58 – Spoonflower Tips with Ashley Beasley of Presutti Design

Laura

0:04
Hi, this is Laura Lee Griffin.

Nikki

0:06
And this is Nikki May with the Startist Society, inspiring you to stop getting in your own way and start building an art biz and life that you love.

Laura

0:15
We are artists who believe strongly in the power of community, accountability, following your intuition, taking small actionable steps and breaking down the barriers of fear and procrastination that keep you stuck.

Nikki

0:30
Follow along with us on our creative business journey as we encourage you on yours.

Last week, we introduced you to Ashley Beasley of Presutti Design. Ashley is a surface pattern designer who’s kicking ass on Spoonflower and Minted, among other things. So if you haven’t had a chance to listen to that episode yet, be sure to go back and check it out.

Laura

0:56
We know that Ashley offers a beautiful and meaty guide on her website to everything Spoonflower, but today she’s going to share a little taste of her best tips for getting started and making sales on Spoonflower. Ashley, what’s your first tip?

Ashley

1:10
All right, well, I think the first tip is going to probably be a little cliche, but it’s going to be to just start. And

Laura

1:18
We like that one.

Nikki

1:19
That’s our motto.

Ashley

1:21
I know a lot of people they have like the crippling fear of starting something new and I totally get it. It’s scary. I was in the same spot. But you know, you just you gotta get going to even know whether or not it’s going to be worth it. So you know, when you start out, if you’re kind of worried about what people are gonna like I suggest on your Instagram, even if you don’t have a big following, load a poll to your story like, hey, what color do you like and kind of get a feel for what people are interested in. That can really help you if you’re trying to narrow it down to begin with. And you can use something like a fill-a-yard, which is really helpful for saving money on swatch samples. There’s more info on their site about that. But basically, you can load like I think, I don’t remember off the top of my head 28 or 32 designs in one yard. So instead of having to buy each swatch individually, that’s a great way to get started just uploading designs to your site.

Laura

2:21
Yeah, you can definitely save some money that way.

Ashley

2:24
Yes, for sure. From there, I would say my second tip would be to really focus on good titles and keywords, because that is how people are going to find you. So if you’re doing like really cutesy names and things like that, that might not get you found. So focus on the color, the content of the design, what shapes are being used, what style, use all 13 keywords, and make your title as descriptive as possible.

Laura

2:54
So instead of saying fluttering things, you should say butterflies, because people are going to search for butterflies, right?

Nikki

3:02
That destroys the name of my next collection, it was gonna be Fluttering Things.

Ashley

3:07
To be like Dances Under the Moonlight and it’s like, you know, butterflies on a blue background, people are gonna like what’s dancing in the moonlight? I don’t know. So, yes, definitely.

Nikki

3:19
Okay, what’s your next tip for us?

Ashley

3:21
My third tip, which is really my biggest tip, is design challenges. And that’s what I talked about a lot in our last episode. But that is what was the biggest turning point for me. And I think it’s really important for anyone who doesn’t have an audience to participate in the design challenges to not only have a brief and accountability to work on, but it is great exposure, getting yourself out there. And another fun thing about if you do place in the top 50 and you’re set up for third party distribution is that your design will automatically get put into their third party distribution, which is like Etsy, and Amazon. And I think like eBay, that I can tell you that I’ve definitely had a good amount of sales come from their Etsy Spoonflower shop. So.

Nikki

4:10
That’s awesome. That’s good to know.

Ashley

4:12
That is some encouragement right there to try to do well is that you’ll get put in more spots, so even more visibility. The fourth tip I have is to add consistently and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to upload like five designs every day, but on a consistent enough basis to where you’re still filling up your shop. You still have things to talk about with your audience on your social networks, or maybe Pinterest. And another thing is that on Spoonflower people can sort by newest so if you upload design and the right person happens to be looking at the right time, your design will pop up right there. So that’s a good opportunity for people to discover new designs is because you’re constantly uploading things. So I know that I try to upload as often as I can, but definitely don’t feel like you need to have a huge shop full of things.

Nikki

5:12
But it’s better to do it consistently over time than like, waiting and doing like 30 at once.

Ashley

5:19
Yes, I think so cuz I did that one day cuz I was just like wanting to get a whole bunch of stuff up. And I was like, you know, I could have probably spread that out a little more, but I was like, really excited about announcing it. So I did a whole bunch of stuff at once, which actually kind of brings me into my fifth tip, which it sounds like counterintuitive, but it’s to start slow. So. And what I mean by that is that, you know, kind of, like I said before, as you don’t need a ton of designs to start making sales. So you want to be adding consistently, but it’s okay to do it slowly. So you might learn as you go certain ways to upload your designs, or to set up your files. And by doing it slowly, you’re getting more control of what you’re doing. So you now have like, here’s my exact method of how I’m going to upload things. Here’s when I’m going to upload things. Here’s how I’m going to name them. Because your style also evolves as you go. So it’s kind of just helpful to pace yourself rather than feeling like rushed to get this one big shop going.

Laura

6:28
Awesome. Those are great tips.

Nikki

6:29
Excellent. Those are fantastic tips. Thank you.

Ashley

6:32
Yes, I have some little bonus thoughts.

Nikki

6:36
Ooh, we’ll take them.

