Coru's Void Blog

It wouldn't be a creative pathway if it didn't have a little risk!

Have you tried extending your feelers and gauging potential customer interest? It might be worth posting on other social media sites to figure out if people would be interested. Maybe even throw a few prices around or ask what people would pay for it. Or perhaps you've already done this, but figuring out if you'll have interest should surely help you to decide if it's worth going through all the effort to set up a shop. :)

A great way to go would be posting something on Reddit somewhere to glean interest. /r/pokemon has just hit 1,000,000 subscribers so if you're selling any pokemon related stuff, just doing a random post on there asking if people would be interested could be helpful!

It would be so cool if you could sell stuff at Comic-Con! O: One of my friends wants to do it as well and I think that's a great goal. Basically, for the Etsy idea, I think that if you reckon it'll help and if you're confident that you can sell some of your work, absolutely go for it! If it were me, I think I'd make sure I had a few people telling me they'd buy things before I was confident enough to go through the process of setting up the shop, then just go nuts marketing it once it was set up. Nothing to lose but a bit of time and money, right? :) Which in the very least gets you experience!

Whatever you choose, best of luck! And tell us all if you do set one up. :D

@Suicune's Fire Researching into it it's gonna be expensive but I'd love to do it so I kind of want to try it out. I'm mainly going to be doing original art as i've spoken to a few Etsy sellers I know and they say that fan art is highly frowned upon there, so want to avoid that, but I want to have some posters for animals, some puns and quotes etc and also want to try and push my comic idea. I also plan to have commissions where I would draw people as things they want, such as fairies or mythical creatures, warriors etc. Pokemon trainers could be in there I guess if i'm careful. I'm planning on selling A4 prints for £7.50 and A3 for £10 with deals for multiple poster purchases at once and then have commissions for £35+

I'm hoping for it to be up next month but will post a blog post about it when it's up. Hoping it will work out. I'll most likely post the poster ideas in my art thread so would love a bit of feedback to see what people think before I list them on there.

I've been telling Gemma she should set something up for commisions herself. She may not be in the best state to work right now, but with things like having your own little online shop open. It's better because you can work anywhere you'd like, work in your own time, and it's easier to work with most people.

An Etsy shop sounds awesome! Some products from there are really cool and unique! Bad part is, yeah setting up for what you want is going to be hard. However, try reaching out to others in the those areas on a visit. It tough because it's as if you need to know someone in the fields or area to be even considered. Go for it I'd say! Push your limits. Just getting your foot out there is a great start!

Could you just not print things until people ordered it? Of course you would have to spend the time doing the art but that way you can treat it like a hobby and not invest money into it unless people start buying?

Etsy cleared Pokemon stuff off there a while ago cos Nintendo complained but I think a lot of stuff is back and quite popular.

@Chakramaster Yeah i'm still a bit iffy about selling my art as I don't have enough confidence in myself yet but this shop will give me the confidence because if I get sales it proves i'm good enough haha. The set up is definitely the worst part, it's so stressful to sort out haha. I'm hoping to use it as a stepping stone though. Use Etsy until I have enough regular customers and fans on social media and then I will make my own website to sell on so I keep all the profits and won't have to split a percentage with Etsy. Comic Con will also play a part in getting more customers too. It sounds like I'm being super ambitious here but if it doesn't work out, at least it wasn't my full time thing. @Pokemon Trainer Sarah To print it hight quality I would either need to invest in a high quality printer which can be expensive or I would need to order singular prints which would be more expensive than I am going to charge, it's so annoying that it works out like that or I would totally do that as it gives me more control. I think I might just buy a high quality A3 printer though because then I can print as people order and because I am going into my final year of uni in a design course, having a high quality printer will also be a big help for that so at least it isn't a complete waste if the shop doesn't take off. They go up to £200 for the one I want which is an A3 6 ink Canon printer but I'm looking around to find the best. I'm intending on having more prints than commissions so when I have done the art I will just need to print it. I think what i will do to continuously add to it is maybe do occasional poster prints of characters from the comic I will do, which I hope to get the first volume done by this time next year maybe and then i will do monthly challenges such as Inktober and Huevember and put the best 3 as prints and then sell a book that has all of them in it.