Good intentions

I will have to admit, I started out strong but I have not followed through with promoting Displate daily as I intended. I must up my game it sales are to follow. Here are some new additions to my galley.

This design is for those loving Mums who support their rebellious children. A sewing machine crafting a Anarchy banner. This was inspired by a friends mum who knitted him a slayer jersey when we were kids. The sewing machine is drawn in reto yellow and clay colours

The 5 eyes are watching you. The 5 eyes is a shady spying agreement between USA, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Australia. Spy agencies and spy bases in these countries co-operate with each other, share information and spy, spy spy (I actually have no idea what they do, and that is the point of this design). This image features the face of a 5 shady men, their faces frame the flags of the above mentioned countries.

Tank Parachute. A design inspired by freedom of individuality. A series of tanks dropping from the sky attached to parachutes. The tanks a all military drab greens as are the parachutes. However the tank at front, center has got a pink, spotted parachute.

A design for those who are slaves to their televisions. If you are ready to live your life to the fullest it may be time to cut the cord. This retro style black and white T.V. has been drawn with its power cord cut and the word FREEDOM written across the screen. This could also be viewed as a political statement about freedom of information and the reliability (or lack there of) of modern news media.

Tee public

I have just joined up with tee public it looks like a good place to sell my t-shirt designs. You get a healthy $4 per shirt. Come join me. More designers = more traffic and that is good for everyone!

Plugging away

I have loaded a few more artworks onto Displate. I am still learning the ropes. I have been very slack on promoting and have found their automated checking of images trouble some. If you try and add two or more images that are similar, the system rejects all but one. This has set me back with 3 designs being rejected recently. My items where in my opinion quite different. I will try to up load the rejected ones in coming weeks and see how they fair.

No sales yet, but that is to be expected with such small number of designs, and limited promotion. I will get cracking again in earnest tomorrow.

Oh Snap! Wanelo

Of all the social media sites I use WANELO is the most annoying. But it is still worth posting there. The problem is that they block you from pinning more than one image from a webpage. If you try you get this message.

This message also comes up when I try to post my work from Displate. 

Luckily there is a work around. Posting first in this blog, then posting from here to Wanelo. This requires a potential customer to make two clicks rather than just one to reach Displate, so it is not ideal. Hopefully some visitors make that next click, or hopefully they will follow this blog to see more of my posts and art. But if I add a second one to this post Wanelo won't allow be to pin it. 

Let Food be thy Medicine, and Medicine be thy Food is a famous historical quote from Hippocrates (460 BC – c. 370 BC), who was an ancient Greek physician. Presented on this product using typography with various shades of green, white and yellow. The text is set on top of a image of one of natures super foods, a juicy red apple.

But if I add a second one to this post Wanelo won't allow be to pin it. Why not?

I think it is because they are an affiliate site, making money of links which they create via share a sale. For this reason they want content posted from the original site. 

A layered collage of piano keys. This music inspired, piano key pattern has the keys marked out with their respective notes. This was inspired by my daughters keyboard, which is marked in this way to help her learn the notes. The keys are coloured in progressive shades of grey. This gives the keyboard a zig-zag appearance when viewed from a distance.

My first seven Displates

    

Day two, promotion begins

This post shows the seven displates (metal prints) I set up on my first day at Displate. I hope they all sell. Maybe they will or maybe not. 

Q.What can I do to help my chances?

A. Promote my work on social media

This is not as hard as it sounds. Promoting on a range of sites is a good idea for maximum exposure.

I use the following, some daily, some when I can be bothered. Not all these sites allow tracking codes to be used so it is hard to say which are the best. However it is easy to do them all at once with the same links.

1. This blog http://sellingondisplate.blogspot.co.nz
2. https://www.tsu.co
3. https://www.pinterest.com/earlykirky/
4. http://wanelo.com/mailboxdisco
5. http://weheartit.com/Earlykirky
6. I am just getting started at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Piedaydesigns/790255284340130?ref=hl
7. I am a newbie on twitter and admit that I don't get it at all https://twitter.com/Earlykirky
8. http://mailboxdisco.polyvore.com
9. I also have my own website which I am yet to add any Displate content to www.tiki.graphics
10. I have just joined https://ello.co/earlykirky

So this week I will promote one of these designs per-day across these sites. This is a bit of effort and not fun to do, but hopefully it will pay off.

                                                

Day one on displate

I have just signed up to sell my graphic designs at the website displate. This blog will follow my experience at this site. There may be errors in this blog as I am a displate newby. It will be an accurate description of my understanding of the site.

Displate describe themselves like this...

Make Your Home Awesome

We are a manufacture specializing in creating exceptional Metal Posters. All the beautiful Displates that you see have been created by an amazing group of artists that are part of our community and whom you support by buying Displates.

They say they have more than 1000 artists from all around the world. And now they have me.

mailboxdisco

Selling on displate is free so there is nothing to lose, I'm in.

I loaded up my avatar and got right into making my metal prints.

Up loading images was very quick and easy. They ask for an image 4200 by 3000 pixels, at least 2800 on the shortest side (or bigger in 4:1 ratio). The metal prints they make are 45 cm by 32cm.

I followed the prompts and set up some galleries (categories) for my art.

Next you are asked to add a title, in a huge box which is actually for a description. You also enter a few key words, they must be single words, no punctuation, no commas. You set your price, I went for 50 dollars. Of that I would get 25% if sold from my profile or the popular, newest, top sections of the site. I can not see what I would earn if sold elsewhere on the site. I note that I can set up a "display" on which I can show other artists displates, if one of those works sells from my display I earn 5%.

On a free account you can add 7 designs a week. On a paid account you can add many more. For now I will use a free account but if I made good sales I will upgrade, I think it is about 30 bucks.

My gallery now looks like this...

They display the work beautifully. Here is one of my first displates.

Badger playing a saxophone

Next I had a good look around the site. Added comments to some cool art, followed some artists and liked some work. This was worth it as I saw some cool stuff and soon had 8 followers and 50 likes over my 7 designs. 

I also noticed a box that said hype. I did not know what they meant but it was on about 10. By the next day it had hit 150 and I got an email from Displate which went some way to explaining "Hypes" meaning.  The email said... 

"We noticed that you have passed the hype of 100

Hype is a measure of the positive feedback you receive from other users!

There are many benefits of increasing your hype such as:

- being a recommended user to follow for newly registered users
- increased chance to appear on gallery shows
- increased chance to being featured on the main page and social media"

I am not expecting overnight success here. In fact I expect this to start very slowly. At seven designs per week it will take a long time to build my portfolio. In my experience you need a large portfolio or a lot of luck when working on any print on demand website.

In my next post I will address promotion. Thank you for reading and hopefully visiting my profile on displate. Sorry for any typos, I love art but I hate proof reading (so I don't bother).

Feel free to comment or offer your words of wisdom about Displate.