Ashley

6:37
That they’re not really tips, they’re just kind of like things I was thinking about. So something that really helped me was having a payout goal. So you can get paid out every two weeks. And I think the threshold is $10. So my first goal was that I just wanted a $10 payout. And, you know, it’s really, it’s small, but it was really nice knowing like, Hey, I hit the $10 payout. And then I did it again, the next two weeks, and I saw like, hey, it’s easy to get $10. So I just kind of shifted my mindset to like, Okay, I want my next payout to be $20. And then, you know, once you hit the $20 keep thinking like, I want a $30 payout. And so I know you don’t really have a ton of control over that.

Nikki

7:23
Yeah, I was gonna say what do you change in what you’re doing to try to reach those goals.

Ashley

7:28
Um, you know, I think I don’t want to get all woowoo on people. But I think just having the mindset of knowing that like, feeling confident, like, Hey, I’m gonna reach this amount of money, I think just, you know, subconsciously, like maybe makes you want to work a little harder to do a little better in a contest, maybe, or upload a design if you’re not feeling creative. So it’s just kind of like that little push to kind of help you just kind of stay on track. And it’s nice to have little goals to look forward to. You know, there’s definitely slow months of the year, it happens. I know, like December was kind of slow, because, you know, people were like, I’m done buying for the holidays. And I don’t know if anything can ship on time. But you know, so you can’t expect it every time. But for me, it was really exciting. Because I started noticing like I was hitting like, Oh, the $50 threshold and the $75 threshold. And then, you know, like I had $100 sale in one day. So I think that’s really good to just kind of put yourself in that mindset that it is possible to just even reach $10 starting out.

Laura

8:34
And for those of us that are woowoo, we do believe a little bit in that law of attraction, kind of putting it out there in the universe, that it’s already headed your way.

Ashley

8:42
Yes, exactly.

Laura

8:43
And magically, things start shifting and happening. That’s my experience. Nikki probably will just laugh at me, but…

Nikki

8:49
Yeah, I was gonna say yeah, one of us believes that.

Ashley

8:53
I know, it’s like a touchy subject with a lot of people. And I’ve been getting more into it. And like, you know, I think I think it’s starting to work, cuz I was like, you know, what, people are gonna start finding me they’re gonna want, you know, to get, you know, get to know me and get to know my stuff. And so I think, you know, it just depends on you can think whatever you want doesn’t matter.

Nikki

9:10
Absolutely.

Laura

9:14
All right, you have another bonus for us?

Ashley

9:16
I do. And the last was just to get to know the materials. So I think you know, it’s hard to sell something if you don’t know what you’re even selling. And even if you don’t have a lot of control over the marketing, just get to know Spoonflower itself. So you can order a sample pack of their fabric, you can get to know all the different materials they have and what the pillar prints on it. And then you can dive around on their website and get to know more about like their sustainability process of printing. So that way if you ever do decide to branch out and say, you know, list your items on Etsy, which is like a whole nother thing in itself. Erin Kendall does that. And so I’m actually like planning on starting to do that myself. And it’s nice just knowing that like if a customer found me on Etsy wanting to buy my Spoonflower fabric, if they had questions, I’d be able to answer them. I’m confident I know what Spoonflower has to offer. And so I think just getting comfortable with the website itself and knowing what you are selling to people is really important too.

Nikki

10:20
That’s great advice.

Laura

10:21
I have one other question. And this is something we didn’t talk about in last week’s episode, your little boy is how old?

Ashley

10:27
He’s one and a half.

Laura

10:28
He’s one and a half. And you built this entire Spoonflower shop from the moment he was born, basically, until now. How in the world do you manage your time with having such a young baby?

Ashley

10:40
So what I had him that was right when quarantine started also. And so the very first month I had him, I absolutely didn’t do anything, I’ll just be honest with you. That was like, huge like, curveball. But then month two, I was like, Okay, we got a routine down. And while he napped, I drew on my iPad. And even when I had to go back to work, thankfully for the first year, I was able to work from home. So my lunch break, he napped, and then I was already home with him all day. So I didn’t feel guilty about it in the evening, if you know, I want to draw on the iPad while my husband watched him for a little bit. So things are a little different now, I am back in the office, unfortunately. But you know, whenever I put him down for bed at eight or 8:30, that is when I decide to get on my iPad or my computer. And even if it’s just one hour, two hours a day, maybe even 30 minutes. Now there’s some nights, I don’t want to do anything, you can still get a lot done, whether it is just brainstorming what you’re going to do the next day, which I’ll do that a lot like here tonight, I’m just going to figure out what I even want to do. The next day, I’m going to sketch it and the day after that, I’m going to finalize it. And the day after that, I’ll put it on the computer. So you know, there are definitely days that are harder than others. And it’s important to just, you know, rest when you need to rest. But I think just because I have the passion to make it work, that it comes easy to me because I’m excited to do it. And it’s fun for me and it’s actually how I relax.

Nikki

12:17
And that’s actually some great points right there. If you managed to start and grow your Spoonflower and Minted shops, and win these contests while working full time and having a baby by doing it in little pockets of time, there’s no excuse for any of the rest of us.

Ashley

12:40
No, definitely not. So no one has an excuse.

Nikki

12:44
Okay, noted.

Laura

12:48
Ashley, thanks so much for coming back and sharing your knowledge with us. We’re ready to ramp up our own Spoonflower shops now or in my case, actually create one.

Ashley

12:57
Awesome.

Nikki

12:59
And I’m ready to actually remember that mine exists. To get a downloadable PDF with Ashley’s tips and tricks and to get a link to Ashley’s full guide visit startistsociety.com/spoonflowertips.

Laura

13:17
Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.