Ask Me Anything: Small Business Blog
A few weeks ago, I put out a survey where YOU asked questions about running a small business--and here are some answers! I hope you guys enjoy reading, and if you have a small business yourself, let me know if you found this blog useful in your journey!
QUESTION: So I really want to become a small business owner as well, do you have any advice on how to get started in that direction? -Agentkit95
This is a really good question—there's so much to answer, but I'll start by sharing my personal story. One day, I had an idea for some art, and I said to myself, “I have a t-shirt design idea that I think would be cool, I'm going to offer it on Etsy!” From there I decided, “Maybe I'll sell some prints of my art too. Maybe I'll offer digital content, but I don't know yet because I'm just experimenting.” I'm not kidding, I did ZERO research and really had no idea what I was getting into. My designs were not cohesive, as I draw and paint in many different mediums and styles.
As you can probably imagine, my level of success was reflected in my level of preparation, i.e. it did not go very well. XD Then, I started to buckle down and think about the DIRECTION I wanted to go. I started by looking at the social media accounts and stores of some of the brands I admired the most, like Blushsprout, Bright Bat Design, Stamistudios, and Tasty Peach Studios, to see what they were doing that I wasn't. They had really cute art that was clearly recognizable as theirs, their logos that were easy to remember and reflected the kind of art they drew, they were killing it with their sales and advertising—they had established themselves as brands.
What is a Brand?
A brand is defined as how your business can be identified—it's basically the personality of your business. It's the personality of your products and yourself as the owner, and it's the values that your business carries (for example, are you environmentally friendly? Customer service oriented? Do you focus on the fact that you're a sole proprietor making original art? Do you cater to a certain fan base?). It's no wonder that so many brands have mascots; these are characters created to embody the personality of the brand. And to figure out yours, you have to ask yourself a couple questions and do some brainstorming:
What kind of products do you want to sell?
Do you want your products to have a general theme (for example, mine is kawaii-inspired), and if so, how will you create a brand around those products?
Who is your target audience, i.e. the people who are most likely to buy your products?
What values do you want people to associate with you and your products?
What is the overall message and statement that you want to reflect to your potential customers?
I learned more about branding when I went to college for graphic design, and I feel like if I had asked these questions sooner, I would have found a lot more success early on! Once I started to cultivate a personality for my creations, it was easy to keep that personality and my brand's values in mind each time I created a new product. This way, my product collection was cohesive and catered to my target audience (which I learned more about as I sold more things—it's easy to imagine the perfect customer, but it's sometimes not what you think, and sometimes items that you're least confident in end up being the customer's favorite!). So my advice for starting your own small business is to really think through the answers to these questions before you start marketing your creations so you can have a good foundation to start!
QUESTION: What was the hardest part about starting to sell your products?
I think the hardest part was deciding what kind of products would sell and battling between things that would be fun, and things that would be profitable. As I mentioned in the above breakdown of how I started my small business, I was basically just guessing in the beginning on what might work, based on one idea that I had, then tried to sell things I had already made to make it easier on myself, such as prints of art I had already drawn, and t-shirts that were drop-shipped so that I didn't have to keep an inventory on hand. I do still recommend these methods, and for anyone else just starting, selling products with a low up-front cost, such as drop-shipped apparel, stickers, buttons, and prints, is a great way to get started. The other thing I struggled with was understanding how to reach my customers, and understanding how much effort would go into it—it's a whole different skillset! Social media algorithms, product photography, networking, oh my! I had to learn how to do all of these things, while also learning more about my target audience, so I could make products that the people who were already interested in them would continue to like. I'm not gonna lie, it took at least a couple years before I was consistently selling products. Sometimes, I still make things that NO ONE WILL BUY, and that can be frustrating and make me feel like a failure, even while other items are doing really well. The important thing though is to not give up on trying to reach your audience, and to continue learning. The internet has some really great tools for understanding how social media works, and there are several free apps for your phone that can help you edit your product photos—the resources are out there!
This is a bundle of my very first products from 4 years ago. I STILL have some of the ice cream sticker sheets!
QUESTION: What all do you consider when you value your time and work and how do you come up with a price for it?
There are different things to consider when pricing out these things—for one, is it an original work that can only be sold once, or is is a reproduction? Can the work be mass-produced, or do you have to make each creation by hand? For Atomik Cupcake Designs, I do a combination. For example, a lot of my stickers are printed from other companies in bulk, but my planners and notebooks are made by hand. Enamel pins are mass produced in factory, so the only labor that goes into them is packaging and quality checking. In all instances, the art that I've made for all these products was made once and can be applied in a variety of ways. In these instances, I rarely consider my time in drawing the design as part of my price. Many do, but for me, that's the fun! I enjoy creating, and that part doesn't feel like work to me. Sometimes, I'll consider the time in setting up the files (like when making heat transfer decals), but normally I'll only factor in time when I'm actually creating something. If a design I make is a one-off, such as an original painting, I will absolutely factor in my time in creating the art, even if I make prints of that art. I will occasionally factor time into making digital art prints as well, depending on the complexity of the design.
When factoring in time, I give myself an hourly rate that I think is fair (mine is $20/hr), then multiply the price of materials by either 2 or 3 times to give myself a profit margin. For your hourly time, try to choose AT LEAST the minimum wage in your state, but remember that art and crafting are skills that are valuable! The equation looks something like this: Price= $20x Time + (Materials x 2) For a planner, for example, I spend about 20 minutes making the binder. The binder itself costs around $5-6, and the materials, depending on the design, come out to around $3-4 per piece: $20x.4 + (8x2) = $24 I actually charge about $22 for binders, so I'm undercharging a little bit, but I'm still able to make a good profit that factors in my time!
For mass-produced creations, I look to pricing trends of other people selling similar products, which usually amounts to 3-4x the cost of one item. I always include shipping costs in my per unit cost. Sometimes, I'll include packaging costs as well Let's look at enamel pins for this: my most recent batch of 250 hard enamel pins, approximately 2 inches each, came out to about $1,150 with shipping and backing card costs included. This gives me a per unit price of about $4.60. I sell these pins at $12.50, which is 2.7x their material cost. So, there you have it! Do you have more questions? Feel free to comment them below!