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Big sales problems. Please help
2 years ago
General
(nsfw warning) This one doesn't seem to be in demand at all..
Please, talk to me. I'm ready now.
Please tell me what price you are willing to pay for similar YCHs? I guess it's too expensive right now? Or what? Help me to understand please.
Or am I just terrible at drawing and no one liked this art?
I don’t know what to do, my brain is already exploding, no matter what I do and no matter how hard I try, nothing works for me.
I guess it's still the "curse" of "noname"?
But when I start actively promoting myself, I receive a lot of unsubscribes. I understand that this annoys people.
I'm just trying to survive, please understand.
I don’t understand how people manage to sell anything for similar prices (and even higher), with the same quality/skill. It would be strange to blame some kind of crisis and so on. Because I communicate with some artists and see for myself that people are still able to sell and buy art.
I feel terrible and very disappointed in myself.
I try to provide people with variety, in styles, in complexity, with prices that match all this, I try to make beautiful and juicy YCHs, but nothing works!! I literally can draw ANYTHING. But no one needs this, what an irony!
Most of the orders I receive are for complex works that take me months to complete and I just die inside while I’m doing them. And I earn about the same amount from it as some artists earn from cartoon halfbody damn it!! You can't imagine how frustrating this is for me.
So what's the point of having all this variety?
But I can't choose something specific. Because I don't even know what could work!
As a result, I simply scatter myself over everything, everything that catches my interest, everything that in theory can work. But it doesn't unfortunately.
And when I decide to concentrate on one thing and tell people - this is what I feel comfortable drawing now, I run into a wall of silence! So this doesn't work either!
More precisely, people of course support me, like "yeah, come on, do what you like and have fun!" But they stop buying anything lmao! How to understand this? How to even trust people in this matter??
I also have a whole bunch of other unsold YCHs, on every taste and style, and they have been lying around for SO LONG that it’s already time to remake them again, and it’s not a fact that this will help the sales too.
I'm afraid I'll simply have to lower prices in order to sell AT LEAST ANYTHING. This would not be very reasonable, of course, considering that my skill is progressing at an incredible speed due to the fact that I work literally every day. And it won’t be reasonable also because I’m already dying doing my job.
I'm really confused and don't know what else I can do. I usually keep quiet and don’t complain, and in general I’m very ashamed to complain about anything, but I still need the audience’s opinion, since my well-being depends on it, whether I want it or not.
Additional context, you don't have to read:
The dark streak of my life is not going to end, I am very close to complete burnout (which, of course, I cannot afford and will try to avoid it somehow).
But I've already experienced this. For one month of summer (or was it spring, I don’t remember exactly) I was so exhausted and sick that I couldn’t work at all.
Because of this, art debts have accumulated like a snowball and I am still in the process of working on them (I work on many in parallel, for several hours every day. It is very difficult, but I will definitely finish everything). At the same time, I'm trying to develop social networks and trying to earn a living (reminder - I feed two people).
I feel that I am very close to this state again. And what scares me most is that this is starting to happen more and more often.
What I mean... all this is not some kind of joke or “another artist whines about bullshit again”. I never allow myself to complain out of nowhere.
The only thing that keeps me in good shape is (Please don't laugh!) new orders. Over all these years of work, I noticed this about myself and I'm completely serious. But it's only works with simple things, like sketches and other stuff. Or things like this new YCH. While I'm doing these artworks, I'm really relaxing, I feel in demand. I train my hand so that I can then move it to more difficult things that require a lot of mental preparation.
I wanted to say one more thing.. But this is kinda personal and I don’t want to talk about it. At least for now.
Quite a lot has happened lately, besides my typical financial problems.
Let's say, this also had a certain impact on the deterioration of my condition and slowed me down a lot at the end of August.
Perhaps I'll tell you later when I feel better and have gotten over it mentally.
That's all.
Thanks for reading, have a nice day/night.
Please, talk to me. I'm ready now.
Please tell me what price you are willing to pay for similar YCHs? I guess it's too expensive right now? Or what? Help me to understand please.
Or am I just terrible at drawing and no one liked this art?
I don’t know what to do, my brain is already exploding, no matter what I do and no matter how hard I try, nothing works for me.
