I hate long draggy articles online so let's cut to the chase in about 1 year (slightly over though by a month or two) I made about $500 passively with less than 50 products on Creative Fabrica. Here's a screenshot of my designer dashboard below (I have cut out my user profile of course, which would usually be on the top right hand side of the screenshot).
How about marketing?
Now you're probably wondering, "how much did you get paid from those referrals?"
I was not paid for the referrals either since they did a free trial--they did not purchase any subscription. Majority of that tiny $500 income for the year was mainly from the weird way Creative Fabrica calculates downloads from their subscriptions model.
How does Creative Fabrica's payment system work?
I won't lie to you guys as I have no idea how many times my products have been downloaded with the subscription platform (Creative Fabrica does not release any download data resulting from their subscribers). I have though sold 2 items from the same customer which Creative Fabrica took 50% from each. Those are the only 2 products that I have any report on. Maybe that customer also came from Pinterest? Sadly, I'll never know because there is no analytics to track this on Creative Fabrica.
All the other items just have reviews and tons of favorites. The reviews are the only way I know several people have downloaded my files. Otherwise there is zero way to know.
Majority of the sales/downloads you get will be from Creative Fabrica subscribers and will not be from one time buyers purchasing at full price because on their website Creative Fabrica puts a big "get this for free" button right next to the full price of your listing. What do you think a customer wanting to buy your digital art or design will do (especially during this faux recession)? Will they purchase your product for $10 - $30 or will they click on the "get this for free" button and do the free trial for 10 downloads or even get the $3.99 a month yearly subscription to download everything on the site? Most likely they will do the $3.99 subscription to download everything on the website or the free trial to get 10 free downloads including your product.
By the way I get paid via Paypal. You can do direct deposit or payoneer but there are more fees.
Don't you also get paid for listing products?
Another thing not to fall for is the "get paid just for having products listed" gimmick that Creative Fabrica users spread online. In my opinion the penny or two that you might get is not worth it, however keep in mind I had less than fifty items majority of my year testing out Creative Fabrica.
I saw a comment on youtube saying a CF designer (Creative Fabrica designer) had 500 products listed there and didn't even make $100 for the year and still only got a penny or two total for about 500 products (I also get about two pennies for 100x less products listed). They never linked their shop in the comments so I don't know what they were actually selling, but goes to show you having hundreds of products up doesn't guarantee anything.
I think it depends on the type of products artists and designers sell. If it's not in demand and gets lots of downloads then you won't make much on this site no matter how much you list.
Here are some comments I saw online:
Now do I myself recommend Creative Fabrica?
Yes, and No.
If you are someone looking to be paid full price for your hard work/effort in your designs then hard no. Pass on this. Also, if you don't want people using your designs for POD or reselling on merch then hard pass. If what I described above sounds like a horror story this is not the platform for you as an artist or designer. No, this is not for you.
However, if you're someone with lots of designs or digital art just sitting on your hard drive doing nothing and looking for some passive income that you can set and forget then Creative Fabrica might just be for you. Maybe an extra $500 a year can help you out (maybe save it for retirement).
Here's what I'll be doing in the future:
I do want to try to see if putting in more effort will bring anything positve.
1- I'll add more products per day (my goal right now is 100 products) to test out the "get paid to just list" gimmick. I'll update in "part 2" and let you guys know if my earnings increased based on the products listed.
2 - I'll add more products that are "trending". If you guys go to "store dashboard" --> "Analytics" --> "Search Analytics" you'll see the most trending words users are searching for on Creative Fabrica. Use this when brainstorming designs or products so you at least get some type of downloads since you know people are looking for these terms. Add them to your tags (that's what I do anyways), and maybe 1 keyword in your title. The title is limited by a certain character count so you can't keyword stuff even if you wanted to. Holidays, football, stickers, autumn, wedding, pizza box, etc are all trending terms right now. Holiday events are always guaranteed to be trending since most people are into holiday stuff so if that's your niche you should be fine with getting downloads as long as it's in your title and tags. I personally don't do holiday themes so none of my items have this theme. If you don't do holiday themes either like me there is still hope for you!
Now what do I sell?
I don't want direct competition with scammers so unfortunately I won't say exactly what designs I sell (I mean, people can go to your CF shop and re-sell your designs on other POD platforms that you also might be selling the same designs at). Make sure you sell designs you don't want to compete with others on for sites like redbubble or etsy or something. However that's not my main concern. Here's my real one:
Some people are bold scammers and re-sell the exact same product you sell on Creative Fabrica as well which isn't allowed but scammers don't care as long as they make money off of you. They will sell it on their own CF account too with no shame. You won't know until it's too late and they made ample money off of your listings over months or years (keep in mind they can download all of them freely for $3.99 a month).
Considering anyone (legit people and scammers) can read my post publicly it's not a good idea to share the exact products (especially since they can download for free under the free trial) hence why my shop was not included in this post either. I do want to give people an idea about what to expect, and also have an option for passive income which is why I am sharing my experience.
I will say though, on this blog I enjoying drawing original characters which I love, but I don't do this on Creative Fabrica.
I don't sell any OC art and would not recommend doing so unless you're a big name or have a lot of followers already following your stuff (be it a comic or what have you). Like if you're Ross Draws or Loish it would make sense but if you are relatively unknown please refrain from selling OC's with unique titles.
Most people unfortunately don't go online to buy random unknown OC characters out of the kindness of their heart. I'm not saying this to be mean, but to be honest and realistic. You won't get false promises or expectations from me. They wouldn't know what to search for to find you to begin with either (which is why people pick easy niches like holidays or animals such as cats/dogs).
I will say I sell templates. Artsy design templates for businesses which is the complete opposite of my blog where I create art for myself and other artists or non-artists like me to enjoy.
That being said there are artists who sell clipart making so much more than me on Creative Fabrica, but I'm 99% sure majority of them are using Ai art to crank out 1000's of bundle listings in a month with the "AI art style". You know the look.
I'm not against AI art, it's super impressive but I myself as an artist who handcrafts everything traditionally and digitally don't want to compete with a high speed robot. I lose. There is no way I can make digital art of that quality in 30 seconds or less even if I ignored hands and created botched out of focus areas like the AI does. This is why I chose the artsy business template route. I had a ton on my computer that I made for myself and friends that just sat there so I'm just putting it to use to help others while earning passively. If you'd like something similar for you digital products just wasting away on your computer never to be used again I recommend trying to sell them on Creative Fabrica if you're still interested (especially after all the cons I listed).
Also, no referral link either. That's not the purpose of my post and I don't want to mislead you guys into thinking it is.
If you enjoyed or have questions you can comment below. I will try to answer them if I can. Before you ask: Yes, there is an approval process.
If you already sell designs or digital art (something similar to what you'll sell there) somewhere else I highly recommend sharing that as your portfolio. I recommend either linking to your Behance or your Etsy shop (only if you have one with sales and with similar products to what you'll be selling).
0 comments:
Post a Comment