👇🏻In the process of making another list of artists to reach out to for the upcoming season, lmk who you'd like to see next! 👀 (And what topics we should talk about!) 💖 Support me on Patreon! www.patreon.com/mualcaina (+ get Artist Alley reviews and tips I don't share on RU-vid 👀) 🌸 Shop my stuff! mualcaina.com/ 📌 Helpful Resources Artist Alley Network International (AANI) Discord discord.com/invite/artistalleynetwork Mualcaina Artist Alley Vlogs: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kyPFldAdi9c.html
I have the same feeling with Lindsey on meeting unexpected proxies instead of artists - kinda loses the magic of meeting the artist in-person, but I'm still willing to support them indirectly!
@mualcaina - your number of products and the selections would be sooooo good at vendor hall. I can only imagine myself actually browsing (and buying) through a lot of your merch!
this episode in particular was extremely interesting! love this series - even as a non artist / no interest in ever vending, I feel like a lot of the discussion topics are really cool
I like lindsey's business POV because I do agree that many artists do AA for fun and as a sidejob, but if I want to turn it into an actual brand business, I wouldn't know what to do. This was so insightful!!
Let's go Capcut free version superiority rise up! But in all seriousness, as someone who literally edits videos for my job, it does the job and tbh the quality is great for what we need! As my friends who do videography and photography professionally say, "Eh, unless it's for you're actual job and you KNOW what you're doing paying for editing software is a waste. Free is great." FREE VERSION USERS RISE UP!
This is the kind of validation I was looking for 🤧 I do a little bit of art but I love reselling vintage toys and stationery and I’ve recently been thinking of eventually being a vendor at a dealers room but hesitant bc there’s not a lot of mix of the both 😭
I would say you are most certainly more fit to be in the dealers hall than Artist alley. Any type of reselling should not be done in the Artist Alley. But if you just wanted to sell your art then staying in the Artist alley is fine! 😊
This is such a great video! Also, I can relate to selling my own version of artwork at a local Comicon and when they see me as an artist, they are always pleasantly surprised and love seeing me doodle on quiet times. So I get a lot of heartwarming compliments of my artwork. ❤ Plus with surprises of my pricing too. Also, this is me selling stuff with a 2ft space sharing a stall with a friend and still made profit back on a lot of stuff last year. Like £350 - £400 pure profit with a first year using a card machine. 80% was cash profit and 20% was card but it helped with families at a con as they would normally carry mostly cash.
@Mualcaina thank you so much! I did have a good rapport with a lot of local people since I have been selling art stuff since 2009 at local conventions so I'm happy to have this kind of experience plus at least over 15 years retail experience too so that helps a lot when building rapport with people and doing all important ice breakers too. :> Best of luck with selling wares at cons in the USA! With love from Northern Ireland, UK! ❤️
I’m also a business person, it was my college major, but also I have to make all new stock nearly every con with just a few roll overs because of selling handmade plush so I’m also Artist but it feels weird calling myself that. Wonderful podcast.
I actually enjoy doing commissions! I have a lot of fun with them. The problem is that I table alone and I can't focus on both my table and commissions. Nor do I get to really enjoy the convention after the AA closes because I'm doing commissions. The panini hit around the time I was rebranding, and I had to go about a year or so getting rid of old stock, working on new things, so I was relying a lot on commissions to get my average sale higher. One convention, I think I took about 18 commissions and made about 1.5k on them?! It wasn't a super busy con, so it was fine, even if I got a little burnt out in the end. Now that I've gotten my stock changed to what I want to focus on, I get less commissions and more sales of my other items. I do them less now. It's kind of sad! But at least I get to enjoy time with other artist friends. My favorite thing to draw was other people's OC's and D&D characters. I love chatting about people's creations and talking about our characters adventures. :)
I've seen artists like Chris Cayco who have their helpers work on transactions and the artist is at the table focusing on commissions! It's definitely one of those things where you can focus on what's most important to you :)
eh , I don't know about calling Vendor Halls more serious than Artist Alleys. Artist Alleys are definitely more approachable as someone starting out but I don't think its that big of a technical jump where you can compare a 'majority' in Artist Alley to casually doing it compared to Single Sploot. Brand building and design are not mutually exclusive things and it depends really on the context and size of the shows and what the vibe is at the vendor halls where a move makes sense for scaling/ merch reasons for someone in Artist Alley, reminds me a bit of Liliuhms
I can see your point in being able to build your brand regardless if you’re in AA or vendor hall. I’ve seen vendors in AA who have a better sense of brand identity vs some of the vendors in exhibitor hall and vice versa
Artist Alley is 100% more approachable. I wouldn't recommend anyone jumping into a vendor hall if they're starting out. And there is nothing ever wrong with just staying in the Artist Alley. After you do several events for a while you'll realize which space is more beneficial to you depending on the show. There are tons of artists who have built their brand in AA and continue to stay in AA, at the end of the day the space in which you want to be in is your choice and there isn't really a right or wrong answer (barring you don't conflict with any of the con's rules i.e: no fan art in vendor hall).
This is an interesting perspective on vendor hall. I feel like i don’t automatically associate AA with causal sellers and i always prefer to go to AA as a biz owner. As a con goer there is a big stigma that vendor hall is all dropshipping and potentially stolen art so i would be weary to set up there and give people the impression that I’m not making my own stuff
I feel like the same people that ask for manufacturing info are the same folks that ask "where can I sell my stuff at/how do I find markets?" If you're going to be in BUSINESS, you really need to be able to research, you need to be able to discern for yourself instead of just following others.
I can see that, and I understand why those new to this would ask those questions, and not know that it can come off as rude or lazy. However I don't think they realize they could easily search it on google and get better results that way 😅
Additionally I appreciate y’all sharing your opinions on gatekeeping. I agree that strangers shouldn’t feel entitled for you to automatically share information you don’t feel comfortable sharing but I personally do my best to share what I can and keep a community of open information and don’t like gatekeeping. I feel like gatekeeping comes from a place of fear and I think if creators do want to share and offer a pay wall to get credit for the work and effort they have put in to finding manufacturers, like from an online course, y’all could do that. I was that person asking questions on where to start and I was met with gatekeeping for enamel pins (a different biz owner, not yall). It didn’t feel great and was frustrating. RU-vid is a great place for sharing experiences and insights, so I love that it offers a lot of answers that many people can turn to and dissolve that wall for people who want to learn. Thanks for the video, appreciate this video series Maci!
I can't speak for all cons but most of them allow you to apply to both, then choose the one you got accepted in! One con at the top of my head that only allows you to choose one is Otakon (once you do vendor hall, I don't think they allow you to apply for AA unless you express your reasoning via email)