I guess it's still the "curse" of "noname"?
But when I start actively promoting myself, I receive a lot of unsubscribes. I understand that this annoys people.
I'm just trying to survive, please understand.
I don’t understand how people manage to sell anything for similar prices (and even higher), with the same quality/skill. It would be strange to blame some kind of crisis and so on. Because I communicate with some artists and see for myself that people are still able to sell and buy art.
I feel terrible and very disappointed in myself.
I try to provide people with variety, in styles, in complexity, with prices that match all this, I try to make beautiful and juicy YCHs, but nothing works!! I literally can draw ANYTHING. But no one needs this, what an irony!
Most of the orders I receive are for complex works that take me months to complete and I just die inside while I’m doing them. And I earn about the same amount from it as some artists earn from cartoon halfbody damn it!! You can't imagine how frustrating this is for me.
So what's the point of having all this variety?
But I can't choose something specific. Because I don't even know what could work!
As a result, I simply scatter myself over everything, everything that catches my interest, everything that in theory can work. But it doesn't unfortunately.
And when I decide to concentrate on one thing and tell people - this is what I feel comfortable drawing now, I run into a wall of silence! So this doesn't work either!
More precisely, people of course support me, like "yeah, come on, do what you like and have fun!" But they stop buying anything lmao! How to understand this? How to even trust people in this matter??
I also have a whole bunch of other unsold YCHs, on every taste and style, and they have been lying around for SO LONG that it’s already time to remake them again, and it’s not a fact that this will help the sales too.
I'm afraid I'll simply have to lower prices in order to sell AT LEAST ANYTHING. This would not be very reasonable, of course, considering that my skill is progressing at an incredible speed due to the fact that I work literally every day. And it won’t be reasonable also because I’m already dying doing my job.
I'm really confused and don't know what else I can do. I usually keep quiet and don’t complain, and in general I’m very ashamed to complain about anything, but I still need the audience’s opinion, since my well-being depends on it, whether I want it or not.
Additional context, you don't have to read:
The dark streak of my life is not going to end, I am very close to complete burnout (which, of course, I cannot afford and will try to avoid it somehow).
But I've already experienced this. For one month of summer (or was it spring, I don’t remember exactly) I was so exhausted and sick that I couldn’t work at all.
Because of this, art debts have accumulated like a snowball and I am still in the process of working on them (I work on many in parallel, for several hours every day. It is very difficult, but I will definitely finish everything). At the same time, I'm trying to develop social networks and trying to earn a living (reminder - I feed two people).
I feel that I am very close to this state again. And what scares me most is that this is starting to happen more and more often.
What I mean... all this is not some kind of joke or “another artist whines about bullshit again”. I never allow myself to complain out of nowhere.
The only thing that keeps me in good shape is (Please don't laugh!) new orders. Over all these years of work, I noticed this about myself and I'm completely serious. But it's only works with simple things, like sketches and other stuff. Or things like this new YCH. While I'm doing these artworks, I'm really relaxing, I feel in demand. I train my hand so that I can then move it to more difficult things that require a lot of mental preparation.
I wanted to say one more thing.. But this is kinda personal and I don’t want to talk about it. At least for now.
Quite a lot has happened lately, besides my typical financial problems.
Let's say, this also had a certain impact on the deterioration of my condition and slowed me down a lot at the end of August.
Perhaps I'll tell you later when I feel better and have gotten over it mentally.
That's all.
Thanks for reading, have a nice day/night.
There’s another artist I follow that has a similar problem, all I can say is that I think it’s a exposure issue, the people that you are trying to sell to aren’t seeing your work.
While I believe your prices are fair for the work you put into them... they're twice as much as I'd expect/want to pay compared to other artists for the subject matter and quality, and your examples might not be doing any favors. I go looking through your commission form, and I get lost trying to tally up the cost between character and background and level of detail. But as you say, asking you to lower your price would be unreasonable.
I don't know if your diversity of styles is helping or not, either. Looking at your art, I don't get the same sense of "I'll pay stupidly huge amounts of money to have a piece by this guy" like I do for other quality-rendering artists - which might be because I found you significantly later than them.
