Year One Lessons & Recap
2023 was my first year of selling my art and creating products. I’ve had successes and failures, but all of it was valuable information to help me improve for 2024. Here are the top things I’ve learned in my first year:
Try Everything
You don’t know what will work until you try. It’s the strategy of throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. It can be time consuming and full of failures, but offers so much helpful feedback that will help you build our business.
It can be anxiety inducing to try and enter new communities and constantly introduce yourself to new people, but it’s so important to be able to build relationships and support as you start your business. I started signing up for any and every market, fair, or local event that I possibly could just to get myself out there. I made some amazing friends, and I learned who couldn’t be trusted.
Finding Your Demographic
It was exciting every time I found a new event, but inevitably some were fun and profitable, and others were long and a financial loss after booth fees.
What I realized is that I needed to pay attention to what my demographic was. The events I did poorly at were ones that were mostly visited by older, retired people that probably have a beach themed bathroom (no offense). And the events I succeeded at were more likely to have college to middle aged people, especially people that love video games and Ghibli movies.
That information is SUPER valuable and is helping me plan my events for 2024. It’s my goal to do my first convention, and start traveling to bigger cities rather than staying local. Bigger events have more expensive booth fees, but also offer bigger audiences and ultimately more sales.
Discovering What Products Sell
I started my business with just art prints of paintings and drawings I had done. I sold a couple, but I noticed other vendors were having more success with practical products. My next investment was to make stickers and those started selling way more than my prints.
I continued to research and found a company that would let me make products with a low minimum order quantity (MOQ), which was necessary because I don’t have a lot of money to invest. I was able to manufacture some pins, journals, and pencil cases which sold SO WELL! I got a big boost of inspiration and continued to expand my products to include key chains, tote bags, and pillows which also sold really well.
I’m so glad I took a chance on investing in those new products and will continue to look for more options in the coming year.
Document, Bookkeep, & Save As You Go
I made the mistake of waiting until the end of the year to try and organize all my taxes, sales, and costs. It is so hard to go back and find every purchase I made over the last year that was for my business.
Luckily it’s a little easier to track my sales with Square so I could keep up with my quarterly state taxes. Not luckily was I was so strapped for money this year that I didn’t do a good job of saving my money to pay for those taxes. Hence my other goal for 2024 is for me is to save as I go and not have to use a credit card to pay my taxes.
Conclusion
It’s so important to have patience and be proud of the smallest steps forward. I didn’t actually profit anything this year, but I still made so much progress. Even the “failures” gave me important information about the audiences I should focus on, and the event coordinators I should avoid.
I have clarity on what my goals are for 2024 which is much different from the start of 2023 when I just new I needed to start somehow. I can’t wait to see what the next year teaches me!
Thank you to everyone that supported me this year. Even if you never bought anything from me but still smiled at something I did, that brings me so much joy and appreciation.
