A New Venture

On By Mick CanningIn Art, Painting, shopping, Work in progress, writing

Well, I’m back. My life still seems to be unreasonably hectic, and this coming week it will be especially so, but I’m now officially semi-retired.

And I’ve finished the first draft of A Good Place, which will now rest for a few months until I return to begin the editing process. More about that next time.

And I’ve also begun a new venture. For some time I’ve been meaning to find a better way of selling some of my paintings and hand-painted greetings cards, and have finally got around to putting up a shop on the online store Etsy.

My shop, imaginatively called Mick Canning Artworks (the result of several weeks brainstorming by marketing and focus groups) can be found here: Mick Canning Artworks

chestnuts

I’d be really grateful if as many people as possible could have a look at it, and feed back to me any comments, such as problems they might find with the look of it, thoughts for improvement, etc.

For the moment, I’ve just put up a few paintings and drawings to start with, but over the next few weeks I’ll be adding more items to it on a regular basis.

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The paintings link on the blog side-bar will also lead there.

bihari door

I’ll slowly move across my larger paintings, and the main difference will be that I can sell them for much less, since the commission I pay is a lot less than I did on the other site.

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And I’ll have to paint a lot more greetings cards!

32 thoughts on “A New Venture”

  5. Hi Mick. I had a look at the shop, it seems fine, enough detail, very reasonable prices, and lovely paintings. And the cards look great. However, without wanting to put you off, I think you need to spend time finding ways to get your stuff to be seen/bought. My own venture into ETSY has been quite pathetic. I sold one painting to my niece, one to a friend (they were obviously trying to encourage me), one to a stranger, and a couple more to Greeks who couldn’t pay online because of the capital controls so they had to give me cash and the sale does not appear on the site…I tried reading their handbook, and recommendations, I tried doing some of the things they tell you, such as change the story, add updates, offer free shipping, but to no avail. There are so many shops out there that you get swamped. I can’t be constantly hammering people on my blog or instagram to buy, I hate that. And I can’t spend endless hours per week fiddling about with it. I suggest an Instagram account to back it up, at least there you connect with other artists, find out about competitions, etc.
    Hope this helps. And if you come up with any brilliant strategies, please pass them on!

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    1. Thanks, Marina, for your comments, and sorry it’s taken me a day or two to reply, but you somehow ended up in the spam queue. Yes, getting out there and noticed is the number one problem, much the same as selling books. I agree completely with what you say. Until now, I’ve avoided most social media as it’s all so time-consuming and much of it eats your brain away anyway, but thought I’d start both a Twit account and an Instagram account, and after spending a while working out how to use Twit I’ve launched that, but have yet to work out how to use it properly, then spent a frustrating couple of hours trying to open an Instagram account – frustrating, because I don’t have a smartphone and that appears to be the only way to get an ‘app’ to put up posts. I’m going to have another go today to see if I can get round that.
      Obviously, the blog is a good way to get some attention – I’ve had a lot of click-throughs and that might help. Otherwise, I’ll probably have to walk up and down my high street with a placard round my neck extorting people to visit.

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  6. Excellent news Mick. What an exciting time for you starting a new venture, hope it all works out and you sell shedloads of art online. Writing, painting, poetry, blogging! Where will it all end? Dancing next?

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