[ Poll ] Artists Alley Information Compilation

Most intimidating thing about your first AA?

What if I don't sell anything?		23.1%	[ 134 ]
What if I don't break Even?		12.2%	[ 71 ]
What if they HATE my work?		26.9%	[ 156 ]
What if I sell out of prints too soon?		4.0%	[ 23 ]
All of the other artists are going to think I suck!		21.7%	[ 126 ]
Other (Please share!)		12.1%	[ 70 ]

Total Votes: 580

[[Kako]]

Great Questions, DarkishStar. I'll list them in the first post for you. :3

[DarkishStar]

Yay, thanks a lot, that should help them get seen better. ;_;

[[Kako]]

Yup. Hey, keep an eye out for me at AX. ;D I'll be the one selling pirate/ninja restroom door signs.

[DarkishStar]

Awesome! I'll be sure to. xD Like much of the advice, people should get to know each other. xDDD; In anycase, I love artist alley, so I'll probably wander around when my buddy watches my table.

I'll most likely have Naruto and Bleach fanart up.. but I plan to do some a bit more obscure/less popular things like Eyeshield21 and Chrono Crusade, I'm just worried about how those would do...

I was thinking of housing the prints in a box, in a sort of filing system, sort of next to me. Do you think the Artist Alley ever has a problem of stealing? Like people stealing the prints right off the table? I was thinking of organizing my wares in a way that makes it's difficult to be stolen, if you know what I mean. O_O

[[Kako]]

Some alleys do. That's why you make friends with your neighbors. Most people are decent human beings though, and will stop anybody who tries to run off with a print. If you're really worried about theft, you should probably put a binder or two out for display purposes, and keep the actual prints behind you/under the table.

As far as obscure fanart goes, just print a few less of them, and have a paper for people to write down their names if they want a print you've run out of. Prints of obscure series make the fans of the series happy. :3

[KIRIHITO]

Yay, thank you! whee This will help so much when I want to sell a few prints in the western cons! whee (Probably this year.)

Hmm... but I have a question to ask... If a con-goer goes to a con and has to pay for travel, entry, lodging, food, etc; won't they have a lot less money to spend on merchandise? Because of that, I was wondering if smaller prints would do better than larger ones, because they're priced less.

The thing is, if the prints are small and don't stand out, they may not want to buy it. Some would rather have something larger (fewer of the large) than many small ones. How does this work? sweatdrop

Sorry for the weird questions. sweatdrop But I'm really excited, I have never touched western markets before, it will be a first time... redface

[[Kako]]

XD Wow, I never expected you to post in my thread, you're like a celebrity or something. :3 (Wait... didn't you change your name to Riku-chan?)

From what I've gathered and experienced, small prints sell very well. People don't like to spend a lot of money in the artists alley, so anything you can sell for under $10 will probably be popular. If you don't want to do small prints then feel free to try bookmarks, buttons, stickers, magnets and the like.

[Look]

DarkishStar: I won't recommend laminate the work, it's not cost efficient and a lot of trouble. On top of that laminated work makes the print so shiny and reflective it sometimes takes away the original beauty.
But if you want to laminate, Kinko and Officemax have laminate machines for you to use.

I've seen someone posted good recommendations from Costcos in another forum, though I never tried it myself. OfficeMax and Kinko does good prints, only if the staff knows how to handle it well. I've ran into one idiot and one b***h and a few okay staffs in both places, and finally had a good staff knows what he's doing at one Officemax. Gosh that was rare.

I usually have both large and small prints of the same image. Sometimes people prefer larger prints to hang on their wall, while other times small prints are easy to carry around.

I prefer slim and long bookmarks myself. That's entirely up to you. If your art appeal to people, they'll buy it no matter what size it is.

For on the spot sketch commissions, I let the buyer pay when they pick it up. I haven't ran into anyone that won't pay yet. For more detailed commissions that I'll be doing after the con, I just tell them to email me the details and I'll email them a quote. I don't ask them to pay at the con, though I do ask them to pay upfront once both parties decided on the commission.

KIRIHITO Smaller prints would sell better in general, but if you are good, large prints will be wiped out too. It also depends on the price difference between your large print and small print. If you price your small print at $5, and large one at $15, then people would tend to buy the small one a lot more. But if your small one is at $10, then people may rather pay for the larger one.
Also have some sort of display, so that it'd makes your art able to be viewed from far away. I've seen many artists paste their print on a foam board and stand it on the table, that attracts people. I use those cheap plastic pipes from homedepot and make a frame above the table, hang prints from there. It works too. Either way, try to make your art stand out.

[DarkishStar]

Look

DarkishStar: I won't recommend laminate the work, it's not cost efficient and a lot of trouble. On top of that laminated work makes the print so shiny and reflective it sometimes takes away the original beauty.
But if you want to laminate, Kinko and Officemax have laminate machines for you to use.

