How I started my online shop as an artist

Written by Kiara Maharaj, 18 August 2024

Starting with why

There must be a burning reason why you want to start an art business. In my case, I needed to as much as I wanted to because I had no other option. I did not want to get into a corporate 9-5 software developer job. The idea that hours of my life would be spent on a screen to make somebody else wealthy, while my sketchbook sits in a corner and my creativity withers away, made me miserable. But I also needed to change my family’s circumstances. We live in a small but populated town, where there’s a low quality of life and lots of crime. With my mom’s encouragement I always saw bigger aspirations for my future. In my case, my desperation was my superpower. I could not let my gift, my creativity, wither away. I would find and pursue all the ways I could earn an income with my gift and sustain my household and even change my family’s circumstances. That became my why.

The Key Mindset

When reading this blog, please keep in mind that I live in a third world country (South Africa) with a weaker currency, and all these services and companies such as Redbubble are US or UK based, had dollars in their prices, or were unavailable in my country. I was already starting off with a huge disadvantage but somehow at that time I did not really think about it. I didn’t know any other artist from the entire African continent who made it on social media the way I admired US or UK artists, yet somehow I still aspired to be like them.

Looking back I realize that was the key mindset: to not focus on my disadvantages too much. With social media and an online business, your zip code or location doesn’t have to define your online business. You can present yourself and your business the way you want to.

I did not have anybody to guide me when I was starting my online business, but there were many resources online that I studied religiously and adapted when I was first starting.

My first “storefront” was on Redbubble, which opened in 2018 while I was still a high school student (grade 12). During the day I would study for exams and tests, and after school I’d spend hours uploading new artworks and customizing them on products. With Redbubble I learnt about print on demand (I've written an E-Book How to start an online E-commerce store for artists which has a list of terminology related to online E-commerce).

I then made posts for Instagram to promote the products. I used the promo images that Redbubble provided because I didn’t have the physical product on me. I did not make any sales for a long time - maybe an entire year. In total I earned about $5 from Redbubble.

But I learned two essential concepts and skills: print on demand and how to market the product. I realized it’s hard to convince anybody to buy my product when I didn’t even have the physical product with me and couldn’t make videos with it.

My next storefront was on a website called Artpal. Here I tried to sell my original artworks (since those are products I had with me). It was another struggle however, and I didn’t make any sales at all. My painting skills were also in the beginning stages.

From here I learned about the importance of branding my products and store.

Lessons on branding and art style

People don’t just buy a product. They buy the lifestyle that they can be part of when they use that product every day. They buy the reason behind why you create the items you sell.

I didn’t have any of these points when I started on Redbubble and Artpal. But after another year of not making any sales, and my social media content also struggling to get views, I realized I need to learn from the people who have already achieved what I’m aiming for. I need to identify exactly what they did and do.

I started studying the profiles of my favourite artists on social media. What attracted me to their profiles? What did I like about their art? And how do they set up their online presence? What software and services did they use?

From these studies I made notes of a few common things that all these artists did:

1. They had a “theme” or brand related to their artistic choices (their medium/s, subject matter/s, color palette, business purpose, logo/profile picture)
2. They had a website and storefront selling prints and merch, and offering their commissions
3. They had some sort of link-in-bio software (another terminology explained in my E-book) which they had under their instagram or tiktok bio.
4. All of their accounts on social media and website reflected the same brand and identity

Understanding this I realized I needed to develop a brand - a unique identity that is easily recognizable, so that when a viewer finds an artwork or video online they should be able to identify that it is from me.

This took another year or so because it is a larger task than it sounds. It’s not as easy as answering a few questions and then having an entire brand laid out. For me it took many hours of painting and experimenting and making a lot of “bad art” that I hated, to discover what I liked, enjoyed, and gravitated towards.

The important thing is that your brand must be authentic. It must reflect your likes and your personality. Because when it does blow up you are going to continue to be responsible for maintaining that brand - and if it’s something you don’t enjoy then your business will fail.

So I highly recommend being as authentic as you can, exaggerate your likes, and discover as much about your artistic practice as you can. Experiment, experiment, experiment. Discover.

