In a previous article I was explaining about cost structures of different venues. While
I am sure a lot of places would name names of venues I prefer to avoid doing so because
the general budgeting principals can be applied at any given venue to decide where to
best sell your artwork. That and I also don't like to risk giving free advertising
which I would essentially be doing if I had named any place in particular.
However this article is about what benefits to consider besides just which venue costs
you the least.
As a rule if a place requires me to give up to much in a license to my intellectual
property I don't use them. If I ever found out later they changed the rules on me odds
are I turn around find another sales outlet. And in fact sometime ago there was an
incident where I nearly close an account over misreading a change in their user
agreement that appeared to indicate I would be giving them more of a license to my
intellectual property than I was comfortable with.
Give up to much intellectual property there goes other revenue you could be making
from it. Some things are priceless.
Another thing to consider is the privacy policy, if they are going to put me at risk of
undue loss to giving access to my information to someone I don't think should have it,
or are gathering information I feel is to invasive without cause I don't want to be doing
business with them. There are actually some companies where I would be comfortable
giving my name and mailing address, but I would not say give them my residential address
if I have a separate mailing address, I've even had it change which payment methods I was
willing to use because at the time one of them didn't have sufficient consumer protection
in place when I bought something from them.
As a rule I count both identity theft risk,
and intellectual property
risk as a financial risk.
Another consideration involved is actually more of a gain than a risk. If you are
paying for the sales venue are you expected to do the selling, or are they in effect
doing the selling work for you. Granted I've heard of cases where a person pays
extra for that and it turns out to be a scam, but bottom line is that if I were
going to pay for a venue sales or no sales I would want to know that venue was
including someone doing the sales work for me. Ironically I would be more interested
in paying a percentage my sales to someone for doing the sales work in the first place
because it gives them a bigger incentive to actually get the stuff sold. However that
is the serious question, would I be paying for just display space (or the digital
equivalent) or would I be paying for more service than that.
Just as importantly regardless of what the actual amount I'm paying is and what they say
they include massive question: is it a scam. I've heard of cases where it's great as long
as you don't spring for the stuff you actually have to pay for beyond the printing on
demand, like advertising, or editing, or some other service they offer, and obviously
online and off beware of scams. A classic offline example with preforming artists is
an agency or group asking the person they are �working for� to pay them and then disappearing
about five minutes later. It stands to reason the local artist/crafts-person could have a
run in with a similar scam.
Another possible benefit that might merit some added expense is if the venue involved is
something along the lines of an art show that could result in some awards and/or
recognition. If it will help sales down the road, or it's important to you for other reasons
then it can be worthwhile to use a venue like that even at a higher risk/cost. However what
that award and/or recognition means to you both for your personal and professional goals is
the determining factor here, and that will very situation by situation. However if you
aren't prepared to lose the money and the contest I would strongly recommend against
seeking those accolades.
Finally a big one is knowing something specific about whatever sales venue you might be
working with. One example is knowing a person who works there and knowing they are the
best sales person you could ask for, or knowing something about the sales statistics of
a given venue that indicate you have a better chance of getting something sold. Whatever
that something is I would strongly recommend taking that into consideration. A perfect
example might be that if you know the people who frequent the venue you are looking
at won't pay the prices that would make selling your artwork profitable but whoever
is shopping at another one will that's actually a very big decision making factor.
Another big one, does a given company do a good job of ____________. Some places are
just sales venues, nothing more or less. Others are actually handling a bit more of
the back end work. A perfect example is that I use a print on demand company for things
like t-shirts,
coffee mugs,
hats, duvets,
shower curtains, and
numerous other products,
however they were the wrong company for me to publish my
kids book through despite
offering services that could in effect be used to publish a
kids book at the time,
and possibly even still (it's been awhile since I checked)
but they were the wrong company for me to publish my
kids book through so I ended up choosing another company
to publish Liberty's Country. It's possible in the future
I may decide it's worth doing business through yet another company along with my current print on demand company because
there is some product or another they don't print. I'm going to have to use yet another
venue if I ever decide I'd like to sell say some type of artwork that isn't digital at
all because obviously a print on demand company isn't going to fill that order.
In the case of print on demand they handel more
than just a display space, they also handel some back
end things like printing, but they don't handel marketing.
This is only a list of some of the things to consider that I am aware of. However even
the hobbyist will find themselves better off long term for really being sure they are
using the right sales venue.
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