December 9, 2010
how to sell your shit, by amanda fucking palmer.
subject: how to sell your shit, by amanda fucking palmer.
easy.
1. first, meet a person like beth hommel, who is good at photography, web analysis, dealing with artists, dealing with people, graphic design, photoshop, accounting, record layout, supervising interns to hand-bedazzle underwear, screaming at/making friends with FEDEX/UPS/the US postal service/overseas book printers, and dealing with a boss who’s often more interested in holding a twitter party about how we should refer to our breasts than actually approving merchandise.
her she is, being gawgeous:
then
2. hope she feels like transforming her brooklyn loft into a warehouse for your fucking t-shirts and other shit.
see for yourself…
from this:
to this:
(believe it or not, there is a kayla in this picture, but the boxes are taller than her)
and VOILA!
INSTANT ONLINE MERCHANDISING BUSINESS.
many of you know that beth (@bethofalltrades) has worked – for years, out of new york – as my assistant, doing….well, just about everything from fan outreach and art-book layout, to running my fan-art-based webstore post-war trade and sticking her finger up my nose to prevent me from accidentally making out with her when i got drunk at a show in kansas city on the first tour she was working for me. she’s my hero.
now she’s switching it up: she’s going to be handling & shipping the ENTIRE line of amanda palmer & dresden dolls merchandise and records from her brooklyn digs.
lots of you have been buying stuff online from me for YEARS, and you’ve probably noticed that it all comes from a variety of places….in the old days of the band, brian actually used to mail everything straight from my apartment (we would have CD-burning and mailing parties on my kitchen floor) but as things got bigger, they changed. sometimes it comes from JSR merchandising in new hampshire, sometimes (in the case of the Who Killed Amanda Palmer pre-order) it came from musictoday, sometimes it came from team chaos packing up UkuleleHead stuff at sean’s place in vermont, and oftentimes it came directly from beth…..
there is certainly no perfect system. items get misprinted, people don’t get the emails we send them with a question or update on their order, the mail fails in some way (usually they lose shit, despite paying for effing tracking), and orders can just get generally fucked up.
BUT
the best thing i can hope for is that everybody who orders from us can have a direct line to the people who are helping to create and ship their stuff, and this is what beth & her team in brooklyn are going to be doing. plus, it’s fun to follow her twitter and look at pictures of her girlfriend (@dharma_punx) and cats (who, as far as i know, do not have their own twitter accounts but i may be mistaken).
here are some of these cats i speak of. it’s like “where’s waldo?” but with fuckdorable feline helpers:
in striving to provide that direct contact with all y’all, we’ve fixed something else which is important and ultimately super advantageous for you & us…now, EVERYTHING is under one roof – you can now order a dresden dolls shirt, an amanda palmer DVD, an evelyn evelyn vinyl, a custom-made piece of art from post-war trade, a holiday card from me, a “cabaret” hoodie, or about two-dozen other items without having to give your credit card three times (and pay shipping three times). it’s one-stop punk cabaret shopping, my friends. HOORAH!
SO, here it is, ladies and gents….OUR NEW WEBSTORE, POST-WAR TRADE.
and now, i’m going to hand the rest of this blog over to beth, so she can tell you why this site is awesome.
Hello all-
I am so so glad that the new Post-War Trade is now out in the world. I came into the glorious world of AFP as an unpaid PWT intern about three years ago, never dreaming that one day I’d be running such a huge operation from my loft. It makes me so happy to see that the ordering process has been smooth and that so many of you are digging the new merch! Thanks to all of you who ordered early and helped us work the bugs out.
As Amanda said, Post-War Trade is no longer just an outlet for hand-made merchandise; we’re now THE place to get Amanda, Dresden Dolls, Evelyn Evelyn, and 8ft records merch. It’s been a lot of work but it was important to us to bring the whole operation in-house in the spirit of DIY. @indeciSEAN and I built the site ourselves. When you make a purchase, I’ll be the one making sure it’s packed and mailed with the personal touch that’s always been the trademark of Post-War Trade — with the help of a few rad interns/friends who can be bribed with food, my gorgeous girlfriend @dharma_punx, and a team of elves who always have a smile on their face as they fill your orders.
