Reply To: Introduction & critique request

[JCFindley]

I use a print on demand service for my sales. (PoD)

Zen is a PoD of sorts but I won’t use them. The reason being is you get no walk in traffic. What I mean by that is many of the PoD sites will draw customers to the site for you and you will get sales from people that you do not bring to the site. Think of these as a shopping mall where you rent space. People will come to the mall looking for a gift and even though they weren’t there to go to your store they find it there and buy from you. Zen is like a stand alone store you rent. They will do all the services of other PoDs but YOU have to bring people to your store to buy as no one just wanders about Zen shopping.

I do not limit myself to a single PoD but I am very particular about which ones I will use.  Some, you cannot set your price and are limited to the royalty THEY decide to give the artist. Art.com is this way and the percentage you earn is not much. I think Cafe Press is also this way but not sure. Other PoDs allow the artist to choose BUT use a percentage based markup. This sounds fine, but if you set a markup to make your 8x10s ~30 bucks then your large prints are thousands of dollars. IF you set your large prints at market prices then your 8x10s are 7 bucks and you make a dollar. Some are a mix, like society6. You can set a dollar amount for each size print there but on canvases you have to accept 10% royalty which means you will make 15 bucks on a 36 inch canvas.

So, I will only use PoDs that allow me to set a price for each size I offer. That way I can set he price for each and every size I offer individually. I am on three but the only one that makes me any money is Fine Art America. (Where you also get your own artist website URL where you can send your clients to see only your work.) The JCFindley.com simply redirects my customers to that site.

I also do live shows but it has been a while.