#(tbh i don't think it's visible enough for people to see in the final product but it's there)

[cyrsed]

sometime between dead space (2023) and dead space 2, isaac recounts a dream where the line between the ishimura and isaac is blurred. was there ever a line to begin with?

the comic is up on itchio for free in PDF form + includes a bunch of in progress pics and extras (putting a few below the cut here :B). also my other dead space comic is up on itch as well!

[bakurapika]

yes! on and off since high school (i'm almost 30 now w one foot in the grave). Not regularly enough for me to be able to give you a complete unbiased overview of seller's fees or anything, and since I don't sell digital art, I can't answer the question about resolution.

I do know that art sellers often sell just the digital art and not the physical print, although as a consumer, I appreciate when the artist includes a step-by-step guide on ordering from a local print shop... because otherwise I have no idea how to turn a digital image into something on my wall lol.

I would also suggest getting one of the prints yourself and photographing it. Those digital mock-ups are nice but don't always give a correct sense of scale or an idea of what the item looks like irl. What I'm selling currently, I have the nice professional photos from the digital mockups... but I also have photos I took of myself wearing the item from different angles, and the preview image is a "real" photo. Imo that offers some confidence in the actual product being good rather than just looking good online. But again, that might not apply as much for digital art.

A lot of people knock Etsy as a platform due to fees (not up front but as a total % of sales), but I think the big upside is the visibility you get from search results. You could make a sale from a total stranger within a couple hours of listing with no advertising with confidence in terms of digital payment. It's pretty user-friendly and all that. With as big a site it is, I'm sure there must be horror stories about bad-faith actors buying things and then getting refunds etc but I haven't had any negative experiences like that.

Try to be responsive and ship things out quickly. In general it's worth it imo to buy shipping through Etsy directly unless there's a reason you can't. As a teenager, I stopped selling for a while because sometimes, the Mental Illness would happen, I wouldn't ship out for WEEKS for no good reason, and I would just refund someone AND ship out their item and then feel terrible about it for ages. So... don't do that. I probably have a longer list of don't-dos from when I was a teenager tbh.

The one thing I'm selling now is through Printify, which handles everything for me including shipping. It works along with Etsy directly. No labor on my part once I made the product and set up the listing. But, I make about $10 at the end of the day for a sale that's almost $24 after shipping, so there's a pretty big trade off. In comparison, in the past when I've done the design-myself-and-manufacture-by-someone-else thing, I've bought in bulk ahead of time and shipped out myself. If I did that now, I would guesstimate I'd make like $5 more per item. But that involves not just labor but financial risk, which is why I no longer sell that particular item lol.

If you're shipping out a physical item yourself, little personal touches are nice, especially if you're trying to build the business. That might just mean a handwritten note thanking someone for the order.

Finally, this isn't advice so much as something to be aware of. Lately Etsy has really been pushing sellers to use coupon codes for 1) when someone puts an item in their basket and doesn't buy it, 2) when someone favorites an item, or 3) when someone buys one thing from a shop. In all these cases, sellers can send coupon codes to shoppers.

These are so common now though that when I shop on Etsy, unless I really need an item right away or it's limited stock, I would rather favorite the item or put it in my shopping cart, then wait 24 hours to see if a coupon code gets automatically generated for me. So I'm pretty cynical about that sales tactic, but I'm guessing that if Etsy is pushing it so hard on sellers, it probably works to increase sales/revenue. shrug emoji.

question: do any of you sell on etsy? what would a complete beginner need to know?