With e-commerce making it easier to reach a global audience, actually setting up an online shop shouldn’t feel like a virtual Rube Goldberg machine. That’s why we created the Artist Shop platform in the first place – to make your online store as easy as possible so you have more time to make awesome art and less time spent doing this:
Artist Shops aim to make e-commerce as easy as scrolling through “confused John Travolta” gifs on Giphy. But as easy as it is to set up a shop of your own, it can be a little daunting to take the plunge. Sometimes it helps to just have all the steps laid out like a checklist you can follow. So to make setting up an Artist Shop even faster and hassle-free by answering any questions you might have when it comes to setting up your shop in The Launch Guide.
what does the launch guide help me with?
The Launch Guide has helpful tips and guides about how to set up your Artist Shop, how to customize it, and how to keep its momentum going and growing with the following topics:
Artist Shops make setting up your shop super easy and fast. But even so, there will always a lot of basic moving parts to setting up any online shop. Those basics happen in five main steps:
- Gathering designs for your shop
- Preparing those designs for your shop (like how to set up a transparent PNG)
- Creating products and customizing your home page (did you know you can have product or designs on your homepage?)
- Making your shop look awesome and publishing your shop for the world
- Getting feedback on your shop
If you need help with any of those steps, the Launch Guide has a ton of helpful hints and tips to help you out.
2. Releasing your shop to the world
If you promote it, they will come.
One of the things mentioned in the Launch Guide is that just because your shop is public doesn’t mean people will be able to find it until you’re ready to share it. This makes the publish button a little less scary by giving you the flexibility to keep customizing and working on your shop while it’s live without anyone seeing it until you’re ready for them to.
That’s where the actual “releasing it to the world” part comes in. There are countless ways you can promote your shop, including things as simple as sharing it with your family and friends, posting it on social media, linking to it, etc. If you put in the effort, people will find your shop. Check out the “Releasing Your Shop to the World” part of the guide for more detailed tips on how to get your shop noticed.
Setting up your shop is easy, keeping the momentum going is a little harder. It’s like working out – you might get a lot of progress really fast at the beginning. But unless you keep changing things around and updating your routine, you’ll plateau and won’t grow.
The whole point (and beauty) of an online shop is to grow it as a business. From tips as simple as updating your shop with new merch, to making a monthly or quarterly schedule and following it to keep your shop and social media fresh, there are plenty of ways to grow your shop, brand, and audience, and this is a dip-your-toe-in guide to doing just that.
If you found this helpful, check out the Launch Guide for these tips and way, way more on how to start your shop and keep it awesome.
Sign up for your very own Artist Shop here! You don’t have to make it public right away, but reserve your name before someone else does!
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We’re an artist community built on the power of helping each other succeed — if you’re reading this and have tips of your own to share, please do so in the comments! Thank you!
Illustrations done by the dope Katie Lukes