The Weekly Glow Up: May 31, 2023

May 31

Welcome back to the Weekly Glow Up, where I share tips and resources that you should know about as a creative who wants to make money from their art.

Here’s what I’ve got this week:

1. 🤑 Money Talk: How Do I Know How Profitable My Products/Services Are?

When starting out with your own business, it’s common to look at the revenue (i.e income from sales) you bring in and get a feeling of how your business is doing from that number.

But revenue doesn’t tell the whole story.

You could have 2 different products that each sell for $50, but one costs you $30 to create and the other costs you $10.

Of course, the one that costs you $10 to create is better for your business because you’re “keeping” more of the sale. Your profit is $40 (50-10) instead of $20 (50-30).

The costs of creating one product is called your “cost of goods sold,” or “COGS.”

But there’s another layer of complexity: your business has costs to keep it running that are independent of your COGS.

These are your ongoing costs for things like your website, software subscriptions, equipment, fees, etc.

So while knowing your COGS and profit margin for each product/service is a good first step, in order to ensure that your biz is actually making enough money to break even, you have to look at the bigger picture of your business costs as well.

To do this, add up all your business expenses for a year and tack on any additional profit you want to make to get your annual income goal.

From here, you can make better decisions about how much profit you need to generate on each sale in order to hit that goal.

ICYMI, I just released a pricing strategy toolkit that automates all of this work for you—just enter in your costs and prices, and it’ll guide you through your sales goals, income goals, ideal hourly rate, and more to help you devise a pricing strategy that makes sense for your biz.

2. 🧠 Biz Strategy: Where Should You Sell Your Art Products Online?

There are tons of different e-commerce platforms and marketplaces you could leverage as an artist printing your designs on physical products: Etsy, Creative Market, Design Cuts, and print-on-demand sites like Society6 or Red Bubble.

But it can hard to know which one makes the most sense for your biz.

It’s usually a little bit of give and take—for example, platforms will offer more convenience (i.e. they do the printing and shipping for you), but then take more of a cut of your profits.

If you’re trying to figure out where to sell your products, or whether you’re selling on the most profitable platform for your business, check out my breakdown on where to sell your art online for an in-depth analysis.

3. 🍵 Client Tea: The Value of Just Getting Something Out There

I recently spoke to a letterer who wanted to start a new wholesale income stream selling products to local stores to stock their shelves.

As we were talking, she felt like she had to have all the answers and reinvent the wheel to start this new income stream.

She was stuck on her packaging design, and wondering what kind of products she should put in her catalog.

But here’s the thing—she was already selling prints and stickers on her own retail site.

She had existing products. She had a way she was already packaging them up and shipping them to people.

So my advice was: rather than start a new income stream AND try to do all new products/packaging, start with the low hanging fruit option.

Take the products you’re already selling, and the packaging you’re already using for them, and leverage that for your new wholesale venture.

When you add more complexity and more decisions, it only holds you back from getting your product “out there” and getting the feedback you need to make it better.

I’d rather my clients fail quickly and know what they need to optimize or fix, than sit on their product ideas and try to make everything perfect before they share them with the world.

You can always plan out your “v2” of a product or income stream and mark some time in the next month or quarter to optimize.

But putting your products out there NOW builds momentum and pushes you to improve and keep moving forward.

4. 💼 Sales Tips: Using LinkedIn to Find Clients

Tbh, I’m not a huge fan of using LinkedIn in general. It feels kind of stiff and corporate and it’s just not really my vibe.

But one thing it DOES have going for it—it makes it really easy to find the exact person you need to talk to at a company.

In general, it’s a good idea to do some regular sales outreach in your business, meaning you introduce yourself and start dialogues with your ideal client, rather than just posting on Instagram and waiting and hoping and praying that they find you.

LinkedIn can be a great way to do that.

Once you figure out exactly who your ideal client is and where they work (if you don’t know how to figure that out, hit reply on this email and let me know what questions you have!), you can search for those job titles on LinkedIn and find the exact person you need to talk to.

From there, you can reach out and start chatting, sharing how you can help them meet their goals or solve a problem they have.

I think it’s worth it to incorporate a little bit of sales outreach into your business tasks each week—getting your name out there to the right people can pay back dividends in the future.

Why not take a little time this week and update your LI profile so it’s ready for you to start hitting up some ideal prospects?