Richard's Research Blog for Passive Owls

Now, I like to consider myself a pretty patient guy. But I'll be honest, Merch has me a bit frustrated. Shirt 1: Approved. YAY! Shirt 2: Rejected. Damn it... Shirt 3: Rejected. Oh, Son of a Bit... Shirt 4: Approved. yay... I know it takes time and I'm definitely ready for the long haul, but I seem to just hit a rut. No sales, even on RB, Designs aren't even being viewed. My Merch shirts don't even show up in the results... Frustration. I'm trying to move but it feels like my feet are glued to the ground. But that's okay. I hope to keep my happy disposition and desire for money alive by continuing. Because I really want more money. I guess this post is just supposed to be a little bit of catharsis after a week of struggling at getting somewhere. Oh man, I was SOOO excited when I got those three RB sales in a day. I wanna feel like that, excet all the time. I wanna be able to make it rain nickels at the very least. Where do I go from here people?

Hello Everyone, So, my first month was a great big exercise in learning, growing, and designing. I now know GIMP halfway decently. Well, enough to be dangerous I suppose. I tried different strategies, and simply putting in the work to find a way to hack it and make a passive income. Big props to my man Craig Jones. Without him, I would have never even thought of it. Any case, here's my totals for the month from Redbubble: WHOO! To be fair, this is actually better than I expected. I actually sold a design somebody liked. Wow. Let me BREAK IT DOWN for you: Total Revenue: 10.75 Costs:                  3.05 (Costs of my Reddit Ad Campaign ) --------------------------- Profit:                 7.70 For a semi-artistic computer guy from North Texas, that's not a bad start. Not a bad start at all. Having barely touched GIMP in my life, and knowing nothing about shirts, and a little about marketing. Hey Richard. Yes? Where do you go from here? Good question. I&

Okay, so I figured out something really important about my methodology in my Tag Research and Design Case Stud y. Keyword Research tools are of utmost importance, and Google's Keyword Planner is good for only one thing; Suggestions and Search Volume. Don't use GKP for your competition research. If you do, you'll find that it is useless in determining the difficulty for ranking for any particular keyword. It would seem that Paid tools are the way to go, and while there might  be some free tool out there that gives you a good idea of different metrics, I haven't found it. Sure,  some keyword planners let you use the tool for a small number of queries, but in order to be productive, you need full access to the tool. That being said, I think this might be important for a few reasons. First, it will give you an accurate idea of volume. You wanna go for minimum  number of searches on keywords. I'm talking say... 10 to 20 searches a month. Yes! TEN or TWENTY search

This is going to be a short one. Mostly because this wasn't exactly a success. If you read Part 1 , You know that I created a design targeted to appeal to a trending design on Redbubble, and optimized tags using google Keyword Planner and Trends. Well... It didn't go too well. BUT, Failure is a success too. A week has passed and I got exactly Four  views and no sales. What might have went wrong? 1.) People didn't like the design. I have no data on impressions so its hard to say if people saw it. 2.) people didn't see it. My methodology for tags was flawed. 3.) Not enough demand. Just because something is trending doesn't mean people are searching for it on Redbubble. Traffic from elsewhere could have pushed it to the trending category. That's a really important maybe. I'm convinced that I can make this work somehow. I gotta make this work somehow. Next plans: I'm going to put up at least 10 more designs in the coming week. a "buckshot&

So.... Let's talk Reddit. The self-styled Front Page of the Internet. People go there to read about their favorite this or that and for the most part it is pretty fun. I have two accounts there, my primary and my other one specifically for business and such. Been browsing Reddit for almost 3 years now. My Cakeday is in March. In any case, My first foray into shameless self promotion was with one of my Redbubble T-shirts. I found a related subreddit, posted my shirt like I was really interested in it to show other people. And waited. COOL! I GOT 50+ HITS OFF OF IT! The little things excite me. Then... HOLY SH*T! I GOT A G-DDAMN SALE! ... Which may or may not be related to my covert Reddit promotion. Want me to share the design? Just don't rip me off: Despite it all, people saw right through it: Whoops. Busted. So, that wasn't a really good way of getting some good exposure. I'm sure there's a way to get it done, and I'm also sure peopl

So, I'm relatively new to Pinterest, but I have known about it for several years. I think that there is a lot of potential with it, since it is very intimately related with art and style. It is also important to note that 81% of Pinterest users are female. That's really important information to know, because if you know the demographics, you know who you need to target in order to make the platform work the most for you. If one does not, then it will serve to minimize user engagement and conversion rates. Again, That's really good to know. So, now that we know this, what can we do about it? Research the kinds of things that would stand out to a female demographic on Redbubble, and emulate those designs when making you own. I'm not saying you necessarily have to do everything strictly female. By and large, women do have boyfriends, and it's no secret that women can on occasion buy clothes for their guys. However, I think in order to hit the sweet spot, ther