The Holiday Prep Guide for Artists: Week 2

Make your list. Check it twice. Are you prepped for the biggest shopping weekend of the year? Here’s some advice!

WEEK 2: NOVEMBER 19 – 25

About the Holiday Prep Guide: For five weeks over peak shopping season, we’ll be sharing a weekly schedule, each Saturday, with tips on prepping your Artist Shop for holiday shoppers, capitalizing on our promo schedule, fun creative challenges and insights from fellow Society6 artists. We’re here to help you make the most of this season–how you follow our schedule is totally up to you!

Heading into week two, we’re blending preparation with promotion for the biggest shopping weekend of the year. We’re releasing new promo imagery for your framed art prints as well as giving you the 101 on making extra money with our affiliate program this holiday season! More below!

DAY 1: MONDAY

Design Challenge: Holiday-Themed Throw Pillows

Each week we’ll be running a new Design Challenge to keep your creative skills sharp. Whether you create something new or share an old favorite, we can’t wait to see what you’ve been creating!

This week we’re all about HOLIDAY THROW PILLOWS. 
Think holiday decoration. Help customers spice up their couch, bed or common areas with some holiday-themed throw pillows. Plus, you-know-who always ends up falling asleep on the couch way to early during family get-togethers.

Keeping in your style, submit designs–new or old–that you feel would be a good fit for our Holiday Throw Pillows collection.

Submissions will be considered for inclusion in our Gift Guides that will be used in marketing throughout the holidays. We’ll also be giving away free product to our favorites!

Submit by: Sunday, November 25, 2018

DAY 2: TUESDAY

1-Hour Task

Try Our New Social-Ready Mockups for Framed Art Prints

This week, we released a series of social-ready images to help you highlight your artwork in its “fine art” form–as Framed Art Prints. Really, we wanted to give you the chance to highlight the artwork above all else with these.

These are Photoshop files where you drop in your imagery and resize accordingly. You can choose from different scenes and ratios depending on the shape of your artwork and the platform you’re interested in promoting on. Feel free to edit and share as much as you’d like!

Learn to use the mockups >

PRO TIP: Join our FB group and tell us what you think, what you need or how these can be improved. We’re open to these being workshopped and re-shared for everyone’s benefit!

DAY 3: WEDNESDAY

Earn An Extra 10% On Sales

By joining the Society6 Affiliate Program, you can earn 10% on anything a customer purchases if you send them to Society6. That means, if they buy something from your shop, you can earn up to 20% on your own products. And if a customer chooses to buy something from another artist instead of you, you still earn 10%!

NOTE: Because artists set their own markup on art prints, framed art prints and canvas prints, an affiliate’s commission is calculated on the base price of those products. See the affiliate program page for more details.

Quick tips for affiliates:

• Grab your affiliate link on product pages
• Send customers to a collection of your best sellers
• Send customers to collections featuring other artists

DAY 4: THURSDAY

Thanksgiving in the U.S.

Spend time with family. Eat too much. Fall asleep on couch with drink in hand.

DAY 5: BLACK FRIDAY

Promote, Promote, Promote

This is what we’ve been waiting for! Sale details will be made available mid-week via email and our promo schedule.

Tips:

• Make sure your shop is ready before Black Friday. You want to be able to focus on promoting your artwork and products.
• Make sure you post across all social channels
• Send an email to your email subscribers *if you have a list

Of all the sales all year long, Black Friday kicks off the biggest shopping weekend of the year! The discounts are steep and customers are going to be showing up to Society6.com in droves. Make sure you update your shop beforehand! Review this week and last week’s Holiday Prep Guide for Artists.

DAY 6: SMALL BUSINESS SATURDAY

Promote Yourself AND Others

Whether art is a side hustle, your main hustle or just a hobby, this is a day you get to proclaim your small business-ness. It’s not an easy job being an artist, and neither is running a business–and you’re likely doing both. So are a lot of your creative peers.

In addition to taking the opportunity to thank those who support you, consider highlighting the work of the fellow artists or businesses who have made an impact on you or journey as an artist. Share why they’ve made an impact as well.

Please tag us because we love seeing this stuff, but also use the hashtag #shopsmall. Here’s their official Facebook page.

DAY 7: SUNDAY

Promo Day

While it is the busiest of all the weekends in terms of visitors on Society6, you have some pretty awesome promos to help get customers through the door to your shop.

Spend 10-15 minutes posting to your social channels, then relax.

ALL WEEK LONG: STAY IN THE KNOW

Customers love promotions and we’ll be running lots of ’em starting on Black Friday and beyond. Keep track of the promo schedule in our weekly Artist Heads Up.

If you’d like to workshop your ideas or have questions about how to approach the holidays, please join us in our official Facebook group where artists will be helping each other throughout the holidays! We’ll chime in where we can too!

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