She's Having Trouble Selling Her Crafts

Dear Papa Bear,

I started making these journals that I call Soul Journals as a hobby at first. It is started to get expensive and I want to continue. I have just recently joined Furaffinity.net and started posting my journals up to adopt out. So far I haven't sold anything. I have plenty of people comment on how they wish they had one. In order to try to gain some support, I have posted up a free giveaway. Simple rules is that they must watch me, comment on a journal and post a journal about the give away on their page. Two weeks have passed and I have only had two hits. So far that is not much of a raffle and I will end up losing money with no support. Now I am trying to figure out other means to get support without sound pushy. Any ideas?

Thanks with all my love,

Ravensylvarii

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Dear Ravensylvarii,

Well, I can tell you that marketing to furries can be very difficult. For instance, I opened up a store of Ask Papabear items with a very nice drawing by my cubby Dan the Bear, and I have not sold anything. My site has gotten very popular, and I have spent hundreds of dollars on it. While I am not writing the advice column to get rich, it would be nice to sell a few things to cover my expenses.

Anyway, I looked at your FA page and your journals are quite beautiful. I do notice, though, that only one of them has furries on it, the rest are all flowers and butterflies. Now, while these are very pretty, perhaps you might do better by creating journals with different furry species on them since that is who you are marketing to. You might also try getting a table at a furcon or two and selling your journals in the dealers’ den.

I would also like to suggest, however, that you don’t restrict yourself to the furry market. I think your journals would have a very broad appeal to many people outside the fandom, especially women and young girls. If I were you, I would gather up a bunch of my journals and take them to local gift shops (not chains like Hallmark, but locally owned stores) and see if I could get some interest there. Also, book shops would probably sell journals like yours.

Too, set up a website (you can get them very cheap now), print up some business cards, and go out and sell!

Take your hobby seriously and I believe you can create a real business out of it. You are making a mistake by restricting yourself to the furry community. Your journals have mass market appeal and are quite beautiful.

Good luck!

Papabear