2024. A year of growth.

I finished off my last blog post—from a year ago (whoops!)—writing about the work that went into the design of my website. Explaining what goes into making a website seemed like a good blog post to start with. It's worth noting that I was thrilled to have a blog feature on my site, given that I love telling stories.

Fast forward about a year and I sadly hadn't written another blog post. That's not because I'm no longer interested, but rather that I was up to other things or perhaps not using my time as effectively as I could've been.

Better late than never, I suppose, so here I am, writing blog post number two and I have a lot to talk about.

This past year has been a great and busy year. I feel like I've accomplished a lot, due to having a "Let's try some stuff" mindset. I've spent far too much of my life being timid, feeling shy, or fending off feelings of anxiety. These are all things I'm working on, because all they do is hold me back. Am I completely free of those traits or feelings? No. But I am at least challenging them on a regular basis.

While the website design was a lot of work and it felt great to launch, I knew I was still going to have to learn a great deal more. After all, this is just the beginning of this photography pursuit for me. I still feel like I've only scratched the surface of what I can do with this website and how it could evolve. I've also only scratched the surface of what I'd like to do with photography.

Let's get into what the last 12ish months looked like, post-website launch.

Technical Problem Solving

While the launch of the site and the start of this journey has gone well overall, there were certainly some things to sort out as I went along. Expected bumps in the road, but bumps, none-the-less.

Paypal

I'd love to say that every service I've interacted with was flawless, but I'll be transparent and say that hasn't always been the case. Paypal has been tricky for me, and wasn't intuitive from my end in terms of accepting payments. It seems that for new Paypal users like myself, purchases must be vetted first to make sure that the account holder (i.e., me) is a legitimate human, representing a legitimate business. That's something new I've had to navigate, as it caused a couple of unexpected delays.

Deliveries

Similar to accepting payments, delivery companies aren't perfect. On one occasion, I had to call the delivery company and print company to get some assistance with an unexpectedly delayed purchase. I am happy to announce that the print company, who chooses to use that delivery company was excellent at helping me solve the problem and re-shipped the product, free-of-charge. Then of course, a short while later, the original ordered print arrived as well.

During the Christmas rush, I also encountered a new "problem" to solve with regards to calendar sales. I offered calendars for purchase off my website without giving enough consideration to shipping costs. Completely my fault. I should've done more research. With orders coming in and Canada Post going on strike, the idea of packaging and mailing calendars was becoming quite expensive. At the time, I felt it was more cost effective to my customers for me to hand deliver many of the calendars myself. Then, one order came in from another country. I thought I had charged enough to cover the shipping fees, but I was mistaken and ended up losing money on the calendar. It was all very hectic at that time of year and I made some quick decisions and some errors, but now I know an area of my website and business that simply needs more work.

Running a sale on my website

Another thing that I learned was how to run a sale on my website. I'm not perfect obviously and this is a learning experience, so running my first sale didn't go quite as I had planned it in my mind.

I approached running my first sale, thinking it would be very intuitive and in some aspects automated. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. I thought there would be an easy and automated way of marking down a large number of products with the click of a few buttons. For example, select all the products with check marks and apply a discount. Maybe it exists or maybe there's an alternate way of doing it, but I have yet to find it. So, I go through each and every product, apply the discount, then save it. That's not very efficient, so for future sales, I'm going to look into this further. There has to be a better option.

The other issue I encountered while running that sale is that I have yet to find a way to have it automatically end on a certain date. That means I've had a sale run longer than I anticipate. Whoops! Again, at the end of the sale, I've had to go through each and every product individually to end the sale. Finding a solution to that is on my list as well.

Marketing

This is a big topic and it's one that I'm going to be learning continuously and indefinitely. As an artist, if you wish to sell art, you must be consistent with your marketing. Wall art prints especially, don't sell at high frequency, so you need to have your line in the water regularly for when someone is ready to buy. That means I'll continue to talk about sales of my products. To those of you who follow me on social media, thanks for your patience with me as I promote my products. I can understand that maybe that's not what you signed up for initially, but it's important to me that I do it.

