This month has been my worst art sales month of the year. I'm not ashamed to mention this. I'm not an artist full time and very few people in Mexico are willing to pay for art anything beyond basic material cost (and cheap materials too just to get in their budget"
Therefore 99% of my art sales is to people who I don't know and who probably have never heard of me. They just happened to come across one of my works and decided to make a purchase probably at one of my stores at Zazzle.com.
I don't have a budget for sales and marketing. My only marketing expense is my domain name renewal fees (since I canceled my hosting account for free hosting in the spring).
This year has been a summary of my attempts to focus, steamline and simplify my life online and offline. I focused on visual art, dropped most of my affiliate marketing afforts when I canceled my hosting account (it became too tedious and I was frustrated by the merchants coming and going and having to redo everything constantly).
I had to decide how I want to spend my time. Do I want to program, promote, or do I want to create and capture beauty?
In the end, I decided that if I'm going to spend hours a day for pocket change, I'd rather do it creating and posting for sale even when there is a slow month like July has been for me.
Slow months are as good a motivator as good months are. Good months are great because you don't have the pressure to create and sell. Slow months are great because you know you need to do something new or expand to get out of that rut.
Last week one of my English groups canceled two classes so I had most of two days free. I worked on learning how to break up the edges of rectangular artwork so it looks better on t-shirts including dark colors.
This week on my non-teaching days and yesterday before AND after class, I've been working on graphic design. I am a beginner at graphic design and still very experimental, but I started a new monogram store as suggested by a friend. I also converted my design elements from my Wedding save the date store to Zazzle templates too.
What else is new? I've added my artwork to many home and office product templates so now every new artwork will be available as great products like stationery and business cards! Both are available in several styles.
If you enjoy my artwork, but are looking for more practical designs that are also beautiful, be sure to follow me on Twitter or Friend me on Facebook so you'll see what is new at my stores.
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