. Location: Atlanta, GA
∙ Remote: Yes, but would prefer to relocate to hybrid or in person if there's a fit.
∙ Willing to relocate: Yes (NYC, SF, DC, Austin, Miami)
∙ Technologies: Fullstack software engineer turned fullstack solopreneur. Did $1.1M in 21/22 with an online education business. Looking to join a team I gel well with and with a mission I care about on the sales/marketing side.
∙ Resume/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harrywhelchel/
∙ Email: In my bio here on HN
Spent the last few years teaching visual artists how to market and sell their art. I was able to get the sales and marketing engines of the business humming smoothly but making service delivery repeatable has me stumped. In 2021 and 2022 I did $1.1M in sales from a little over $500k in ad spend. All bootstrapped.
I'm looking to join a team that I gel well with and who have a mission I care about. The best fit roles for me would be in marketing or sales.
I've done 1,000's of sales calls with ACVs between $2k and $10k. I've built direct response VSL and webinar funnels, (copywriting, web dev, video production) that have generated 7 figures of revenue. I've built marketing sites with gatsbyjs and tailwind. I've built fullstack software applications with React and Rails.
Today though, I don't want to spend most of my time behind a screen. Today, I'm interested in podcasting, event based marketing, and relationship based sales. I would like to ultimately land somewhere with a face to face company culture that is either hybrid or in person.
And I'm really glad to hear you are doing so well with your approach!
> If you can make the type of Art that someone is willing to actually pay whatever you charge for it, you have a chance to go up market because you've overcome the first obstacle of picking the right product. 95% of people on Etsy will not or cannot achieve this based on what they sell (or know how to do, or enjoy doing), but many can still be successful.
Such a good point. Most artists I see work from their own beliefs outwards rather than seeing what the market will bear at different price points and targeting a higher rate. They think things like, "I wouldn't spend more than $X00 on a work of art" and so end up charging the same or less.
> I make over 6 figures selling an average order value of $20.
Just curious, is that 6 figures of profit or revenue? The nice thing about the $3k to $5k sales is how high margin they each can be.
> We'll do craft shows and sell $20 items like hotcakes all day, while the depressed folks in the booth across from us selling expensive art make maybe 1 sale a day, and usually not for an expensive piece. Our $475 item that takes a week to make will turn heads and bring people in all day and we might sell one of them, and 5 other folks will just say they can't justify the cost, despite how unique and big and amazing they think it is. On the other hand, we'll sell wedding invitations that take 10 minutes to print for $500 and people won't even blink when we name the price, and then they'll re-order again because they changed the date. It's shocking.
Yeah it's interesting at these kinds of events I see little mistakes or points of friction that artists selling high ticket work introduce that reduce their sales. Things like, sitting on a chair way back in their booth reading a book or their phone, not having an assistant standing out in the flow of foot traffic saying hi and drawing people in, displaying pricing, having too large a range of pricing, not asking questions about the person and their desires and instead "talking at them" about the art versus "talking with them", etc. Again it takes learning a communication / relationship building style that works great if you don't accidentally get in your own way.
> There are tons of digital download shops that makes 10k-100k sales a year on Etsy at $3-$15/sale and they only need to do the work of producing an item once. Those are amazing businesses and 100x times easier to run than trying to convince someone to buy a $x,000 item via social media and paid channels.
I could see once you identify your niche, write your copy, optimize the SEO, and set up all the other tech required, and you have a product that really resonates with your niche, this could be easier to manage once up and running than the social media / high ticket approach—at least for some people. That said, it sounds like it could be hard and unpredictable for non tech savvy art folks to initially set up.
There are definitely multiple paths that work for sure and there's no one magic ninja hack or silver bullet that doesn't require personal development, learning new skills, mindset shifts, etc.
Again, really glad to hear about all your success and I hope your businesses continue to serve your life and goals well in the future!
Yeah I hear you. I naturally can relate more to the producer than the fan or supporter.
Another good comparison is a company like Tesla. Tesla started out with the high priced roadster but as they sold more and their audience grew, they pushed the pricing down and make cars more accessible and affordable to more people.
Art can be done in a similar way but there's some nuance to it where you want to make sure if you offer lower ticket items that they don't cannibalize your core profitable offer and that you can actually have enough volume to profitably sell items at those lower rates.
