Category: Store Updates

Updates to my online store and information about what is being offered there.

Shifted to Printify

I’ve moved my storefront from Etsy to Printify. Currently, my Etsy store is in vacation mode. At some point, I may try to create some sort of digital product to offer there. As for physical products, they are all currently on Printify.

I feel like I’ve wasted time and money on Etsy. I had a digital offering there originally, listed for about a year. Nothing sold. I let the listings expire, regrouped, and returned with print-on-demand product via a linked Printify account. I sold a few items to a friend. After a month of the design being listed on Etsy, I did a keyword search on its title: “property of the Holy Spirit.” My search returned NO RESULTS. As far as I knew, I had the only property of the Holy Spirit design on all of Etsy. The keyword search returned neither my products bearing the design, nor my store even. It was then that I began to think Etsy was not where I needed to be.

I will admit that I did not pay to advertise on Etsy, and I get the feeling that, unless you pour some money into advertising, they aren’t really going to help your store out. Hence why I got no search results. I can’t prove that, but I experienced what I experienced and draw conclusions from that.

Etsy charges a fee to list your items. If you have variations, each one gets a listing fee. Different sizes? Each one gets a listing fee. If you sell something, Etsy also takes a commission plus a transaction fee. I may well have spent more money than I made.

Continue reading “Shifted to Printify”

Faith Coloring Pages

It took me a very long time to feel comfortable calling myself an artist. It’s taken me even longer to get to a place where I felt I could sell my work. I believe the latter has a lot to do with the fact that my art, much like the artist, is not perfect. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever created anything that didn’t have some flaw in it somewhere. And because it wasn’t perfect, I didn’t feel like I could sell it.

I finally learned that when you’re making things by hand, there probably is going to be something somewhere that just doesn’t come out perfect, and that is okay, especially with things that are hand-drawn. I have come to prefer a little bit of wonkiness in my hand-drawn work. It feels more honest and organic to me. And so, after many hours spent clutching a mouse (often until my hand ached) to digitally clean up scanned images of art I’d originally hand-drawn (ink to paper), I opened an Etsy store and listed some of my doodle art drawings as coloring pages.

Set 1 at Etsy - FaithThese pages are all available for purchase as a downloadable set of 5 that you can print yourself, or as individual downloadable pages. If you purchase and download the file, you may print as many copies as you want. I am asking, however, that you not sell the printed pages (though you may give the printed pages away) nor resell the downloaded file or give it to anyone else.

I picked up doodle art in dealing with some trauma I’d experienced. It has been very therapeutic, and at times, it has been a way for me to stay present and grounded. Drawing these pieces of art have been an excellent way for me to practice mindfulness. Coloring them could be beneficial in that same sense. If it’s been years since you spent some quality time with crayons, colored pencils, or markers coloring, why not give it a try? There are many other artists selling their coloring pages on Etsy as well. Sometimes simple pleasures can have a big impact.