To start this new series, I thought I'd write a blog about something I've been noticing for a while now, because it would be interesting to hear your views and experiences on the subject too. I'm also hoping that it might contain some useful information for those of you who are thinking of setting up a business online.
I've been selling my work on the internet since 2005 and during that time I've noticed one thing: it's never stable and never stays the same for any length of time. It always seems to be 'feast or famine' where sales, views of the website, new customers, and illustration or painting commissions are concerned. This applies to sales outside of the internet too, but not as much as it seems to online. Personally, I'm lucky because I don't just sell my work on the internet and so I'm not relying on it totally for my income; I was selling at galleries and taking on commissions in the 'real world' long before I decided to sell online.
I also have income from many different sources:
* Galleries
* Commercial illustration work
* Painting commissions
* Royalty payments from the licensing of my images
* Online sales in the shop or from work found via my website
Selling and licensing my work in a variety of ways means that if one area is a little quiet for a while, I find that I'm still receiving an income from another area, so it keeps things ticking along nicely. Can you imagine if I chose only one way of selling my work? If that particular source of income dried up for a while or if there was a quiet period, I'd be in real trouble financially!
Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was the irregularity of exposure (by which I mean new people finding, following or buying your work) and selling on the internet. Take my Etsy shop for example: the month of May 2010 was (I believe) my best month ever for sales on there, and yet as soon as June came along I sold nothing. Not a single thing. Until today, when I sold one of the larger original illustrations! But Etsy has always been like that for me from the very beginning: I'll have a flurry of sales or a really good couple of weeks and then.......silence. You can almost see the tumbleweeds blowing across the screen. Then - as suddenly as it stopped - it starts up again with a new flurry of sales.
And that's the part I just don't get. WHY? I've tried to work out whether I'm busier at certain times of the month or year. I don't think so. I don't think there's really a pattern. Is it because I've been featured somewhere, for example, on a popular blog or art website? Sometimes that can help, but these little 'flurries' of several sales often seem to come from nowhere and for no reason.
I would have thought that it's far more likely that I would have one or two sales every day or every couple of days, in a very 'regular' way. But no matter how established/well-known I have become, it's always 'all or nothing'. Of course, this isn't necessarily a bad thing - the days or weeks where I'm selling lots of pieces manage to tide me over during the times where I'm selling nothing. The total volume of sales over the course of a year isn't a problem (although of course there's always room for improvement and I wouldn't say no to more sales; never resting on your laurels is part of the fun of running your own business!), but it's just perplexing as to why it's like this! I'd be interested to know if any of you experience the same thing, or whether you find that your business is much more 'regular' in terms of sales.
As I mentioned at the beginning, it's the same with website views, new people finding my work, and even the type of pieces that are selling or where those sales are coming from. We'll talk more about that - and the venues I've found to be most successful - in the next part of the series.