Better to just focus on one profitable offer and skip the low ticket items until you have quite a massive audience to reach. The low ticket items then become more like "merch" you see youtubers sell to monetize their audience and then a percentage of those folks ascend to investing in commission or originals.
But when starting out just the one core profitable art offer sold through personal branding and relationship building, I've seen be the most sustainable way to go.
Yes I'm curious to sign up but don't have an Etsy store either. Are you looking to build a more of a competitive intel product for existing Etsy store owners or something more for end users of Etsy like a weekly curation email newsletter?
In my experience if you want to make a sustainable living from selling arts or crafts online, you want to go up market. Charge $1,000 or more per work.
Use a relationship based sales process starting with one focused social media presence, typically Instagram.
Not everyone will be afford your work, but if your marketing and customer service is solid, a plenty large market will exist.
Once you start collecting social proof from happy customers, flow that back into your marketing and getting your next client becomes easier and easier. You can then often charge $3,000 to $5,000 for the same exact work because of the social proof and the brand you are building with it.
Making an art business work is similar to making a bootstrapped software business work, in the sense that software bootstrappers again and again go through the personal realization that writing software is typically only 20% to 30% of what they need to focus on in order to be successful.
They realize they need to bite the bullet and learn sales and marketing too and only if they do so can they overtime shift more and more of their time to just the areas of their software business they want to spend the most time in.
What's interesting about the online art world is that there are a number of platforms like Etsy that ostensibly take the sales and marketing off your plate, that said, all your points are true. They are often a race to the bottom where you feel a strong pressure to compete on pricing.
What I've seen work instead is to charge much higher rates of $1,000 or more. Think to yourself, hypothetically speaking, if I were to charge $1,000 or more for my art or my woodworking etc. what kind of items would justify that price point and then just focus on those.
Then when it comes to marketing and selling, pursue a relationship based selling approach rather than an ecommerce transactional approach.
Once you start getting social proof of happy customers you can often take the same work that was selling for $1,000 and sell it for $3,000 to $5,000 or even more.
That's the key to making a sustainable income with art or handcrafted work these days.
This would be great for English. So many people need help with their conversational or small talk skills. Would be great for them to be able to practice even if they are native speakers. For public speaking, office communication training, self confidence development, etc.
Is there a form SaaS that allows the admin to give feedback on the form submission and then have the user resubmit their form?
I run a coaching business and I’d like my students to be able to submit their work for feedback and review. Then if they need to make changes, I’d like to make it as easy as possible for them to resubmit the form with tweaks to their submission.
If someone is on downward trajectory towards death, why not give them cheap generics at human safe doses? Aren't physicians supposed to do risk benefit analyses? Sure they can feel the odds of benefit are slim to none but if the risk is slim to none as well, why not let them have what they ask for?
Also the doctor made no mention of other therapeutics that do have more expert consensus of helping like monoclonal antibodies or fluvoxamine. I'm sorry to hear that they have decide to leave medicine and that they were assaulted. Violence is never called for. That said, it's unclear if all tools in the current tool belt were used in this patient's case.
i totally get that it's anecdotal. my point is more about just allowing people the opportunity to try therapeutics especially ones that have been proven to help in many cases like monoclonal antibodies or have little to no risk of harm.
From my understanding you can’t get the actual distinct Comirnaty version when you go in and get the shot. They only have EUA Pfizer supplies. Technically the same thing but legally different and therefore has a different liability profile.
Spent the last few years teaching visual artists how to market and sell their art. I was able to get the sales and marketing engines of the business humming smoothly but making service delivery repeatable has me stumped. In 2021 and 2022 I did $1.1M in sales from a little over $500k in ad spend. All bootstrapped.
I'm looking to join a team that I gel well with and who have a mission I care about. The best fit roles for me would be in marketing or sales.
I've done 1,000's of sales calls with ACVs between $2k and $10k. I've built direct response VSL and webinar funnels, (copywriting, web dev, video production) that have generated 7 figures of revenue. I've built marketing sites with gatsbyjs and tailwind. I've built fullstack software applications with React and Rails.
Today though, I don't want to spend most of my time behind a screen. Today, I'm interested in podcasting, event based marketing, and relationship based sales. I would like to ultimately land somewhere with a face to face company culture that is either hybrid or in person.