Contemplating where to focus my efforts.
Elizabeth thinking: photo by @lauraringphotography
In today's post I'm sharing my current business contemplations with you.
With the rest of my new DIY Sculpting Kits packaging on their way I’ve been trying to figure out what parts of Miniezshop to focus my efforts on. I’ve narrowed it down to 5 categories:
The accessory style sculptures (plant stakes, pins, needle minders, earrings, etc.).
The DIY Sculpting Kits.
The custom creations. (Dogs, cats, people, pets etc.)
My YouTube tutorials.
The book (My mother-in-law wrote and I’m illustrating with clay).
The factors I’m contemplating are:
Will it be profitable? (Miniezshop is only covering its own expenses right now and I just have figure out which avenue will help Miniezshop pay our personal bills).
How involved will it be? (There are so many cool ideas but I don’t want to stretch myself too thin.)
How fulfilling will it be? (I want every part of Miniezshop to be focused on sharing the love of sculpting, building artistic confidence, and focusing on how art helps process life.)
So here are my contemplations for each of these categories:
For my accessory style items: This year, two small retailers have placed wholesale orders, of the ten that responded to the oodles of emails I sent. So I’m wondering if I keep reaching out to more and how “fulfilling” making the same sculptures over and over and over again might be. But, if I could pick a narrow/local area to only stock in that would be good to get my name out there.
The DIY kits will definitely be a big focus and the most likely to be “less involved” later on. They’ll require a huge amount of effort on the marketing side and I’ll still be packing/assembling them, ordering everything, designing everything, and shipping them for the first while at least but maybe eventually I could have help there. Plus they’re super aligned with Miniezshops mission of “sharing the love of sculpting” and “building artistic confidence.”
Custom creations are the most involved but I think my favorite, the most fulfilling and the most detailed. I could develop my sculpting skills further by focusing on these. Also, they seem to be what people want to order the most/ the most unique.
My YouTube tutorials. YouTube is funny. With almost 2,000 subscribers each of the videos I’ve posted this year has gotten only about 30 views. I’m pretty sure if I focus more on “how to sculpt dogs, cats, people and random trends” the views will be more. So it’ll just take more time to refine that area. Plus, once the videos are done they’re another “less involved” way of making a smidge bit of income. I made $14 this month which is more than I was expecting! However, I have to acknowledge that I wish there were more views for the amount of work that goes into the videos but time might change that?
The book I’m illustrating out of clay that my mother-in-law wrote. This one is where I feel the most expressive/creative because while the scenes have a theme I have a lot of artistic liberty. Now this could be a good way for “less involved” money maybe if I get it in front a lot people and get into a lot of bookstores etc. But that’ll definitely require a lot of marketing also. We also have 1 official Patron now on Patreon which means $4/month to save towards publishing the book. So maybe in the future there would be more Patrons there because I know a lot of artists make their living on Patreon. (Plus I have 5 book ideas that are pretty flushed out but I won’t start them until this book is done.)
There are also other minor inklings in my brain such as: maybe trying to be in a museum/gallery one day, doing stop motion animation and being able to do more workshops.
Plus as I narrow my focuses there will be the narrowing of marketing too, like do I focus on: flyers in businesses, which businesses, my blog, which of the socials, trying to get into magazines, lots of cold calling, do I run ads, how many and to which target markets, which craft shows do I apply for, etc. etc.?
There are so many options, it will take time to refine and a lot of effort but tiny step by tiny step. If you’ve read this all, thanks. That’s where I’m currently at. I appreciate your following along! If you have recommendations I’d love to hear.
Thanks for reading, hugs - Elizabeth (miniezshop)