In an effort to market myself more, I've been making a concerted effort to put myself out there. Say for example the reels that I'm creating, which I make appearances in. Gasp! I'm doing that to show people who the fella behind the lens actually is. For years it's been easy to hide behind the lens. I've had to become much more comfortable being on camera. I was very nervous about it at first, but I'm pleased to say that I actually enjoy creating those videos. Creating seems to be part of my identity and has been for some time, so I'm looking forward to continuing with that. I've been enjoying the video creation side of things so much that I even bought a subscription to the CapCut app. I find it far more user friendly than social media apps for piecing together videos. I'd highly recommend it if you are looking for a better app for video creation.

Learning about marketing has taught me a great deal and has helped me identify areas where I could grow. I have to admit though, learning about these areas of growth make me feel both motivated and stressed at the same time. I always feel like I'm not doing enough, I'm not reaching enough people, I'm not going about it the right way, or like I'm not investing enough time or money into it. They're very difficult markers to hit when working a full-time job. I'm trying to remind myself that Rome wasn't built in a day, nor can a business be. I plan on working at this for years to come and like anyone else would do, I'll build off of what I've accomplished in the previous year.

In-person Markets

One aspect of my business that I was and still am excited to explore is in-person markets. There's no better way to sell your art than in person. Plus, I like the human interaction...for the most part. At my first market, a customer did call me daft and dumb... all because I hadn't put the species of animal, plant, or the location of the photo printed on each product. I'll admit that it was great feedback. I should've had those things on there, but I'm brand new to this and in the chaos of prepping everything, I overlooked that detail. To be called dumb to my face wasn't my favourite. Luckily, I'm a very patient person and had worked in retail for many years prior, so I've dealt with challenging people more times than I can count. I just smiled, listened, and said thank you for the feedback. It was my first ever market and the last thing I wanted to do was make a poor impression.

Like I said, I enjoy the customer interaction and it was something I was great at while working retail. I'm discovering that I am a storyteller, so getting to do that with the public felt great and is an effective way to build my brand.

What was most new to me regarding selling at in-person markets was the logistics behind actually selling and having a professional looking booth.

Products

Figuring out what to offer is ongoing. I currently offer wall art prints, greeting cards, postcards, and calendars, but I'm definitely looking at other products. Calendars are a great offering, but they're also very seasonal, so as I approach my summer markets, look out for some new product offerings from me.

Display setup

Merchandising is an important consideration when trying to make your products look good, look organized, and look enticing to potential customers. I've opted for a setup that's minimal, so as not to overwhelm people and I've taken cues from friends of mine who also sell at markets. This is another area that I expect to see evolve over time. I like where I've started, but I know the display can improve immensely. I've also been making mental notes on what customers seem to be most drawn to, as they, stop at my booth or even so much as pass by. Some subject matter draws more people than others and so do certain products, so I'll keep adjusting as time goes on.

Along with the setup is also the signage and taking into consideration each piece of communication material that's necessary to inform people or draw them in.

Payments

Similar to my website, accepting payments was another thing I had to learn about. Several people suggest getting a Square reader and I'm happy to say that it's been very intuitive and so far successful.

I was a vendor at three markets at various locations in Winnipeg in 2024. So far this year, I've got two lined up for summer, then hopefully a few more in the fall. Look out for my upcoming markets in June and August this year.

Looking back on it all as a whole, I'm very happy with these past 12 ish months. It's been very productive and has exceeded my expectations in terms of overall sales, giving me optimism for continued progress with the business side of my photography. I could sit here and feel embarrassed about being called dumb or making mistakes along the way, but you know what they say, those mistakes and difficult moments are what help you grow. :)

It's also important that I note that given the stressful nature of starting up a side business, having supportive people around to keep me motivated and feeling encouraged is something that I'm very grateful for. I hope you folks know who you are.

Thanks for reading!

Dale