How One Sticker Saved My Art Business

I didn’t think much about my Etsy store when I first opened it.

And I mean this very literally.

It was February of 2020 (unfortunate timing), and I just woke up one more deciding I wanted to start an Etsy shop. As an artist with a moderate following, about 40k at the time, I thought it could be a good idea to sell some prints with the nice printer I bought myself a few months earlier.

I was unsure if anyone even wanted prints of my artwork, but it was a relatively small investment, and so one morning, I clicked launch, posted on Instagram, and over a few weeks, a few sales came in. I truly never considered growing my shop beyond that.

I shut down briefly in the summer of 2020, but overall made anywhere from $50-$100 a month that year. My first glimpse of real success came in December.

I decided I wanted to get into stickers, and so I drew and released my Lunar Chronicles character sticker pack in December of 2020. From that product, I made almost $2000 in revenue in a week, which was incredibly exciting! I went from making $50 a month to $2000 in a week.

Maybe this could be a real business! I thought.

So I followed that momentum and I drew and released a Six of Crows sticker pack and Percy Jackson sticker pack in 2021 to similar success, and in 2022 I designed my Night Court graphic tee to much more revenue.

It was exciting, and initially validating. It feels amazing to create artwork and have people want to buy what you created. And while these weren’t life-changing amounts of money, they proved that a successful art shop was possible.

But over the months, a creeping thought began to push to the surface, and by the end of 2022/beginning of 2023, I was more unsure of the trajectory of my shop than ever.

I’d proven that making money with art was possible, but over 3 years, I learned more about copyright law and licensing and realized I couldn’t rely on other people’s IP to keep my business running. My character stickers were popular because the books were popular, and it left me nervous and unsure if I could even sell art or products that people cared about outside of relying on existing IP.

And if I couldn’t sell anything original, how could I make a living as an artist?

Even writing this, I remember the feeling of anxiety and uncertainty I felt in that moment. In the spring of 2023, I decided to counteract this by trying out some new sticker ideas agnostic from any book.

They did ok. I marketed them on Instagram, ran Etsy ads, and pinned them on Pinterest, but I only made a handful of sales over a few months. This didn’t help with my anxiety about being able to create a sustainable art business, which I now fully realized I wanted to do.

But I kept designing these book-agnostic stickers anyway, mainly because I liked them, and in October of 2023, I drew this design.

I didn’t think much of this drawing (this tends to be a trend with me). In fact, I actually thought it wasn’t good and wasn’t going to order any to put up for sale in my shop. But it was nearly Black Friday and I wanted to have something new to share because Etsy likes new listings, and so I ordered the minimum amount possible and put them up for sale anyway.

Black Friday came and went uneventfully. But I woke up a few weeks later on Christmas Eve to 2 sales of this sticker.

Weird. I rarely get 2 sales in a day. I brushed it off.

Another 5 sales came in by the end of the day. Very odd.

Christmas Day arrives and my phone is buzzing consistently. By the end of the day, I had 30 sales. The next day, 50 sales. And this persisted for the next week. All of this Slow Burn sticker.

I was shocked. Before I knew it, I had over 200 in a week and needed to call in my parents to help me package and ship orders.

For the first time ever, an illustration I made outside of a book was taking off, and it was taking off greater than anything I had made before. The thing I was most nervous about was suddenly no longer an issue. I was now fully motivated and inspired. Over the next year, I released another 30 bookish sticker designs that quickly gained traction and started making sales along my Slow Burn sticker.

Just a few of my stickers!

Over a year later, the momentum from my Slow Burn sticker still lasts. My shop is filled with several original designs making sales daily. Not only that, but the success of these stickers then motivated me to apply to markets in my area this year, and to apply to Faire to ship wholesale.

My stickers are in bookstores across the country, I’ll be traveling to events to sell my artwork, and have so many exciting things I can’t even share in the works.

All because of this one sticker.

So what?

The creation process is the process to success. You may not always know where you’re going, but you’re building your road as you go anyway.

3 years ago, I never imagined my Etsy shop would leave me to this. I never pictured that I could be designing stickers or products in this way, but that changed the moment I saw and problem and decided to try.

So try out that random idea you had. Post that artwork. Start that shop, and allow yourself to explore, fail, and try again.

Because even when things seem so uncertain, you never know what doors open up when you allow yourself to knock.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this was helpful 🙂

x Olivia