Thoughts on Progress So Far
This is a great time to reflect a bit on the progress so far on my journey towards my doodling art empire 🙂
I started to post to my new @doodlingjorge Instagram account on May 17, 2020 and converted it to a Business Account on May 19, 2020 (prior to this I have been posting my doodles on my private account).
After much thought and encouragement from others I opened an Etsy Store on September 14, 2020 and started to sell digital downloads (coloring books and digital art). It was fun creating some of those early product, trying to figure out what to put in them and how to combine them.
I was learning about Print-On-Demand (POD) and in early October I had my first few T-shirts and leggings posted on Etsy using Printful
There were some product that were not offered via Printful, so over the following couple of weeks I added the Teespring and a Redbubble stores. (Redbubble is the place for stickers!) I also added Gooten POD products to the Etsy store.
[ Side note: I looked at Zazzle, but did not like what I saw… It was too easy it was to copy my designs and for others to create products… I still need to look more into it and learn a bit more. ]
With the many stores, and things to track, I needed a main hub for all thing Doodling Jorge so I created doodlingjorge.com and started to add the different things I had to it.
My daughter helped me with the logo so I now have GREAT logo and a brand I can use. This meant I had to rebrand all of my different places with new banners and colors. So Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etsy, Redbubble, TeeSpring and DoodlingJorge all got rebranded!
I then needed a place to display my product catalog so after searching for a service or product I can use and not finding one, I created one. A catalog section off doodlingjorge.com for my visitors, end users and potential customers to see.
Meanwhile, friends and family have ordered and tested some of the products and received feedback. We discontinued some and enabled new ones.
We also had to learn to deal with a couple of customer service issues:
- One shirt misprinted and ad to be replaced.
- One of the women t-shirt styles was one size too small
- Print on product was not good – refunded.
By this time, my wife agreed to help me improve on the placement of my designs on t-shirts, leggings, mugs and such. It has been really fun to work with her, as she is much better than I will even hope top be at it… She certainly has an eye for it.
Speaking of my wife, she was asked if I had an art portfolio she could quickly show to others. Up until that question came up, I always had thought of my DoodlingJorge Instagram account to be my art gallery / portfolio, but it would make much more sense to have an Art Gallery showcase section out of my doodlingjorge.com site. So I got to work and launched the Art Gallery section a few weeks back.
That is really the last thing I have done. to the site.
Product creation and site improvements have been taking a back seat to content creation and process creation. I have been creating doodling videos for YouTube as well as short Instagram and posting them to the different platforms.
It is very much a still a hobby!
Yes it is a hobby still. I have made some sales (thank you!), and made a little bit of profit, but the reality of things is that I / we are on a learning path still. Very few people know about the store and doodling art. I do not yet have many followers on any of the platforms either. I have been educating myself by reading / watching videos on the next steps… Getting more followers, social media marketing, and such.
Behind the Scenes: Process is very important!
With the holidays, I have been spending significant amount of time in developing a steady and repeatable process to the many steps needed to store, use and promote a doodle along the way.
I will write a more detailed and proper blog post on this in the near future, but this must be one of the most important things any artist has to get their hear around it. The process! (puff!)
- Create a doodle
- Video the creation of the doodle
- Store the video
- Take a clean photo of the original
- Take a promo photo of work in progress
- Place the original art somewhere
- Store the original digital photo in a masters location
- Clean / crop the digital photo for Instagram
- Add logo to clean digital copy
- Make different sizes of clean digital copy
- Compress clean digital copies.
- Vectorize clean digital copy
- Make white and black versions of clean digital copy
- Prep for specific product (maybe combine art. save as new)
- Prep the product image
- Size the product image correctly
- Save the photo for the catalog 500×500
- Save the product image to correct folder
- Save RAW video
- Edit RAW Video / create master version (no sound)
- Find royalty free music for video ( something that matches it)
- Create YouTube video with Intro/Outro
- Create Instagram Promo (<1 minute) video
- Schedule release of doodle digital photo and video on different social media channels
- Create promotional shots
- Create / schedule blog posts
- and so much more!
Ah! Do not forget to have a backup strategy for all of the files and file system!
