LITDigitalArt Trends

I used excel spreadsheets a LOT. I was a regional director of performance management operations in a large health care system in the Midwest and an infrastructure program specialist at the Library of Congress. Now I’ve been retired for three years and don’t even have excel on my laptop. Since I use my iPad for everything I have even less use for excel. But I always liked to see outcomes shown in a visual way with graphs and charts. I would hang the displays in my office to highlight progress - or not. And they always got attention. I started my on level be LITDigitalArt shops in 2013. It started with Etsy for commissioned pet portraits and ready made digitalart. Then it expanded to Fine Art America/Pixels, Zazzle, Redbubble, and Amazon Merch. I also have my own website that links everything together. So I decided to track the overall performance of my on line shops. Because I have to report the information for taxes, I decided to figure out my earnings, volumes, and dollars per piece over time from 2013-2018. Unfortunately I can’t create my graphs but it was interesting all the same to see the numbers. I’ve made adjustments to the price charged per custom portrait over time, opened ready made image shops where the percentage of take home is pennies, and used social media to the max to promote my work. I used to have a storefront to display my work but decided the printing and foam board costs far exceeded the benefit. A new iPad and printer also added to the initial expenses but now my operating expenses are essentially my time. It’s been an interesting process and it just goes to show that I like tracking things. I guess it’s in my blood. I’d still like to dump the data in to a spreadsheet!