I’ve thought about creating an online shop. I would love y’all’s feedback. Would you buy items with my drawings on them? What items? Which drawings?
Mockup storefront
Here’s a mockup storefront I made just to see how it would work and how it would look. This doesn’t work, you can’t buy anything! So please don’t share the link. What do you think?
The sketch of a plan
Squaretree could be the mother of the art shop until I spun it out as its own thing. (I have all the business stuff set up already so it would be much less work.) There would be some startup costs but I would only grow the shop at the rate that it could pay for its own growth.
I do want to be sure that whatever I create is actually something people are into. It would benefit from SEO and market research if I ever decide to scale up with ads or something… I do have a dream of creating an ecommerce office supply storefront with beautiful and cute designs (like why do file folders have to be ugly???) but none of that is in tomorrow’s basket.
I’m limiting my time on this to the weekends and only if I really want to work on it. I don’t want to actually go into business for ecommerce without actually planning it out. So the idea would be to build something that can run basically on its own with minimal effort from me. If that’s not possible, I won’t do it at this time.
How you can get involved now
So far I’ve ordered a few discounted test prints of posters and postcards and have to say… they’re really cool. 😛 If anyone does want something shipped to them right now, I can make some more test orders and take payment directly from you to me while the products ship to you. 🙂
There may be a market for such, but I know that there are many millions of people trying to do the same. Who would print your images? Fine Art America, the company that prints mine through my online site, has nearly 354,000 horse art images. The competition is tough. https://fineartamerica.com/art/horse
You’re smart to ask if people will purchase your work. I mainly sell to people I know.
Creatively yours, Gary
Good points, thank you! You’re the expert in this area. And thanks for the link! My hopeful brain sees there aren’t many images that fit my aesthetic. But hard to know whether that’s a promising or not promising sign.