Of course, the current economic situation isn't helping, either. While certainly pricey, a year or two ago I'd have happily bought a painting at your asking price of my lioness' butt, or maybe something more. But my ISP, landlord, and Utility Company decided they wanted all my disposable income that I usually spent on seeking out new artists.
I think most people lean towards either more academic feeling work that is pushed so hard it feels really classical and tight (I think of people like BubbleWolf and oouna for this hyper accurate and tight anatomical type approach), or they want works that feel more expressive and often hyper sexual (for this type of work I think of people like Kihu or JustMeGabeNewell or gerkk for rendered but very saturated and appealing pop-art expressive styles), for all the artists I listed here they are always filled on commission work and are very popular in their own way. I think right now its a combination of your work sitting a bit in the middle without a strong clear goal for what features you want to emphasize (i.e. are you pushing for having stronger more traditional classic looking academic work, or push harder into being more expressive and consumer friendly for general audiences, because right now you are sort of sitting in the middle), combined with the "no name" problem. Once you have a more clear direction or identity with your work you can likely then acquire the audience to match over time.
I tended to bounce around a lot on my old main account, and thus over the years my following was mostly just people vaguely interested in seeing what I was up to since I was experimental and trying new things all the time, when I would open for commissions I got little to no response regardless of what was offered. Then I opened an alt account which was SUPER focused, specific, and consistent, and I would immediately fill up on commission slots for $80-200 each with within the first day of opening, even though the account only has ~200 watchers. A lot of what will get commissioners interested in my experience (as both an artist and as a commissioner) is if the person has really consistent output, so people can then trust them to make exactly what they want or expect. If the artist bounces around a lot, honestly I personally would also be hesitant to buy something as a commissioner, since I have no idea how well their quality will hold up.
Just my thoughts, this isn't meant to bash or be mean or anything, just something I see pop up for people who did something similar to me.
It's a noticeable effect
And I agree, as I mentioned the "no name" issue of not being lucky with how your work is displayed, time in the game, and luck are all factors. But they are factors we can't control, so its better to focus as a content creator on what you can actually control actively, which is maximizing the appeal of your work to a specific demographic and giving them a consistent feed of the type of output that they are looking for and/or willing to pay for.
I'm not really making a comment on worth, since personal worth and enjoyment of work are not really what's being discussed here, this is more advice on improving at marketing strategies and helping to make customers feel more trusting of an artist's quality, much of which is subconscious but much of the time still vital nonetheless, haha.
I haven't gotten a real commission for about a year but on a whim I posted a silly ych mostly as a joke and I got like 8 slots filled.
I haven't fully cracked the code myself so don't take me too seriously but that's my 2 cents.
(And personally I wouldn't put so much effort on a ych example. You can get the point across with a rougher sketch and examples next to it)
Good luck! You are on my list to get something of my character Dune <3
My currency again losing value vs euro/dollar, art is last in line of needs.
LynxWolf's enormous 'price sheet' page compared to others. I like it plain. Example: CedarWolf's or Drawing_sofa's price list, everything important within single screen.
And well... negativity, while I understand why, I'm already bombarded by negativity by all the media, I don't need more. I'm not taking risks it will affect me again. Reminds me of other artist which I subscribed to... and few days later I backtracked due to that.
Also competition within specific price range, but thats probably obvious.
It's not you and not reflective of your value as an artist or your work ethic, I realize this isn't a solution and probably doesn't feel very affirming in retrospect, but it is still the truth. The only thing you can do is keep trying and do your best :<. There is nothing a single person like yourself (or even me) can do to fix a series of systematic errors that will inevitably come to a "head" sometime in the next 7 years :")[hopefully].
I have actually signal boosted your art in my very small channels a few times, but short of some insanely 15K+ following artist with that many people just signal boosting your content out of kindness a lot until it sells, it's not your fault that social media and economy are cruel rn. I still wish you the best and hope you keep at it. While it probably means little in this moment, your content is stellar.
