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Once irl loosens up a little (and I finish some design stuff), I plan to set up a spot with a very simple adoptable to make a bit of pocket change to throw at my unachievable familiar dreams and practice my digital art a little. I've gotten a lot of great advice from both a friend and some threads about things I should try that could keep things fun, profitable, and low-maintenance, while promoting gentle growth.

Now I wanna know things to avoid doing with art shops/adoptables. I can find protips to my heart's content but I rarely see any advice a la "If I saw this at an art shop, I'd probably choose a different one."

I would've just gone with my gut, but my dumb butt thought people would hate upfront payment before I actually looked in the forums and saw that's standard practice. xD So I'd really appreciate some "don't's" for my first mini amateur-level art shop. (Though I'd appreciate some more "do's" as well, if there's any essentials that aren't as obvious from combing Art Sales.)

@Cassofish

- make the thread visually appealing and easy to navigate. If you've got multiple sections, coding a simple navigation bar to go on top of all your posts/sections is always nice

- take payment upfront but offer to reimburse if you can't complete an order for some reason (irl, health, lack of motivation, etc, it happens)

- peek at other art shops offering similar things for prices. Don't underprice yourself too much, even if it's for practice. It's not ideal for your self esteem on the long run: If you incease your prices later to what your art is worth, you'll get less traffic even though your art increased in quality. And by underpricing you're also forcing other artists to lower their prices to stay competitive. Remember that art is a luxury not a necessity, and you are worth your effort and your time.

- advertise a lot. A LOT. Join some discord servers and post in their art and/or advertisment channels, make some social media accounts if that's your thing, bump your thread every now and then, maybe look for affiliates that will advertise your thread and bump it in exchange for you doing the same to their thread.

... I'll come back if other things come to mind. Good luck on your shop!

I don't really have any "don'ts". The only thing that would turn me off from an art thread would be if the person had walls of text and put no effort at all into the presentation and ergonomy of the thread.

@Cassofish

The above advice is really great! I'd also reccommend finding what price range is a comfort zone for you and then pushing yourself to charge more than that. Also be sure to stalk the Art Wanted Thread (pinned in art sales). In the beginning I got most of my commissions responding to Looking For adverts. Even if it was 1/10 people resonding it was still a commission!! As for your original question....

Reasons I'll click away from an art shop:

• No gallery of images in the forum or the gallery is an extrenal link to DA or instagram or something.
• Very few art examples (less than 3) and the examples have a very wide range of quality. (This also applies to adoptable shops. I want to see what it looks like colored in).
• Art examples are huge and take up too much space forcing me to scroll. (Thumbnails that you can click to a "full size" image are your friend!)
• No attempt to create organization in the thread or code any posts.
• Abysmal punctuation or reading clarity (I can forgive spelling mistakes and poor grammar as long as the thoughts are clear).
• Using text colors or fonts that are difficult to read.
• No proof of accepting and delivering previous commissions. Evidence of accepting commissions and not following through.
• Finished commissions do not match the quality of art presented in the original sales post.
• Text graphics (title cards) that don't match the art quality.

Hope this helps ease some of your worries. You should be fine if you use any art shop guides. I particularly like Foff's because it makes it fun and straightforwardly easy.

In a nutshell the only reasons I click away from a shop are:

1. The bare minimum of effort was put into making the shop.
2. The shop has scam warning flags
3. The art style isn't what I'm looking for at the moment (might bookmark for later)

Good luck when you start!

Thank you both for the advice! And sorry to ask so many questions, but I really appreciate the input.

@Zaviei
Would you happen to know where to find that "table of contents" kind of code? I know there was a way to link to a specific forum post, but the coding guide I had bookmarked didn't mention it. I also appreciate the note about pricing, I'd been having a lot of the "Man these people are way better than me and aren't even charging double what I was going to.." but struggling since I didn't want to charge so little as to make it not worth it for me. I forgot about affiliates, that's great advice! I'll go hunting for some once I've got it up and running. I don't know how to do all the fancy code stuff some do, but I figure if I have it divided in sections, a pretty non-wild font, and non-eye-burning colors for fonts that it'll be fine, right?


@Bananyan
Hm, I might have to consider that.. I actually didn't look at the Looking For ads because I really want to make this starting place as easy to do in my free time as possible, hence the adoptable rather than personalized commissions. It's not just a lack of skills issue but a time issue, as I know some people get really touchy or pull out if you take more than a week or so on an order.

I haven't really done art publicly before this (or even much privately, all my stuff is unfinished and more amateur than this even) so my gallery will probably have to be just examples made using the adoptable until some other folks order anything.

As far as not following through, would that just mean not finishing and having to refund someone, or would that mean not finishing and not refunding someone? I was going to operate on the idea of "Do your best, but if it's taking way too long or you find you can't do it, refund and apologize," but if people would be upset about that happening too then I would have to be really careful about what I accept. I'd never seen that guide before so thank you for linking it! I doubt I'll be anywhere near what most art folks can offer, but hey, it's supposed to be about fun and practicing in art programs as much as it is making some pocket money for funds.

@Cassofish Well, for the nav bar on my painting shop, I used the navbar coder spreadsheet we use in the IceDom team. I don't know if someone who doesn't have editing acces to it can use it, but the coding itself isn't hard! Here: [code][rule][center][size=3][url=URL HERE][color=#196887][b]Post1[/color][/b][/url] | [url=URL HERE][color=#196887][b]Post2[/color][/b][/url] | [url=URL HERE][color=#196887][b]Post3[/color][/b][/url] | [url=URL HERE][color=#196887][b]Post4[/color][/b][/url] | [url=URL HERE][color=#196887][b]Post5[/color][/b][/url] | [url=URL HERE][color=#196887][b]Post6[/color][/b][/url][/size][/center][rule] [/code] You can change the color of it to whatever you want of course. [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/gde/1047514]Here[/url]'s the BB coding guide that helped me out a lot, when I was new to FR. You can always ask someone you trust to be blunt to take a look at your shop and critisize it and give advice on impoving it after you're got it set up to your best :)

Sry, forgot to add this: To link to a specific forum post, you just have to click the chain on the upper right corner of said post! [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/708999403595104257/833875726465630218/unknown.png[/img]

@Cassofish

You don't have to comb art wanted threads if you don't want to! It all just depends on how much time you want to sink in! Just playing the game normally with a signature advert works perfectly fine. I had missed the part where you said you wanted to have a shop with a gentle and steady growth.

Having the adoptable examples works totally fine for the gallery! Even better if those examples were of dragons you don't own. (Draw the Dragon Above You, a friend's dragon, freebie requests, art-for-fodder, whatever). It just shows me that the artist actually is willing to color the lineart and knows how to do it. I personally don't like to be the first to order from a shop, but there are plenty of other users who are willing to take that plunge!

For "not following through" I specifically mean art that did not get refunded. I tend to check and see if orders have a finished product present either in the thread or in the dragon's bio. If there was no finished product, but I found dialogue between the artist and commissioner about a refund then that is fine! I know some artists also do it through PM, but then potential buyers would only see an order that got accepted and then mysteriously was never filled.

I hope that clears things up. :D