin community is incredibly nice.

Buying Art Online

The most exciting and transformative development in the art market &#; perhaps ever &#; has been the explosion of online exhibits and sales.

Twenty years ago, collectors were more or less limited to what their local gallery could place in front of them and perhaps what they could see at art fairs within driving distance.

No more.

Collectors now have instant access to nearly every artist in the world. Consider that for a moment.

Many artists eagerly welcome and embrace this opportunity.  Not only do they make their work available for viewing and purchase online, but they often write about their creative process on blogs, and most significantly make themselves available to speak directly with collectors through social media.  Artists and their collectors can now easily forge direct, lifelong relationships, regardless of location.

There are things to be aware of when purchasing artwork online, and the most important is image quality; you certainly want the artwork that arrives at your home to look exactly like what you purchased on the website.

Especially look for artists who are very conscientious and deliberate about their images.  Ideally they should display high-resolution images of their work, preferably even with detailed shots of the artwork, allowing you to get a real, closeup view of the work.  

The gold standard would be a description of the setup and equipment used to take the photographs, in particular the lights used.  While you will not wish to duplicate the lighting itself, attempting to match the color temperature of the lights the artist used while creating and photographing the artwork will ensure a very close correspondence to what you see online.

Make sure that the terms of the purchase are clearly described.  This of course includes price and payment methods, as well as whether the work will be sold with or without a frame.  Be certain to look for images of the frame if it is part of the purchase.  

The artist should also clearly explain their shipping methods and policies. The cost of the shipping should be explicitly listed, or there should be a way to estimate shipping expenses.  You will also want information about how the painting will be shipped; what carriers may be employed, what insurance (if any) will be purchased, and estimated delivery time.  Ideally, the artist will also relate information about how the painting is physically packed to protect it during shipping.

You will also want to look for information about the return policy, including how shipping on a return is paid for.  I would strongly advise you to not purchase from an artist who does not offer a full refund if you are not completely satisfied for any reason, whatsoever.

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