As a small business owner, time is your greatest resource. From admin activities to marketing your brand to actually crafting your product, you’re constantly making decisions about how to allocate your time. In 2016, when eMarketer predicted that Twitter usage growth would drop from 8% to 2%, many business owners decided Twitter wasn’t worth their time. Of the brands that stuck around, a large percentage continue to use the post-and-ghost method, yielding little results and bolstering the rumor that TwitterRead more
Posts filed in: Shop Promotion
Start Sweating—and Selling—Performance Tees and Activewear
Activewear is here, and it’s taking off as more Artist Shop owners add short and long sleeve performance tees to their shops. It’s a versatile product for many reasons—the fabric being specifically designed for movement makes it a great fit for customers looking for workout clothes, athletic wear, activewear, and even athleisure apparel. Whether you’ve already created your own custom performance tees or are considering adding them to your product lineup, read on for our tips to design, market, andRead more
How Managed Pricing and Promotions Helps Artist Shop Owners
As a creative professional, running a sale can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of growing your business. Everything from when you’re marketing your products and how you’re communicating about them to what promotion you’re offering and for how long, can impact your sales and long-term growth. If you have a background in sales, marketing, operations, or finance, you might already have a feel for when to lower pricing for certain products in order to drive traffic to yourRead more
How to Design, Market, and Sell Custom Shoes
Selling your designs on custom, handmade-to-order shoes is a unique way to offer customers your wearable art. But if you don’t have a background in apparel, product design, or fashion, designing and marketing your own shoes can feel daunting. Breathe deeply, and read on. There are plenty of good reasons to include custom slip-ons as a product in your online store. Take the leap and read our tips for designing and marketing your own custom shoes. Scope Shoe Specs StartRead more
Create Costume-Ready Halloween Designs
Holidays are an incredibly powerful time to earn more with your online business. Your customers and social followers are already searching for products with the holiday’s theme in mind. Halloween, which emphasizes consumers getting new apparel unique for the occasion, is no exception. Why not make brand-new art on the products you already offer that can be combined in creative ways to help your customers create their smartest Halloween costume yet? Our Halloween design guide outlines several surprising ways toRead more
9 Proven Strategies to Grow Your Brand Online
As a small business owner, there are a lot of ways to track and celebrate growth. You can grow your audience on social, subscribers to your newsletter, and visitors to your site. You can also monitor engagement with those different audiences and grow the level of active participation across those channels. There’s always revenue to monitor and hopefully increase over time, as well as units sold, and unique and repeat customers. We’ve collected our favorite Creative Resources to help guideRead more
5 Hacks to Grow Your Online Business
Running a successful online business requires strategy. It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it endeavor. If you’re continually focused on improving your customer experience, from the way your brand’s expressed on your homepage to the kinds of products you offer and the frequency with which you add new art, then you’ll likely see repeat shoppers and increased traffic over time. We’ve gathered the latest Artist Shops hacks artists are using to ensure their brands stand out, their art’s well represented on each product,Read more
Activewear Alert: Add Performance Tees to Your Artist Shop
Nothing’s more motivating when you’re hitting up the gym than an energizing outfit. Activewear is stylish, fashion-forward apparel that’s been optimized for athletic performance. It looks good while you’re working out and transitions well to other activities throughout the day. Welcome to our catalogue brand-new, exclusive to Artist Shops, short and long sleeve performance t-shirts. Your fans will finally be able to sweat in style, sporting your designs on the treadmill, trail, court, or anywhere else they like to workout. Finally,Read more
New Products Update: Magnets and Buttons Are Live
Sharing your art just got easier. Magnets and buttons are available to include in your Artist Shop, and we can’t contain our excitement for these likable, wearable, and magnetic products. Fans will delight in scooping up your designs to stick to their fridges and lockers or pin on their tees, jackets, and backpacks. Both products are an excellent item to add to a shopper’s cart in order to reach shipping minimums. It’s great to have several cart-building products like theseRead more
Four Painless Ways to Grow Your Email Marketing List
The good news about email marketing: it’s an easy way to leverage data to better communicate with your customers and drive sales. The bad news? When you’re not actively adding new contacts to your list, you’re slowly losing them. (People opt-out of your communications, change email addresses, and abandon old accounts.) Even as you’re adding fresh emails, your overall list could be shrinking. That’s why it’s imperative to diligently collect contacts on an ongoing basis. These two guides are incrediblyRead more
How Themes and Collections Strengthen Your Brand
Your brand is uniquely you. More than simply the accumulation of your designs or art, your brand is what makes you distinct—setting you apart from other artists in the marketplace. It’s what comes to mind when a potential customer thinks of your work. Whether or not you’re actively taking steps to mold and shape it, your audience responds and reacts to obvious (and nuanced) aspects of your brand’s online presence. New and longtime fans will base their perceptions about yourRead more
The Anatomy of a Perfect Newsletter
Promoting your business may seem daunting, but with the right tools and strategy, it doesn’t have to be. Knowing how to properly put together and send a newsletter is an important part of running promotions, notifying your customers of new products or designs, and driving traffic to your website. If you aren’t quite ready to send a newsletter, learn how easy it is to get started! If you don’t have an email service provider (ESP), Mailchimp is a great placeRead more