Denaliah Arts
... I want to promote my story that I've been working on, and start growing a fanbase. ... How do you keep first time buyers and turn them into longtime fans that follow your work? ... so I'm gonna have to make some fanart it seems. So what kind of fanart sells well? I'm not picky, but I wonder do people care less about the quality of fanart, as long as it has their favourite character? Also what kind of merchandise sell best? Advice on price points would be good too.
You're going about it a little off.
You only have so much energy to put into things, and splitting your time between making random fan art to sell vs making loyal fans for your own work will do you a disservice.
Pick if you want to make money as fast as possible or put in the effort for the long run with your original story.
After you've picked that, the rest of your answers will be based on your experience and feedback. You want to make quality work and consistently put out new work. Try to get to know your customers and chat with them so that they make a connection to the work. If they had a positive experience, they'll come back, even if to just say hi.
Based on my own experience:
-you don't need fan art to break even. you need to know about the attendees, what they're wanting, and what you offer. I broke even at Otakon (an expensive con), I made profit at nycc (even more expensive). Location and competition is the biggest factor on sales.
- The sale of fan art depends on a few things. You can go with the top shows like Titan, Free, SAO, but know that there's a lot of competition and people will most likely go to more popular fan artists first. You can go with niche or classics like Eva, Beboop, Might '9, but its a gamble that you might hit gold or rock bottom. Its best to keep to things that you like and have something similar to what your story is like so that its a natural transition for your buyers. I love magical girls and shoujo manga, I draw sailormoon. I've sold sailor moon and original art to the same shoppers. which..
-With the amount of people that draw fan art, quality and popularity counts. If there's a half decent naruto right next to an awesome one, the awesome one will win out unless there's some sort of personal preference like the decent one is humorous or is an inside joke that only fans of the show would know. I'm familiar with Titan and can definitely pull off an awesome poster, but with all those that draw titan, I fall about middle in terms of skill and low in terms of originality of concept. In reverse, I love sailormoon and as a fan, I know what I want. I never found a full group posters of all the senshis and starlights and Galaxia'n Co. So I did one, and others appreciated that.
-For merch: one year I sold a lot of totes, now i can't get rid of them. I seem to be one of few artists at cons that can sell a lot of posters. Sometimes I only get commissions. A con that I did very well this year, used to be a crafter's con (seems like the only thing people bought). For pricing, I base it first with cost of making the item and double it. Than I consider how many transactions I'll have and guess what the average $ per transaction I need to make. Its a little more to it than that, and it comes from my retail background and going to cons for 6ish years. At the end of the day, prices isn't the most important in getting people to buy stuff. You have some leeway there, its mostly if the attendees are the buying type and are a good match for your stuff. Even if something is for free, if they don't want it, they don't want it.
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