Ah crap all I got are those like mini choco donuts in the bag.

*Sticks my hand out under the door*

Gimmie

*Places a few*
Haha a smol offering

You mean 15k grand prize right? I’ll support you either way but uhh duckie-

Yeah I meant that. Hahaha I was excited and it was late when I typed that.

It’s $15k then $6k then 3k. I want grand price, I’ma aim for it, but don’t mind if I get lower.

Oh ok good. That's awesome! Good luck and happy hunting, I hope you nail it!

Thanks! And wow that was a fast reply. Ninja reflex? Lol

Love how you chat tho, makes FA feel less... void like.

Went to check messages, saw there was a reply and went to chat. I'm mostly so active on here right now because I'm talking to a few people via notes and comments, including you :) when I don't have conversations going I take much longer, but it was a happy coincidence that I checked when I did. Theeeen I spent an hour writing a response to someone in notes and only saw this message now, haha.
I'm glad! It's easy to feel like you're alone in a weird archive without people to chat with.

Fair fair and very true. I try to leave comments on stuff on here on things I can think of one, hoping it makes them feel like people do notice em.

It really does help. And then, everyone on here so far (in my experience) has been really nice, which is encouraging and makes me want to leave more comments to see who I’ll meet, as well.

Same! It’s a nice feeling to see comments over watches, really weird.

Though, I will say… there are a lot more artists on or above my skill level on my watch list than I expected? Which is simultaneously really flattering and really panic inducing. (And yeah all of them I’ve talked to have been super nice). This website is sort of twilight zone y, in a good way. But yeah comments > watches (nod)

To me you’re one of the celestial level artist in my watch list watching me and talking to me so much. It helps bring my confidence how much you chat with me.

… that is unknowably weird on my end. Thank you for telling me so (Laughs) it warms my cold heart. I hope you get to experience the joy/confusion mix of being the celestial level artist for someone if you haven’t already.
You’re awesome and you’re going to keep improving, which will be SO COOL to watch! <3 I’m really looking forward to seeing what you end up doing with duck anthros, for one. I LOVE watching people develop uncommon species<3
also, you do really cool designs for shirts, I think pretty well ahead of me in that regard, which I actually went to school for!

I know it sounded super weird, but best way I could put it. Haha And thanks, I’m always trying to see how I could improve though sometimes it’s a bit of a slippery downslope doing that. Start being too critical on myself. It’s nice to hear you like my T-shirt designs. So far nobody bought anything so I’m wondering if my designs haven’t been that eye catching to the point of It need to have it’. Though so far far I have had 13 people checkout the redbubble and two favorite stuff, so, that’s a positive at least.

I mean it made me smile, and kind of made me think of an anime. (laugh) also, it's weird to know my words are encouraging, but it makes me really happy
... I mean, whatever you make, chances are you'll hate it in six months. So do your best but also try to let go. I held myself back a lot, especially in the last five years, holding back and wanting to be perfect.
Uhh... for what it's worth, I've only sold one thing on my redbubble so far - a friend of mine bought a notebook of my "Lupa" painting, and that painting is actually an interpretation of one of her characters.
It's something like for every 100 views you might get one sale, so it's probably more a lack of eyes than a lack of interest. Like, imagine going into a Hot Topic and looking at the T-shirt wall. You'll only buy maybe 3 shirts, right? (IF there's a sale.) But there's like 50 designs there. But they can afford to have those 50 designs because of their thousands of stores, hundreds of thousands of customers see the designs, and enough buy one of each to make keeping all of them worth it - even if some of the designs aren't very good. Hang in there!
(I'm also deadass broke, so I can't buy any redbubble merch for a while. But when I can, I'll come looking.)
I've seen a thing recommending facebook ads (only if you can budget for it), and their rule of thumb was buy an ad for a week. If you don't sell any shirts in that week, don't buy another ad for that design - do a new one and try that. I hadn't done it yet, but it seems a pretty solid method. They went through ~20 shirts before one generated any real interest, too.

I mean so far I not only have t-shirts but tons of stickers and so far building a collection of patterns. I remember once starting commissions and it took a year to get that ball rolling at all. Lol I don’t think atm I have budget to do adds, I’ll keep a lookout tho. I do have an idea to buy my own stickers in small bulk, write my red bubble and FA on the back and pass it around at cons. Like just the Cow stickers and the pancake one. Tbh I wanna just buy my own stuff, is that weird? Hahaha

It takes a while and a lot of advertising, yeah. Most of my commissioners are people I’ve built friendships with, so I have an attitude now of trying to cultivate relationships with customers as well. From a business perspective it’s the main advantage small businesses and indie artists have over large companies. We can have those personal connections :)

Not a bad idea at all! I’m thinking of doing something similar. A friend is also pushing me to get a con table, so that will hopefully happen in the next year or two. Don’t forget a business card as well for people to take pics of, if you do a table! (Or physical copies because some people still collect those, like me)
Nah not at all. I have one of my paintings on my phone case, the Czar in Violet one. It’s… definitely a conversation starter.

I personally do believe in treating customers/commissioners as like regular people, because they are. I’ll still have a business like approach, but J won’t turn away asking how they are and keeping contact during commission. I do agree and also find it very important too. Once you forgo the connection everything is just digits and names.

I’m not sure what business card to go for. I know to let know K do mature works along with tame works, but not too sure. I know I don’t want too many social media’s, but was wondering to do a Ko-Fi or pick up another social. Though for sure I still do the sticker thing 10/10. If you get a booth that’d be really awesome.

