Digital Scrapbooking Business
Thinking. Out loud. Well, as loud as ones fingers can be. Or as I like to call it, The Anatomy of a SAHMs Digital Scrapbooking Business.
I spent the morning going through my mailbag. I do try to reply to all of the emails I receive from this site, given it usually takes a while. *I did delete some odd 7000 spam yesterday. Go me! Anyway, like most mornings, I received a few emails asking about: the Digital Scrapbooking business, DigiScrapObsession, being a digital scrapbook designer, working from home etc… So now I have all these emails neatly tagged waiting for me to reply to them.
While I was in the shower, I thought you know what, I’m just going to blog it since I get asked basically the same things over and over. So my aim for this post is to answer a bunch of questions I seem to get asked ALL OF THE TIME. And then maybe I won’t have to answer them again for a while. Maybe. 🙂
The main questions I get asked, and I mean OFTEN are:
Can I make money being a digital scrapbooking designer? How much money will I make? Why did you close DSO/do you miss being a designer?
All of these questions basically have the same answer, so I’ll round them all up with this one post. I hope.
I can not tell you if you will make money becoming a digital scrapbook designer. The answer to that has so many different factors, you just cant give a flat answer. (I’ve actually talked about designing in this business before and getting started, HERE) The most obvious answer is a question – Do you have any designing talent? If you do, then the answer would be MAYBE. I cant say for sure. What I can do is tell you about my digital scrapbooking business experience, and you can use that as a case study if you will.
At one time, say about 4-5 years ago, I made very good money in the digital scrapbooking business. Upper 5 digits, nearly 6 actually. Way more money than I made even as a retail store manager in “the real world”. It was not easy. I literally worked either: designing, customer service, doing the administrative duties on my site, and/or advertising from the time I got up until I went to bed. Many days, I only left the computer to tend my kids, bathroom break, or cook dinner. Did all this work pay off? Yes, for a while.
Does everyone make that kind of money?! Shoot no! As a multi designer site owner, I saw everyone’s paychecks. Of course I did, because I had to pay them. Most designers made between $50 – $200 per month. These were designers who did minimal to average amounts of advertising and released at least one product every two weeks. A few designers, made Between $300-$400 per month. These were the designers who: put out a new product EVERY week, advertised several hours EVERY DAY, were very active on their store sites forum, hosted challenges, and blogged nearly EVERY DAY. A few lucky ones made $1000+ ever month. These designers did all the same work the $300-$400 a month designers did, however for some reason seemed to have “a cult” following. Their “fans” would buy EVERYTHING they put out, and they put out a LOT of product.
So if you were making that kind of money, why did you close the business? Well, I DID make that kind of money. DID. It took a couple of years to get to that peak. And then like with any peak – there was no where to go but DOWN.
You see, timing wise, several things seemed to happen all at once. When the bottom fell out of the economy, the first thing people let go was unnecessary purchases. Lets face it, your kids aren’t going to starve if you don’t buy that newest scrapbooking kit. The tightening wallets of the masses, took a huge CHUNK out of my income. With people’s money becoming tighter and tighter, more and more people started looking for other ways to make money. So not only was spending down, but there was a huge flux in people who thought they could/should try to make money by being a digital scrapbook designer. So purchases were down, and now the “market” was becoming flooded. Never mind that a lot of the product is sub-par, and unusable crap (Oh, Im sorry, did I say that?). With the market being flooded, and sales down, digital designers-in masses, started lowering their already too low prices. So the “market” was now not only flooded with product, it was flooded with product barely priced enough to cover the transaction fees. To the point that now, there are .50 and .99 products EVERYWHERE (I wont even get started on the subject of FREEBIES).
As a store owner, I spent the bulk of my day quality checking our teams product for our store. Products that it seemed if marked more the .99 were not selling. So I spent the bulk of my time quality checking, which left NO time to design things for myself to sell. So now, personally, I had a store full of products that weren’t moving and no time for myself to design anything.
I went from claiming 5 digits on my taxes to filing in the red. Lets be real here, NO BUSINESS can function without some kind of expenses. Not even businesses ran from home. Seeing your finances out there in black and white (or in this case RED) is kind of an undeniable wake up call.
Now for me personally, my designing money has always been our family’s “extra” income. You know, the kids got to order pizza every weekend. We rented movies, and/or WENT to the movies. We went to Holiday World, or on our ALL GIRLS TRIP. It was our “fun” money. My husband makes enough to pay our bills, but my income bought school clothes and new shoes. So for me, when the STRESS and disappointment (the RED paperwork), started to out weigh the enjoyment of it… it was like a big neon sign for me to step away.
What do I think is going to happen now for the digital scrapbooking business?
I find I think about this at least once a day. Funny since it’s not really my “business” anymore. Here is what I think, I think. With the flux of stores closing and designers “retiring” the market is going to now start having a flux of “FREE” stuff. Think about it, there are designers retiring left and right. Multiple digital scrapbooking stores closing every month. All of these designers have spent months creating these products. They’re already made. Why let them go to waste? I see a bunch of retiring product becoming freebies. And for a while it will kill sales. Additionally, you have shops closing up. This puts a little bit of distrust in digiscrap customer’s minds. Here they have made all these purchases, and now there is no store to go to should there be a problem with the purchase. People who were already leery of spending money and now concerned with being STUCK with it because the store may up and disappear.
For customers: First and foremost, I say stick with designers you trust to have good products. Also, if a designer has their own personal store – I think you should purchase from them THERE and not a multi-designer store. this might make shopping a little more tedious, since you are going to multiple sites instead of one big one. But this does something more important. This gives you direct access to the designer and not some middle man. If the designer doesn’t handle their customer service issues, then its up to the customers to decide whether they wish to support that designer. There is no middle man to lay the blame on if there are any “issues”.
For designers: Wake up. This is a highly saturated market. Decide if its worth your time or not. Decide if this is your business or your hobby. If its your business then you better start treating it as such. Look around you and realize that its not going to just fall in your lap. If you want to be a success in this business you are going to have to WORK for it. Just like a “real job”. Stop whining and decide whether you are willing to work for it or NOT. You also need to realize a few things about the market itself and your customer base. Your customers are SMART. It’s not like a few years ago when it was all new and most people did not really “KNOW” their graphics software. Graphics programs are way more affordable now, and there are tutorials and online classes for them EVERYWHERE. Your customers KNOW how to look for pixelization and strays. They want professional quality product. If you can’t produce that high of quality, then give it up. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, I’m not selling it as “CU”…” DOESNT FLY. We, and I am speaking for myself as a customer, want HIGH QUALITY not NO QUALITY. You also need to take a look at what people are making with the digital scrapbooking supplies they are buying. It’s not just for digital scrapbooking anymore. We use it for cards, and crafts too. If you are not willing to branch out into hybrid crafting you are going to be left by the wayside. We want versatile product. We want to print it and play with it!
Give the people what they want and they will love you for it. I’m just sayin.
*phew* I feel better now, I think I need a smoke. lol…