I think you're prices and expectations are simply too high/much. This particular YCH is about $160 USD and is incredibly rigid with nearly no flexibility. Which I can imagine, scares off potential clients. I can get behind a fee for complex designs, like if I bought this for my zebra mare and male horse. Stripes suck, I get it, but I'm sure as hell not going to pay an 1/3 of the commission price to change the Slot 2 dick to a horsecock. Now I'm not trying to belittle your work by any means but you gotta see where your audience is coming from and how lopsided the pricing is here. Especially since you also offer a 50 Euro charge for the privilege of Slot 2 being one of your characters. I honestly don't know how much this MULTISLOT would cost me for my previously mention characters. So I would look at this as a worst case scenario for pricing. 150 base price + 50 complex character fee + 50 cock swap fee = 250 Euro / $265. I'm sorry but there is just too much competition out there for me to remotely entertain that price and it's not even "unique" to me as the buyer. As much as auctions can get a bit scuzzy, they at least weaponize people's FOMO factor because they can miss out and that baits them into bidding/buying. I think the last contributing issue that I can use this YCH is that it may be too "rendered" for a better lack of words. While you clearly have preferences for species with this YCH, you unfortunately put a roadblock in front of those less "imaginative" with how the final product would look with their characters. You may also need to ask yourself "Will I need to completely redraw this if someone wants a fox for Slot 1?" because you may sink more time into a piece than it's worth.
Sorry if this came down as harsh or cruel, I just wanted to be absolutely blunt so nothing was misconstrued. I'd be more than happy to chat on Discord or Telegram if you wanted to discuss things further.
Not your faulty, just everyone is poor right now and luxuries are the first to go.
I've read your journal and a few of the comments down below as well.
Personally I feel you SO MUCH. I have the very same problem, and I am nowhere near as skilled as you. One major thing is the variety of styles that are being offered. Some sfw, some nsfw, some are in that 'fluffy' style of yours, some (like the YCH youre talking about) have a bit of a cartoony side, some are coloured lines. I am the same as you - I LOVE working on different things. I don't want to just draw one kind of thing.
But the fact is: That is not how you get an audience.
If you listen to your favourite music artist, then you want to hear songs in the similar style of what they usually do. You want the TV shows you watch to be similar with each episode. Consumers DONT want the style change. And that is why offering broad styles or themes will just not get you the audience you need. Right now, your audience is splitted into many different tastes. But if you want consistent sales, you need to offer consistent styles. (It is something I really struggle with as well because just like you I want to do different things!). Solution: Like someone else suggested, you could try parting your art to different accounts. I know you already have two, but... yeah, that could help. Or maybe try to find a direction you want to take. Special kinks. Special features. Something like that. And then... being persistent. Because the more you do one specific thing, the better you get at it. And that's when you gain the audience that will like that specific taste! (I wish you the best of luck for it!!)
And the other one is the rather complicated pricing system.
While I personally dont have the money to spend, I dont think 150€ is too much to ask for. BUT as someone else pointed out... 150 € is more or less the base price. Once people see that you advertise with 150 € but they have to pay rather high prices for costumisation... Yeah, that wont work.
Solution 1 (My prefered solution): I would suggest to ask for a SET price which includes every change you might need to make for the customer. That includes complett redraws because of size differences, other species or whatever. And in order to save you some time: Don't render the "example" YCH so much. It's okay if its a sketch only. That means that yes, you have to draw the YCH from scratch again, but also you wont have put so much time into the original drawing. (Also, you should try to either draw 'typical' furry species or concentrate on humanoid art only).
Solution 2: Lower the individual price points. Changing a cock for 50 € is way too expensive. It wouldn't have to be so expensive if you hadn't pre-rendered everything already and the changing it takes much of your time for a second time.
I hope it helps! I love seeing your art, I'm probably not a target audience bc I lack the income to buy so expensive art, but I hope you will find some help in it regardless!
Perhaps if you adopted the strategy of making more commissions, but with greater simplicity (which requires fewer hours of work), it could help. Many people only look for lineart or flat colors for their characters, appreciating shapes more than other aspects.
Please, do not misunderstand. Your art is some of the most beautiful I've seen here. As a writer, I would pay for cover art for my books made by youp. But the reality is that I have not been able to sell many books to justify apn investment either. The money I have obtained simply does not cover the cost.
That's what I can say. I wish from the bottom of my heart that things get better for you.
Getting someone to buy something is really hard. We as furry creators provide a very specific service in a very specific niche, but the fundamentals of sales remains the same. Selling furry porn is no different from selling anything else in the world.
