Setting Up a Mini Shop
If you have any sort of marketable skill, such as drawing, graphic design, CSS coding, webdesign, or even writing, you can set up a shop to sell your services to others in exchange for gold or items.
This guide will go over the process of an art shop, but it can be applied to any shop for that matter.
Pros:
- You set your own price. No need to worry about deflation and inflation in the market. Your creations are always worth what you say it is. When you become more established you can raise your prices as the demand grows greater. (Just make sure you don't apply those prices to current orders on your waiting list)
- You can make up to several hundred k in just a few weeks if your art is good enough. This is also a good way to gain rare items too.
- You gain experience, and it's a chance to try out new techniques and experiment.
Cons:
- Skill is the deciding factor here. You may think your work is the shiz, but that may not be what other people think. If you place your items at a high price and nobody buys, you might want to consider lowering your prices.
- It's often hard to get buyers. This is especially the case if your work is very run of the mill. Also, I've found that art styles that are not anime/manga are very hard to sell if you are not established.
- Getting people to bump can be difficult. I've recently had very good luck with it, but not in the past. I can never bump my own threads, but I've found friends who are willing to bump for me... and this greatly leads to my success with art shop ventures.
- Owning a shop and meeting people's expectations for play money is stressful and tiring. It often takes awhile to figure out what your limits are. Everyone wants their avatar drawn, but can you keep up with the demand?
Getting Started
The first thing you should do is follow these steps:
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Proper thread placement You won't believe how many art shop threads end up in the Art Discussion forum.
Here is a guide to where you should place your thread!
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Get your samples priced Not sure how much to sell your art for? Post in the
Pricing Assistance and Suggestions Forum with some of your artwork asking others how much they would pay for it.
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Open a temporary shop You can open a quick temp shop to get started. This will also get you used to the overall process. In the end, you will have examples of avatar and OC art to use in your permanent shop. You can price for about the same amount that people suggested in Pricing Assistance... or you can do cheaper just to get yourself some orders fast. I've made as much as 100k from a temp marker art shop that lasted for a week, and another 100-200k from selling 10k, 1 hour speed paintings for the first month or two I was here.
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Network and gauge your skill against others When I first started, I combed the R & C forums looking for artists of similar skill to see what they charge. Then I applied it to my own work when opening my shop.
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Always show samples! Show samples for each style of art that you are offering. Tell people where your cut-offs or croppings are (headshot, half body, full body, etc). I can guarantee that you will not get any customers by starting up a thread of one post that says "I do avi art for 1000g" and leave it as that. We want to see what you care capable of doing!
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Do not undersell yourself! Only do a commission if you are getting your money's worth for it. Do you quickly blow through anything less than 10k? Do you feel like your hard work isn't paying off? Don't sell your art for anything much lower than what people price it at. (I usually base this as my starting point.)
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Do not oversell yourself! Usually people who do get away with selling their art for several hundred k are very experienced and professional artists... be it in real life or they are being educated in it. Doodles on notebook paper with crayons will not sell for more than a few hundred gold at the most. But if you can invest 20 or more hours in a CG and can attain proper proportion, light usage, and have good technique, you can easily get away with selling your art for upwards of 100k. Generally, if you want truly good art, you will be looking for prices around 100k for fully colored at the very least. Be honest with your skills and check around to see what others are doing.
The Business of an Art Shop
Terminology
OC - Original Character. These are characters that are created in pre-existing worlds (such as say, Naruto) or ones of original creation (comic or novel characters). They can also apply to Role Play characters.
Avi - Avatar. Everyone wants their avatar drawn. People are willing to spend several hundred thousand k just for a nice picture of their avatar. It's a big business here.
Note that some people prefer drawing avatars over OC's, and other people prefer doing OC's instead of doing avatars. When you are first starting out, it's a good idea to get a feel for doing both so you know what to expect.
Know Your Rights and Limits!
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It's extremely important to list your artist rights. A good list of artist rights should include "No Refunds" and "I have the right to refuse any order", "do not harass me to complete the art", "do not PM" and other things. Check other art shop threads to see what they write for this area.
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Clearly state what you will and will not do. Do not get so over-confident about your art skills, such as "I can draw anything and everything with ease!" in hopes that it will draw more customers. You will get orders for extremely cluttered avatars, ornate armor, complex weapons, or be asked to draw things which you may not be comfortable with. As a general rule, it's a good idea to only draw what you have experience doing in the beginning. If you would like practice with areas you are not comfortable with, you can offer an "experimental" option which is cheaper and "Buy or Beware", meaning that the commissioner gets what they pay for.
