Automated art business series, part II

POV: your face is 2 inches from another one of my paintings 💃

It’s been a week and a half since I officially launched my project. Here’s what I have to show for it:

• Domain name with email and privacy stuff acquired.
• Logo designed.
• Printer and order fulfilment service chosen.
• Shopify plan started (I used the 14-day free trial for about 5 days first).
• Printer and order fulfilment service integrated with my Shopify store.
• Shopify store mostly set up.
• Instagram and Facebook accounts created.

Phew! It looks like a lot, but in reality the mechanics of each of the above were pretty easy and quick to navigate. That being said, I have been spending about two hours every day on this, not including any time I have spent listening to podcasts for research.

Setup costs so far

So. I have already cheated myself. I have spent over £100. BUT the big cost that has pushed me way over the limit I initially set myself was completely optional.

GoDaddy domain for 1 year, plus domain privacy and email address, £26.18

Logo design & social media kit via Fiverr, £41.51

Two of my prints, framed and couriered to Ireland, £265.96 😬

Shopify Basic, first month, £22.58

Additional GoDaddy domain for 1 year, plus domain privacy, £43.48

TOTAL: £399.71

Okay. I realise this looks discouraging and outrageous but I will tell you why you don’t need to take 2.5 of these lines into consideration.

I bought the wrong domain. I know that sounds funny, but I bought a hyphenated domain because the one I wanted wasn’t available. Then, only yesterday, I figured out how to use the business name I had chosen in a non-hyphenated domain that worked really well. Additionally, said domain name was also available as an Instagram, Facebook and Twitter handle.

My shop is called wallo. The .com domain for this was taken. BUT, wewallo was not taken. Perfect. So that was my second domain name purchase. If you are smarter than me and think things through a bit more before diving headlong into buying your domain, you won’t have to double book this.

The framed prints. I bought them because I figured I should do some product photography for my social media accounts. This was unnecessary because I later realised that lots of people just photoshop their scanned artwork onto a stock photo of a very clean sitting room with a frame on the wall.

Lessons learned by me so hopefully you can save yourself the cash.

I also would not have bought the framed prints if I had been in my flat in London where the originals are, but I am in Ireland where my originals are not.

And the half line you could also remove is the social media kit part of the logo bundle I purchased on Fiverr. Really. You can do this yourself with Canva. All you need is the logo and those manicured images of your print on a rich person’s wall.

If you subtract all that stuff, my total comes to £68.76 😁.

Purchasing a domain

This was a breeze. I used GoDaddy and took a little while to search for an available version of my chosen shop name. I went for a .com but I think you can go for whatever you want. After doing a bit of reading, it doesn’t seem as though choosing a less common extension will harm your SEO in and of itself. Go wild! There is even a .art one now.

Make sure to include their domain privacy package so lurkers cannot trace your domain back to the personal details you use to register. MUY IMPORTANTE! I think the privacy package was about half of the total above.

I also forked out for an email package which uses Microsoft, yuck (e.g. if your chosen domain is myart.com, this gives you the option to have the following email address: yourname@myart.com).

One thing which is annoying about GoDaddy is they will probably call you and try to upsell. If they do, just ask to be taken off their marketing list so they don’t keep calling.

Logo design

I initially tried to design a logo myself to mixed results.

I mean, it’s not the worst thing you’ve ever seen, right? But certainly not the best.

After some less than enthusiastic feedback from my family I scrapped the homemade logo plan.

My first backup was the Wix logo generator. This was a helpful tool for two reasons:

1. The generator asks you some questions about what you want the logo for and how you would like it to look. This came in useful when I subsequently had to write requirements for the logo designer I engaged on Fiverr, as I already knew what design buzz words to use: Creative, Modern, Playful.
2. The generator gives you LOADS of options to choose from. Browsing through gave me a really good sense for what types of font or other logo element I liked.

What I didn’t do, which has resulted in me asking for several revisions from my logo designer, was write down a description of the font characteristics I like or dislike. For example, I find “feminine”, curly fonts positively revolting. I should have put this in my initial set of requirements, but I didn’t. And what did I get? “Feminine”. Fonts. Ew.

I did take a screenshot of one of the Wix fonts I particularly liked but that wasn’t enough to fend off the creations in cursive.

I moved on to Fiverr because I found the volume of robo-generated logos from Wix overwhelming. The choice paralysis was real.

Fiverr has LOADS of logo designers with packages that start at around the £12 mark for a logo. Most of them will create more than one concept for you to choose from, and give you a limited number of revisions. Have a look through the designers’ portfolios to find work that is similar to what you have in mind and make sure to be as explicit as possible in your requirements. Attach doodles if you have some.

One of the benefits of the slightly more expensive package I went with is that I get unlimited revisions (i.e. more indecision 🙄). Here is the designer I used in case anyone is interested!

Printing and order fulfilment

I was very fortunate to have come across a business doing exactly this in London a few months ago when I was looking for someone to scan my paintings. Theprintspace do a fantastic job with fine art prints and they have a platform (at least I think it’s their’s…) called Creative Hub where you can upload digital scans of your artwork to an online portfolio. From there, you can order prints directly, or use the platform to upload print products to your Shopify store via their free Shopify app.

I had a brief look at other print-on-demand businesses, but none did fine art printing to the quality that I wanted. Printful only do posters and canvases. Printify do giclée prints (giclée is the term used to identify fine art prints / paper / printers) BUT theprintspace has two advantages related to my project constraints:

1. They are carbon neutral 🌱
2. theprintspace gives you seven different types of paper to choose fron. One of those types is sustainably made from bamboo, so they ticked that box for me as well. Printify only have one type of giclée paper.

If these things are not as important to you, then I reckon Printify will print for cheaper, and their shipping will probably be cheaper too. The other big upside with using Printify or Printful is that they integrate with both Etsy and Shopify, whereas Creative Hub only does Shopify.

There is a flat shipping rate of £7 using Creative Hub which I am planning to bake into all of my product prices, as it is a little on the steep side and might frighten people off at the checkout.

The other decent print-on-demand option I found was Art Storefronts, but they only offer this service to customers of their whole art storefront package. They have their own online shop templates and hosting that you would use. They also provide art business and marketing consulting as part of the package. I am not keen to pay more than I have to for anything so I will not be pursuing this avenue. However, if you are a career artist, this might be the move.

Alright, I think that’s enough for this update! See you in part III!