The hardest part is finding product market fit. The old YCombinator saying is that you'll know when you have it, because you'll have more sales than you know what to do with. Until you get to PMF, you'll struggle to make every single sale. Then the question becomes: why don't you have Product Market Fit? PMF has nothing to do with price. It also has nothing to do with artistic skill. It's all about how close your offer is to the customer's unscratchable itch.
Example: who would make more money? Gordon Ramsay selling $10 gourmet burgers outside a nutritionist's office, or a hotdog seller outside a baseball stadium selling hotdogs for $10? It's about you matching what the market wants, not the quality of the food, or the price.
My point is this: While I can't tell you exactly how to get to PMF, I can tell you if you're not there yet, you don't understand the customer's needs enough. The customer loves to buy from you, they're just waiting for you to perfect the product. Again, idk what that perfect version is. It's probably not art or style. It could be a tiny change. Maybe body type? Maybe accessories? You'll just have to experiment. (Case in point, please check out my price sheet: https://jimmybelvins.com/commissions-info/ You should be appalled at the prices I can charge, as a writer with only 800 watchers, compared to your 3000+. I can do it because I offer my target customer almost exactly what they're looking for but can't get.)
Please note me if you'd like to keep talking about this. I've helped a few artists with this problem
Rather than asking How do I get my product to these people that may or may not exist, (I have a product, How do I find customers?) to (These are the customers, what product can I provide?)
Kinda of a Dale Carnegie "How to Win Friends and Influence People Approach" it seems.
It's a heck of a lot easier to work to perfect your product for an existing pool of customers, than to have a ready-product and work to find the ideal customer.
In startup circles, this is called "solution in search of a problem". Took me a while to exit that mindset, at the cost of several failures
Think that may be a bit of the problem here too. YCH is too finished, so the customer isn't quite as invested in it. Which has been brought up.
- It's an expensive multislot YCH
- It's not something I personally enjoy (foot stuff)
The most effective way seems to be through mouth to mouth between people from discord servers. Look for ones that would fit your themes, share your art there, chat with people from time to time, be nice, could also give people some art feedback if they're asking.
For the Kobolds the really good place to start would be the server ran by
If at least one of them gives you a chance, and you won't disapoint, they will very likely recommend you to some of their friends! At least that was the case for me.
Of course you can look in other places, but I think this would be a good place to start. I wish you good luck, your stuff is good!
Have you been able to sort out the issues with the platforms of Boosty and Buymeacoffee?
End of the month is coming up, I'll see what I can do.
И со многими я соглашусь! Мне очень нравятся твои полноценные работы с академическим стилем,превосходной анатомией и фулл рендером, но так же я путаюсь в других твоих работах в мультяшном стиле, или каком то еще. Может быть это действительно проблема для потенциальных покупателей?о.о
Так еще, невыносимо грустно слышать о том, что такое прекрасное дело как рисование обходиться тебе такой болью и трудом, я уверена что ты пашешь больше чем среднестатистические люди на заводах :,,,,)
Можно оставить нечто сложное на потом или для заказов, а сейчас ты можешь заполнить страницу тем, что будет приносить тебе удовольствие и будет выполняться не настолько тягостно....Просто динамичные цветные эскизы? Я рисую примерно в таком стиле, потому что знаю, что если я выжму все из себя я нарисую намного лучше, но это не факт, так еще и попаду в артблок на месяцы!
Так же, я согласна с тем что пишут тебе о прайс листе, я сама его читала, кстати где то 40 минут😁, и очень долго считала в голове сколько же получается за то/се, мб можно сделать это все намного проще для покупателей? Сразу задать им цены на сразу все, это как в маникюре, потому что у меня там был опыт х) Можно поставить итоговую цену сразу на весь маникюр, а не за очищение кутикулы, выравнивания, покрытия цветом, и декора (это тупой пример, но у меня почему то с этим ассоциация)
Людям будет сразу все понятно
Я в этом не разбераюсь конечно же, во первых я просто хочу тебя поддержать, и очень надеюсь что у тебя все получится!!, а все что я сказала это лишь мои советы которые могут быть ошибочными