Do YOU want to sell prints? One mistake you make.

Hi people!

Today it is a short journal without photos, sorry.
I would like to give you one important advice, so I hope it can be still useful

I see many people try to sell prints here. And they are often sad they have not sold anything yet.
But at the same time I see they do the same mistake. So:



HOW PEOPLE TRY TO SELL THEIR WORK AS A PRINT?

1. you took a photo (drew a picture). It is nice, so you want to post it as a deviation.
2. you edit it. Making it sharper, more colourful, adding contrast, CHANGING a size to some 850x600px, for example.
3. you post it as a deviation.
4. you look at your deviation and think "hm, it looks pretty cool! Maybe somebody can buy it. I will allow it as a print."
5. you click at "submit as a print" and in "print submission" option you just scroll down and click at "SUBMIT AS A PRINT".
6. now deviation in your gallery has that cool "buy this print" green button and you are excited about somebody buying it.
7. you are disappointed that nobody bought it.


Where did you make a mistake?


It is simple.

When you decide to sell a print, you CAN NOT just submit your CURRENT deviation as a print. It is usually TOO small and it usually has your signature on it.
Even if somebody ordered it, dA would NOT allow him/her to buy it, because such deviation would not go through quality control.


So, here is the CORRECT way how to sell it:



HOW TO SUBMITT A PRINT TO ALLOW PEOPLE TO BUY IT?

1. you take a photo (drew a picture). You like the result and you think you can post it and maybe also sell it.
2. you edit it. Making it sharper, colourful and so. BUT you have TWO versions of that photo (picture). Not only you prepare that fe. 800x600px size for deviation posting. You keep also a version, which is much larger, for example 4000x3000 px with bigger resolution. This BIGGER version SHOULD NOT have any frame or any signature on it!!!!
3. you post your deviation (800x600px)
4. you click at "submit as a print"
5. choose the right size of a print.
6. then DOUBLE click on those big pink fields, which says "to make this size available, please click here to upload a higher resolution image"
7. in next option, click at UPLOAD LARGER IMAGE
8. Upload that BIGGER version or your photo (image), that one without frames and signature.
9. click at OK. Now you see how the print would look - if you see some strange white borders, you chose a bad size of the print, try to find more fitting. Or you can choose to crop your image a bit (be careful about cutting important parts)
10. do not forget about choosing more products - you can sell also calendars, mugs, mousepads and such things. For each product, you need to upload that bigger version of the image.
11. Finally set your price and SUBMIT IT as a print.

+

12. if you still want to keep your signature on a print you sell, be careful about NOT cropping it during the submition process so half of the signature is on the product and half if cut off. That's why many of my prints were rejected in the past




You can see the example here:

My deviation in gallery (with signature and frames): woxys.deviantart.com/art/White… - the size of the photo is 854x571 px.
And product I sell (no frame, no signature, MUCH bigger size, which allows me to sell even BIG and expensive prints): www.deviantart.com/print/23373… - the size of the photo I sell is 4752x3168 px! Do you see the difference?



Simply: the file for product you sell must be DIFFERENT from the file, which is a deviation in your gallery. There must be bigger size, resolution and no signatures and frames on a file you want to sell!


And one big advice: DO NOT say anything like ,,If you like it, tell me and I will make it available as a print". If you think people may like some photo (picture) enough to buy it, SUBMIT it as a print AUTOMATICALLY. People are lazy and this is not a site, where buying prints is the most important thing, so make it as user-friendly as possible. If people see you do not offer some work as a print, they will probably find some available product instead of asking you to make it available


I hope it helped
It took me few years to understand it - during this time, quite many of my deviations were refused by dA, although somebody wanted to buy them. As I did not go through those steps and I tried to sell signed small deviations, the product did not go through the quality control.
After I got how to sell prints, I really sold quite nice number of them. So I would like to help you a bit