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Require reference material for all orders! Visual references are great, but you should also ask for things such as age, personality, build, background, history... this helps make a better picture. Most people requesting do not know any better, and just give you a picture to work from without a description, thinking that it's enough. It's good to include a place in the form for this. With avatars, how can you tell the character isn't a cute 14 year old girl? What if they really want their avatar to be a 21 year old woman? Is the male avatar a masculine 35 year old or a 17 year old bishshonen? What if they would never, ever, under any circumstance smile and giggle? Require information to keep yourself safe!
Getting Your Shop Noticed!
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Place some of your best work in the FIRST POST You can put it in your shop header or just alongside of the first few paragraphs with news and introduction. There are a million shops, and people quickly browse through them looking for art that is good which they can afford. People will care less about your prices and become more interested in what you have to offer if there is something right at the beginning to lure them in. (It also keeps people coming back, after they've saved up enough! I have so many shops that I bookmarked for future reference, but I couldn't afford at first.)
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Decorate and organize your thread! Nothing is more distracting in a shop than a giant wall of unformatted text. You can start your thread out with just text, but make sure you spend some time making graphics, coloring and sizing your headers, and making your shop easy to follow and understand.
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Show at least ONE sample per each item People will skim over your art or ignore it all together if you just have something like this: "[
x]" for ALL of your samples. Put at least one picture as a thumbnail so that people can see it. Then, you can place more samples underneath as text links. Make sure there is one sample for each style that you offer so people can see what they're buying.
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Network and make banners Exchange links with others, but do not spam their threads. Just kindly ask if others would like to link to your shop. Check the thread rules to see what the guidelines are.
Avoid having large banners only! Sure, these may draw more attention, but some people do not want to have their threads cluttered with large banners. Try to make at least one banner that is 200x40 pixels in size.
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BUMP, BUMP, BUMP Minishops moves fast. So it's important to keep your thread bumped often. Just bumping a few times a day will not suffice. Bring in friends to conversate and bump, or you can hire a bumper.
Avoid Sticky Situations!
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Don't bite off more than you can chew! Do not let all the gold pouring in tempt you to open up 50,000 slots!
Quality over Quantity should be the thing to remember here. How busy are you in real life? Do you work, have school, or a family to attend to? What are your obligations? If you want more money, keep your slot number low and your prices high. Keep yourself from getting burned out!
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Don't spend the money before the commission is complete! If you do accept all the gold up front, place it in a separate mule account and DO NOT touch it until the artwork is done. What if some mitigating circumstance prevents you from finishing the commission? What if you find yourself so burnt out, and you just don't want to work on it anymore? Then you'll need to do extra work to pay back the person in question.
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Do offer "limited" refunds What I mean by this, is that if for some reason you cannot complete an order, and they paid, give back the gold. Maybe it was not up to your expectations for some reason, or it was extremely late, it's just nice to give them a little extra back. But do not give out a full refund if the commissioner isn't happy at all with your picture that you spent several hours on, and you feel it is worth what they paid.
Avoid Getting Cheated!
A common way for commissioners to get art for free is to cancel the trade! This means that all of your hard work has gone to waste, and it's not a good situation for anyone. Here are some methods to ensure you get payment for your efforts.
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Make your payment methods or "how to" clear This saves you in the end, should anything happen. It's also a good idea to mention that if someone does not complete their half of the bargain within a set, reasonable time, they will be removed from the list.
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Keep in constant contact! Let your commissioners know if you are very busy with life obligations. If you cannot finish the commission until a certain time, inform them. Ask them to kindly avoid canceling any trades, or show watermarked samples of your progress to let them know that you're working on it.
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Send Watarmarked Samples When complete, send them a very small, low resolution sample, with watermarks all over it. (
EXAMPLE) This shows the entire image, you can get a good feel for how it is drawn and colored, and you can tell that it's complete. But there's no chance that they'll steal the work from you. NEVER EVER send the full size before you have the gold. I will occasionally do this with people who I know are experienced Gaia artists... but I would not recommend it.
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Charge everything upfront If you are a very honest person and you can trust yourself, charge everything upfront, and place it in a mule account with a very secure password until the commission is done. If you can't trust yourself with the gold, I would suggest not doing this.
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Do not accept trades until completed, watermarked sample is sent Leave the trade waiting on you until you finish the art. Should they cancel the trade, you can send them the sample, and you will not give them the full-size version until the money/items are in your account. However, they can still say that they don't want the art anymore. Chances are though, if you have pretty art waiting for them, it may persuade them to restart the trade. It's not a guarantee though.
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Charge half upfront and the other half later Another good way to make sure you get paid for your efforts. Again, it's a good practice to put the money in another account and don't touch it until you've reached a good halfway point, or until the art is complete. Then the person sends the rest of the trade for the completed picture.
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Charge by the step This is a really good method, I think, and I will be adopting this in the future. Charge for the sketch process. When that is complete, send it to the commissioner, and request more for the next steps. This ensures that if for some reason you can't finish the request, you get paid in some form, and the commissioner gets
something out of it.
