Working on Shops

Despite having more energy than before the last dental visit, I still had some pain and tiredness this week from the sinus infection, but I was still able to work on the Etsy shop. Mostly, I was learning how to improve my listings and do things with digital images. There's a file size requirement I kept running up against. I was submitting .png files for larger images when I needed to be submitting .jpegs. Problem solved. I still have a problem resizing images for different surfaces without distorting them too much. Some images just don't resize and maintain their look.

I'm so far behind where I thought I would be. I have 13 products, some with multiple variations. It takes hundreds to make any real money. My goal is at least 300 images on multiple products each. It looks like it's going to take months. Still no sales on about 20 visits. From what I've researched, it takes about 100 visits to get 2 sales, more or less. A small number of stores do better and some worse. It can take one to four months to get the first sale. I'm hoping for better.

I've been using AI to generate images, which has left me with a lot of leftovers that don't match the artistic look I'm going for. Etsy started out selling handmade items, so I'm trying to match that esthetic as much as I can, although now there's a ton of print on demand and some AI art things there. Some of my leftovers have been spectacular. It hurts so much not to be able to sell them or have anyone even be able to look at them. Guess what? It turns out I can sell them as stock art. Yay! I've taken nearly 100 leftovers, after curating for the best ones, and started a stock art store on another site. I'm not approved yet, so there's no link this week. I made a few extra images to get up to 100 even. The goal with that store is to have thousands of images.

Needless to say, I got nothing done of the writing front this week. With all the inflation and greedflation, I need the extra income an online store could generate. It's way more work than I thought it would be, and there's no way to know what's going to happen with it.

Have a great weekend.

Shop Open

I've been suffering a sinus infection and in infected gum from a tooth that chipped. That was on top of the filling I needed. I made it to the dentist yesterday and had the filling done and the tooth fixed. I'm feeling better today but still not 100%. Any progress is good progress, though. I already have more energy.

Last week I mentioned I've been trying to set up an Etsy store. It's called Abundant Rivers. There's still a lot of work to do to get it up and running, but the ball is rolling. I need to go through and add more information to the listings I have. The digital art has no size information, for example. I also need to work on descriptions and tags and things like that both on the customer side and the back end. It's kind of basic, but I'm okay with that since it means getting it open instead of waiting until things are "perfect". It usually takes a month or more to get a first sale. That gives me some time to polish things.

My goal is to have hundreds of listings in the near term. Right now I have 11. My focus will be digital art and t-shirts. The art will be downloadable as well as on products like cell phone cases, mouse pads, etc. I don't know what's going to happen with it, but I'm willing to take a chance.

Not much new on the writing front. I've been working on the store and dragging from the infection. I did work on some cover art, but it's slow going. I've put more time into it than I have results, but something is going to give. Something is going to go my way.

Have a great weekend.

I'm Back

I wanted to be back last Friday, but I ran out of time. Since I don't have much time this week either, let's get to it. I've been busy lately preparing to open an Etsy store. My products would be digital images that could either be bought as a standalone product or could be bought for a print on demand item like a cell phone case, poster, sticker, t-shirt, etc. In addition to Etsy, I'm looking at launching on other platforms like Redbubble, a place I'd never heard of. It sounds easy, but it's a lot more work than I thought. With inflation like it is, I need to get something going on the side. I'm also still training for that Fiverr gig I mentioned a while back. I think I could get started with that right now, but there's a lot of work to do to get that off the ground. I may not go with Fiverr after all. Gotta run.

Have a great weekend.