I've seen someone posted good recommendations from Costcos in another forum, though I never tried it myself. OfficeMax and Kinko does good prints, only if the staff knows how to handle it well. I've ran into one idiot and one b***h and a few okay staffs in both places, and finally had a good staff knows what he's doing at one Officemax. Gosh that was rare.

I usually have both large and small prints of the same image. Sometimes people prefer larger prints to hang on their wall, while other times small prints are easy to carry around.

I prefer slim and long bookmarks myself. That's entirely up to you. If your art appeal to people, they'll buy it no matter what size it is.

For on the spot sketch commissions, I let the buyer pay when they pick it up. I haven't ran into anyone that won't pay yet. For more detailed commissions that I'll be doing after the con, I just tell them to email me the details and I'll email them a quote. I don't ask them to pay at the con, though I do ask them to pay upfront once both parties decided on the commission.

Yeah, that is a good point, often the lamination machines can crumple or rumple and that would look pretty bad and waste a few of the prints.

I guess I could go and check out the prices and do a couple of test prints, I'm a little iffy of buying prints online because there's extra shipping and most of those places are for digital pictures from cameras so I think there would be some sizing issues. I'll go check it out and post an update on how Costco is if some people would like to know. xD

I guess that could work too, that would actually invite a wider range of people to buy actually. Some people who like bigger sizes might see all of the small sizes and then won't buy because of the small sizes and vice versa. I think with the smaller prints it works well if you sell one for $4 and maybe sell 3 for 10$ instead. O_O I think that would help sell the work better. I've seen it done a lot. I know Sleepar did it with the buy 3 large prints for $30 and it was one for $15 or something. I think that was smart marketing. I don't think I'm at the level where I can sell a print for more than $7 though. Dx Is it wiser to start out cheaper? I want to make a profit, but I don't want to feel like I've ripped people off or not make enough money because people won't buy higher priced art from a relatively unknown. Basically I don't want to sell myself short or go overboard with prices. O_O

Eek, I'm rather young, so I don't know if I'm ready to deal with mean staffies yet. xD Sometimes they might be a little meaner due to age. I guess at last resort I could go to a place like that. xD Especially since you say it's so rare to find someone who knows what they're doing. O_O

And I think your way is better, have the communication carried on after the con and maybe the payment carried out through Paypal or something. Maybe simpler things done at con and more complicated after. O_O Very good ideas! Thanks for taking the time to answer. xD

[KIRIHITO]

Thanks [Kako], Look, for your answers! 3nodding They were very helpful! 3nodding

I'm not that good in artwork yet, so I do believe I have to work smaller. whee

Huh? I'm not a celebrity. eek Yeah, I was `Rikuchan for a while. whee

[[Kako]]

You are in the picture post. X3 At least, I consider getting more than 10 pages of responses on art being a bit of a celebrity. :3

[fanartist]

Do you think someone would consider taking a print and going through all the printers available online and give us a review of each printer?

I would do it if I didn't need to eat =w=;;

Or maybe we should do a fund for print reviews...? >>;;;

[DarkishStar]

I'm willing to try a few.. of the cheapest printers online if Costco doesn't seem as cheap or as high quality as I would like it to be. I for one am going to take the challenge and go try my hand at Costco and give an opinion later. xD

[Look]

DarkishStar

Is it wiser to start out cheaper?

If you aren't confident of your skill, then yeah, start off at $5 or so. I won't recommend going too low either. Because $5 is cheap as it is, if people aren't even willing to spend that amount, then they probably won't bother to buy at even lower price either. Of course that's entirely up to you. Only thing is don't adjust price in the middle of a con, that would make customers unhappy.

fanartist: Good idea. Here are the sites I've used, I plan to try out bestcolorphoto.com and ezprints.com soon.

I personally love mpix for their special metallic finish. And they are for professional photographer and artists, so I won't doubt their quality. Price is reasonable.

deviantArt is really good too, stays pretty true to the original color. Though that'd depends on how your monitor is adjusted.

snapfish is so so. They adjust the print settings and the print is more saturated than it should be, which is not very true to the original color. Which is not preferred to artists.

cafepress their postcard's print quality is kind of mediocre, I can see the dots printed. But their poster print quality is pretty good. Though their price is a lot higher compare to the other one.

zazzle don't use them. I actually haven't purchased any print from them, but it's a pain to cancel your product. -___-; I don't like other sites have my original high res picture most time, and not able to delete your product is really shady business practice. Their price is not cheap either.

OfficeMax and Kinko all depend on the staff and which location. Some location branch have better printers and better staffs, some don't. So it's really hard to say.

[fanartist]

Many heart s to Look ^3^/

The only one I've really used is http://catprint.bz

When you hit 20+ prints, it's pretty cheap. The print quality, however, is... OK. Since I use really saturated colors, I noticed that the prints aren't as saturated as I like (especially this one).

[EDIT] They have an online calculator to tell you exactly what you'll be paying, and their customer service is really good. You don't need an account to make prints, last time I checked.