Ideas and experiments

In 2021 my brand grew more recognizable. I painted more of what I thoroughly enjoyed - the one thing I’d never get tired of painting. That was greenery. Tree portals. Foliage. Faeries. My skills still weren’t the best in my view, so I showed my sketchbooks as I learned and practiced art. I made sketchbook tours which had my most authentic imagination expressed across it. And I chose music that reflected the “fairy core” fantasy theme. I also changed my username to the same thing across all platforms.

These sketchbook tours started to attract a lot of views. While experimenting with oil as a medium, I was painting oil miniatures of scenes from my favourite video game: Hollow Knight. And those videos blew up too.

I had already set up my brand behind the scenes so that once somebody saw my video and clicked my profile, they could easily understand what to expect, which made them click the follow button quicker especially if my brand reflected exactly what they love too. At this time my only monetized stream was commissions, and my first artist alley that was coming up. I had savings from my university scholarship, and the cash prize from a business competition that I won and that was it.

I opened my shop in 2022. I didn’t do much research because I knew what I was looking for - a FREE option. I didn’t have any capital to invest. I couldn’t afford a Shopify plan. Or Etsy or Wix for that matter. They have trial options but I wanted a solution that was free for a longer term.

This led me to find Ecwid.

Ecwid has a free plan (literally free forever) with no fees. The only catch is that it was limited to 10 products (in 2024 it’s limited to 5 products). But that was fine with me, I just wanted to start. I decided if my business kicks off I could upgrade to a better plan with more products. I uploaded 5 prints.

I didn’t make any sales again. I was getting so frustrated and discouraged. I think I was at an all time low because I had just graduated from my computer science degree program and I didn’t want to be a software developer with a 9-5. I was desperate for another option, for THIS option with my artwork.

At this time my videos were getting good views and I was getting alot of followers on instagram. I looked at the other plans on Ecwid, considering my options, and saw that in the Venture plan on Ecwid you can add digital products. This led me to a rabbit hole to learn everything about digital products.

I am a writer by nature. When I saw how much people were earning from E-books I realized I could be using my passion for writing AND art AND content creation together.

I wrote my first E-book - a guide on “how to print stickers from home” because that was one of the first things I figured out on my own for artist alley, everything from scanning my artworks to making a sticker sheet and getting sticker paper and a printer. I also included a sticker sheet template with this E-book.

Then I upgraded my Ecwid plan to Venture. And that first payment felt incredibly heavy. But I told myself I’m going to make 10x more no matter what. With Venture I could upload 100 products, including digital products.

I started making coloring pages, wallpapers, and writing more E-books. All products that suited my brand and reflected my fantasy artwork. During 2023 I wrote and wrote and wrote everything I learned up to that point about social media, and branding and an art business.

I was also going through rigorous business training as part of my prize for the business competition I won in Dec 2022. I wrote E-books about everything I learned and combined it with my art niche.

Now in 2024 with Ecwid, you can have multiple web pages in addition to your storefront. You can add a blog, a newsletter, and so many more features for free, and even more with a paid plan without losing the different versions of your website. They also have an affiliate program if you want to introduce affiliate marketing as another income stream.

Fulfilling work

Having an online shop changed my life. Five years later in 2024, my online shop has sustained me and my family full-time. It is a lot of work, but it’s work I enjoy. It’s not a 9-5, it’s a 24/7. But I love every hour of it, and that was important to me when choosing this path. April was my shop’s 1 year anniversary, and taking a look at its progress made me feel incredibly emotional. I went from having no sales for years, to sales daily, with my artwork and writing, both my passions.

In summary, the 5 year journey taught me so much, and this blog post is just 1% of my journey. It is not all fun and games - there are less enjoyable tasks which comes with being a full-time artists (being my own admin, accountant, marketer, customer care manager, and every other role). But I am of the mindset that this is a welcome gift, because I asked for it and I'd rather have these problems coupled with fulfilling work, than that 9-5 I dreaded.

In my E-book on this topic, I cover step by step what you can do to start your own online shop. We’re going to cover the nitty gritty stuff like domain names and actual numbers in the costs too. Are you ready?