That's an excellent approach, because if you treat people as a bottom line they will notice and it is definitely a turn-off for them. Working at a mall for 5 years was interesting because... er... your bosses will talk a good game, but most of them aren't really great at listening to what has and hasn't worked for the people working in the stores.

Uhh, I'd personally leave NSFW off the card unless you're going to something specifically catering to adults like an 18+ con or event, or if it's more than 50% of your business. You can have it on your pages and if that's something they're interested in they can pursue it from there (again, just my opinion, and I would recommend you talk to someone more experienced to get their input as well, or even several people). Most of the cards I have collected have their website, if they have one, main art site, and then twitter/facebook/or insta, not usually all three. It might be worth it to take a picture of my card collection at some point for comparisons sake. If you're getting income through ko-fi or accept commissions there, that's a good option to list - possibly even with 'commissions available through' tagged on.
The other thing I would say is, if you're not experienced with business cards, you might consider getting one professionally designed if you can budget for it. If not or if you decide that you'd rather design it for yourself because that's just a thing you want control over (I'm a control freak and am designing my own) if you want feedback or have questions, let me know. I don't do them professionally, but they are one of the things I actually had to do for grades in college.
Whenever I do that I'll take pictures to share and keep notes on what works and what didn't. First one will probably be a clusterfuck so I'm thinking a small home con would be best. I don't know what area you're in, but I'm in northeast Florida.

Well, I suppose I can leave my NSFW as a optional you can see thing, again I do plan to go do more explicit things which will not be censored, I love my lewd shit. So I can easily do my own SFW business card. I’m not sure what more experienced person I can talk to about it, tho for the KoFi thing I feel like it’s a bit early to set it up or am I wrong? Maybe I should just make a website that’s a small deal thing.

Man this stuff is getting confusing. I don’t wanna say specifically, but I am near Florida and tend to go to cons around there- if in budget and time. There was so much to unpack here, sorry if I missed commenting on anything.

Smutty things~ they're hard but they're fun. Set up the Kofi now and link to it on your pages. I wouldn't do the paid one yet/at all though. Uhh, I would say check out a forum, but I don't know either unfortunately. If I find anything on my roaming of the web I'll fwd it, I need to find the article on t-shirt designs again to send your way.

(laugh) yeah it got long, sorry hun. Don't worry, I'm only comfortable saying because I live in a very populated place and don't leave the house. If I did a con it would probably be some tiny thing like Anime day in Jax to start though, and if you're more than an hour from that I wouldn't recommend it. It's miserably packed, tiny, and the last time I went a dude creeped on me there and my friend was ready to suplex him. Only thing worth going for is networking with the dealers/artists OR taking someone who's on the fence about bigger cons.

I thought Ko-Fi was just a artist tip jar, does it do more than that? I mean after this Reply I’ll check it out more so K’ll know before you tell me, haha. The more you learn. Oh gosh, forums. The only semi-forum base I had a good experience was once Tumblr, but that’s pretty dead atm. I do miss the ultimate customizable blog accounts tho and easy format. Plus it was sooo easy to get things around to others.

Fair enough, most everything is more than an hour away besides recently new stuff popping up around me. Those are tiny too, but most end up as ComicCon and not anime. Also if a guy was creeping on me I’d just start a random conversation about a rash I had between my legs and how it looks gross and itches without the cream- Creep on me and J creep you out. Lmao It’s also a funny way to deal with it like messing with spam callers.

It is but you can do more and some artists use it for commission payments. (I don’t because invoices, but to each their own). Set that up soon, if not today. You could also set up shinies on here via user controls.
Make things as easy as possible for people and remember that we’re all naturally lazy. (Nod)

Yeaaaah. I actually cosplay so I prefer cosplayer cons (comic cons are… not as fun in costume bc people are by and large not respectful) and the small ones here really can’t accommodate props. Plus comic cons have more casual observers in general and while most of them are chill it’s not the same as anime cons.
I was mostly trying to figure out what he was trying to accomplish. Interaction started with him pointing a plastifoam master sword at me. That works though lmao.

I could set up the Shinies and use Ko-if as an optional place to use as a semi-blog and commission set up. Though have to wait a little while before setting up the commissions as it’s locked behind membership. Fun. Lol Sad thing they don’t allow much for NSFW postings, but what can you do, I can post my SFW stuff. The few that I have... I’ll make more.

And true, I can agree with that. Still fun to go to comic cons, but not the same as anime cons. Plus most of the booths end up being boxes filled with comics nobody really wants usually. Lol

Yes, do that. For NSFW commissions it’s harder because, a lot of places don’t want to allow for it (PayPal, lookin at you.) I really should look for viable alternatives again, my only NSFW work has been for friends and paid via cash app or Zelle or like physical cash.

Yep, that. And they’re not very fun in costume which I usually want to go in. (Because muggle cons.)

Wait, PayPal doesn’t allow NSFW commissions? How do they know? I don’t think you can send images via PayPal just transfer money.

If you tell them it’s NSFW (which they have in their options list) they’ll cancel the transfer. So yeah just don’t tell them, say it’s custom artwork in any invoice. PayPal technically bans any adult content in that vein to my awareness.

I can get a portion of why they do this, cause they can’t judge what NSFW content goes through which could be something very bad, but at the same time how would it bother them since everything is private? Idk, but I’ll take her advice and just have it under art. Which it is. Lol

If it’s a drawing as far as I’m aware it’s not technically illegal, so it seems like overkill to me. Buuut I’m not a lawyer nor do I have any legal training so. Best of luck!

Thank You!