More Profit At Christmas

Introduction

I will concentrate on making more profit at Christmas in this post, and will expand on the subject of POD (Print on Demand) sites in a later post. You could upload an image for ALL of your events, and it could, over time, give you a good residual income.

We have a number of occasions in the UK where we can hold themed based P&S events that tie in with card sending occasions. The Christian events are New Year, Valentine’s Day, Easter and Christmas. Other religions have Diwali, Eid, Ramadan, Hanukka, Yom Kippur and Passover. I am sure there are others that I have missed.

There are other recognised periods for themed based P&S events such as Remembrance Day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day and Pride. Let us not forget, in the USA, Independence Day and Thanksgiving Day.

Our Christmas Paint and Sip Events.

You have developed your Christmas themed art, you have started selling tickets for the events, but what else can you do with the artwork. How about taking a subscription to a POD (Print On Demand) site and adding a link from your event page to the image on the POD site, with a caption along the lines of “Like this image? Maybe turn it into some Christmas cards, or a mug. If so click here”. See my example below. Click on the link to see what I mean, you aren’t buying anything, you are just looking.

Come to our next event at the Flying Elephant and paint this rather cute. You can turn this image into a unique Christmas card if you want, or print it onto something you can send as a gift. Click the link to our STORE to learn more.

What Is A POD Site?

A POD (Print On Demand) site is a site where you upload your images and potential customers can have those images reproduced on numerous products that they can buy. These products can include anything from mobile phone cases, mugs and cushions, through to duvet covers, shower curtains and large metal printed wall art displays. I have sold some of my images in this way and I know that there was a lady in Texas who had one of my images printed out on a large T-Shirt that I assume she took pride in wearing. I have also sold wall art up to about 1 metre wide.

You provide the images, you set the mark-up that YOU want to receive per sale, the POD company, then adds its own costs to your mark-up for the price the customer pays. The customer chooses an image and buys a product, the POD site takes the payment, despatches the products to the customer, and then pays you the mark-up you want in accordance with their terms and conditions. You have nothing to do except provide the image with text content.

What POD Sites Are There?

There are numerous POD sites, and the most well-known one, and biggest is FAA (Fine Art America) at www.fineartamerica.com, Fine Art America has duplicated itself as www.pixels.com as it wants to be seen as a worldwide organisation, not just one for the USA. If you join Pixels, you automatically join Fine Art America. Pixels has a UK distribution centre.

Other sites include Sellfy, Gelato, Printful and Redbubble. Some of these charge a monthly fee whether you sell anything or not.

I am going to concentrate on FAA/Pixels as I use Pixels and I am going to describe the bare bones of it.

What Is Pixels?

Pixels.com is probably the best know POD (Print on Demand) site. It has between 100,000 and 400,000 artists and photographers who have uploaded a few million images in total. Five million people visit the site every month.

How Does Pixels Work?

You upload your image, describe it, add keywords and make it available to view. You set the amount you want to receive per type of item as a fee if you sell an image. It could be 75p for a card, 50p each for a pack of 10 cards, through to £150.00 for a large sized reproduction. Someone chooses an image of yours, buys it and Pixels deals with everything from manufacturing and shipping the product to sending you your fee. You do nothing once the image is there.

With All Those People, How Am I Found?

The majority of Artists just put art there and hope for the best, you though have some secret weapons and they are your existing customer base, and event booking web site.

Consider the subject of SJ (Search Juice). The more SJ you have the higher you go up the lists when someone searches on a keyword you have used. You get a bit more SJ every time, you add an image, have someone look at an image of yours, or buys something with an image of yours on it. Your secret weapon though is your events web site.

People look at your web site and consider buying a ticket for one of your Christmas events. They go to the event web page and near the beginning of the descriptive text they see something like “Take a look at the Christmas card HERE” and there is a link that takes you to the relevant image on Pixels. They might click on the link, they might not. If they do click on the link and see what the card looks like, whether they buy something or not, it doesn’t matter. The fact that they have come to your Pixels location, in this way, means that you get a supercharged amount of SJ that will give you a big boost up the Pixels ratings when someone uses a keyword that you have used. I have repeated my example below. .

Come to our next event at the Flying Elephant and paint this rather cute. You can turn this image into a unique Christmas card if you want, or print it onto something you can send as a gift. Click the link to our STORE to learn more.

How Do I Use A POD Site.

This relates to Pixels/FAA as this is the one I use. Be warned that it can take a couple of hours to set yourself up. You need to enter a lot of details about yourself, decide what products you want your images reproduced on, and then set up your mark-up figures. 

Initial Setup.

Go to www.pixels.com and register as an Artist/Photographer. Go through the setup process and eventually you start entering your mark-ups.

For instance, you might want a mark-up of £1.00 for a single card, £0.50 per card for a pack of 10, and £0.40 per card for a pack of 25. Your mug mark-up might be £2.00 for both a small mug and a large one. For a print of some sort you might have a mark-up of £14.00 for something with a longest side of 8 inches, and £140.00 for something very much larger. Once you are set up, you add your images.

Adding Images.

Take a high quality photograph of your artwork and upload it to the Pixels site. Once uploaded you will enter a title, keywords, description, category, and some other information. Once all done, it is visible for sale.

Pixels has a very sophisticated search engine capability and when potential customers want to buy something they enter what they are looking for. Pixels then shows them a list of items they think the customer would be interested in that is based on their search requests. Those artists who have been on Pixels some time, with sales success will be near the top of the list. Those who have only been on for a short while with little success (so far) will be near the bottom of the list. But you will have an advantage…..

Make a link from your event information to the relevant pixels page of the image. People look at your event information on-line, and if they click on the Pixels link it will go through to the Pixels buying page. This action will bring up your Pixels page to your potential event customers, and give your Pixels page a bit of a boost up the internal rankings. If your potential event customer wants to buy something from your Pixels page, then that also gives you a boost up the internal rankings.

With Pixels, you can upload 25 images for free, and if you pay an annual fee of US$30.00 you have unlimited image storage, a website that is automatically populated and a widget that you can put on your WordPress website that leads directly to your images – Click Russell Collins Art Shop to see mine, and scroll to the bottom.