A Watercolor Artist’s Journey into POD Shops
If you’ve been following along in my Fall Watercolor Themed Collections Challenge, you’ll know I’ve been creating a small holiday themed collection to open my new POD shop that is linked to my Squarespace website. It’s no small feat and has been in my to-do list for a few years now. It’s hard to admit that, but it’s the truth.
Making this project part of the challenge and building this shop piece by piece in the form of video lessons, made me accountable to the process and freed up my time to do it. It went from a side project I could never get to, to a front and center focus in order to get my weekly scheduled YouTube videos out into the world. So yeah, it was a bit of a sneaky plan, but it worked!
I essentially tricked myself into getting my watercolor POD shop off the dream list, and checked off of my actual to do list. What a turn around!
Maybe you’ve been meaning to start a POD shop of your own? It does take some effort and planning to get it done. I put a lot of thought into what kind of products I want to sell, and who I want to sell them to. Even if you haven’t figured that part out yet, it’s really not too early to start.
Why is that? Because most of the learning is in the doing. I think that’s why I didn’t start this project earlier. I felt so much imposter syndrome around and confusion. For example, what paintings do I put in the shop? How do I choose what my clients will like? What if it’s not good enough? This last one is an all encompassing question I think we can all relate to.
But even if you don’t have it all thought out, it’s not too early to get started.
I finally realized that I’ll never know any of this, unless I start. Just starting is a very simple solution to most of my procrastination issues. It’s just the hardest solution. In order to do it I first have to get past my mental blocks and press forward into completion. The beauty is, starting tends to give me a deeper sense of purpose, and in the end I’ll know if it’s for me, or not. That in itself is a huge gift.
If you’ve read to this point, I’m guessing you’re wanting to start your own shop but haven’t done it yet. I’d love to share what I’ve learned about this process so far, to help you along and hopefully save you some of the time I spent figuring things out on my own.
Just starting gives a sense of purpose and clarity that nothing else can.
First of all, you’ll need some art to work with. Since I love watercolors, that’s always my first choice! However, watercolor paintings need a bit of cleanup in order to look good on products. There might be unwanted drips, pencil marks, wavy outer lines, plus the paper background would need to be removed if it’s not part of the design.
This could be a really time consuming proposition, and yes, it does take some time, but I have some ways to make it easier. If you work in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, you’re all set to go. But if you’re not that tech savvy, or you just want to simplify the process, I have some tips for you.
Giving up was the worst thing I could have done.
I actually have had a shop at Society 6 for about six years, but I haven’t really cultivated or marketed it that much. Society 6 is a great platform, lots of artists have found success. However, I am not one of them. I sort of got lost in the crowd, and when I didn’t see a lot of sales in the first few months, I sort of gave up.
But giving up was the worst thing I could have done. Many of us think that we can start something and it’s automatically just going to take off because it’s live online. It’s going to be exciting to see all the sales roll in while we’re sleeping. and that does happen sometimes. However, most of the time, it takes a while to get any sort of activity on a site especially if it’s new..
The reason is that you must drive traffic to your site and to do that you must market it. That consists of posting on social media, reaching out to potential clients on your own, joining live networking events, and passing out your info, and even posting ads. The ladder can get expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing, however. When you’re just starting out, organic non-paid marketing is a great way to go, and can get great results under one condition. You don’t quit too soon. Even when nothing looks like is happening.
Continuing to market is the hardest when it looks like nothing is happening, but that’s the time to dig in and keep going.
The truth is that something IS happening. You are getting yourself out there, you’re learning a new skill, people are finding out about you, and you just have to keep it going until you figure it out. If you see that it just is not resonating with your followers after a while, then it’s time to drop back and regroup. But don’t stop marketing. Keep your name first and foremost with your potential customers until they start to trust you.
If you stick with it long enough, you’ll start to see spirts in your sales here and there, then you’ll start to develop a connection with your customer, and you’ll start to understand what they want from you. It’s only from there that you’ll start to create products that you’re confident your customers will love, and things just start to escalate.
Can you imagine where I would be with my Society 6 shop today had I been marketing for the last six years? I would’ve gotten people used to going to my shop, and seeing my new products added regularly. I would’ve had brand recognition by now and it could’ve all been a success.
In the beginning it’s just not easy. It takes time to find your legs.
Back then I didn’t understand this principle. Since I’m starting all over again, I’ve made the decision and the commitment to do the hard thing and keep going when it doesn’t look like anything is happening until I figure it out.
I’ve also begun again on a platform called Printful that I feel much more connected to. I think this will help my motivation as I will be able to keep in touch with customers and reach them directly with email updates to drive even more sales.
Now, in taking a good look at my old POD shop, I realized that Society 6 is a separate website where I don’t really have any contact with with my customers or know how the sale went. I don’t get their contact information or get to have a personal connection with them in any way.
Now, in some cases, that’s just fine. But having a relationship with my customer is everything to me. How will I ever know what he or she likes or doesn’t like otherwise? Unfortunately Society 6 doesn’t allow me to add this personal touch to my cell.
After lots more research, I found a few companies and settled on Printful as my new POD shop choice, and there are a few reasons for this:
#1 They offer most of the kinds of products I want to sell. It doesn’t seem like any one of these companies has everything I want, but this one seems as close as I can get.
#2 I’ve checked around with others who use Printful and they are telling me that all of the samples they’ve ordered have been really quality. They like the fabrics on the T-shirts and the totes, the printing colors are bright and pretty accurate, etc.
#3 They have a selection of friendly products and they use non-toxic and vegan inks for the printing. If I’m going to be selling products in bigger numbers, I want to be sure I’m being as responsible to the environment as I possibly can.
#4 Printful has an integration with Squarespace where I have my shop. That means stores can purchase directly from my site, so I can see what they’re buying, how much of it they’re buying, I can initiate a survey to see how they felt about the purchase, and I can collect their email address and stay in touch with them to let them know about new products coming up down the line. Plus, I can send them an email afterwards thanking them for their purchase, which lets them know there’s a real artist behind these products that actually cares about them.
If you are going to be opening a POD shop, you’ll have to consider your needs and how you work. You may not need any contact with your customer, and that’s just fine! Please remember that what works for you will also work for your ideal customer. Don’t worry about pleasing everyone, there will be plenty of customers to go around once you get going.
Want to know how I hooked up this shop to my site, and put an actual product in it? I made a series of lessons that will take you from the planning process, to the painting process, to create easy no-fuss lettering and clean up the artwork, then save it all with the proper file types, put the artwork on products, and actually open up the POD shop.
It’s absolutely free on my YouTube channel and you can begin watching them today. Just click the button below to access the lessons or click on the video here in the blog post to watch me add a listing to my shop. and you can even join my Facebook group for extra support.