SEE, IT’S KAYLA (out from behind the boxes and wearing one of the new shirts):
And if they don’t smile? We make them sleep on the roof…and model the clothes. And take photos of it:
Photo by Laura Vogel
Over the years I spent as Amanda’s assistant, I got to meet a lot of you and I learned so much about what sorts of THINGS you want in our merch store. While selling merch on tour, I learned that by not stocking larger sizes, we were disappointing a lot of you, so now every new shirt we add to the store will be available up to size 3X, with some available up to 5X. During the Radiohead pre-order, you told us that you wanted items a la carte, not just in bundles, so the majority of what you see in our new store can be purchased individually. And, perhaps most importantly, you no longer have to pay separate shipping fees to buy merch from four different sites: now it’s all right here.
While I was running the old Post-War Trade, I saw how a little extra effort could go a long way toward making people happy. All of the knowledge and experience weve gathered are shaping the way we run the new Post-War Trade. We
took YOU into account while planning and creating the store, and we’ll continue to keep you in mind while we fulfill your orders and dream up new products.
took YOU into account while planning and creating the store, and we’ll continue to keep you in mind while we fulfill your orders and dream up new products.
This is my full-time gig now, and I feel really fucking lucky that I get to spend my time making merch into an art and getting that art into the hands of people who dig it. I owe you all a lot and I won’t let you down.
In closing, I’d like to share our business philosophy with you. It springs directly from our punk/DIY/independent artist roots, and it’s the standard we at Post-War Trade will hold ourselves to:
Do what you do as well as you can, only offer products that are the highest quality possible, be honest and transparent in the way you do business, apologize when you make mistakes, respect the people who let you do what you do and do as much as you can personally.
People tell us we won’t get rich doing it this, but we can pay our bills and the art is getting out into the world, which is all any of us really need.
‘Till we meet one another via Post-War Trade or beyond, take care of yourselves and know we appreciate your support more than words can express. Whether you’re a fan who’s never purchased anything from us or someone who’s been buying stuff from The Dolls since poor Amanda & Brian were hand-making it themselves on Amanda’s kitchen floor, we thank you from the bottom of all of our hearts.
Love,
Beth
BTW – If any of you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to go HERE on The Shadowbox and post away. And now, pardon me, I have elves to discipline.
and because you can never have enough,
more LOVE,
AFP (& beth and team AFP)
p.s. if you’re an artist & disappointed by the misleading title of this blog, sorry. if you’re actually trying to sell your shit online i recommend you check out/use some of these companies we all love (and oftentimes use for our own wares):
MUSIC (digital distribution)
• bandcamp (so awesome. one-stop shopping for physical product and digital music. all sorts of awesome bells and whistles, plus an amazing group of people working there. if you are a musician and you’re not on bandcamp, stop reading this and fix that now)
note – you don’t need to use more than one of those companies but you should do your research and find out which one is the best fit for you/your band:
• tunecore (a simple and affordable way to get yourself on itunes, amazonmp3, and tons of other places)
• orchard (ditto)
• ioda (ditto)
• CDBaby (ditto)
• IRIS (one more, similar to the last few)
WEBSTORE STOREFRONTS
• big cartel (who we’re using to power postwartrade.com)
• storenvy
• magento
• etsy
SHIRTS & HOODIES (and more)
• threadless (the big daddy of amazing shirts…enter your designs, buy others, etc)
• shirt.woot! (those of you complementing @indeciSEAN on his clever t-shirts should pay closer attention to these dudes)
• teefury
• teetonic
PHOTOGRAPHY
• zenfolio
• smugmug (go to dpexperience.com to save 20% btw)
• mpix
• pictage
• zenfolio
OTHER RESOURCES
• ebay (sell your stuff and buy other people’s…you’d be surprised what you can find on there)
• paypal (accept/send money)
• square (take credit card payments right on your phone – great for merch booths/fleamarkets/cons)
• amazon (yup, you can sell things there as well as blow your whole paycheck)
• kickstarter (a great way to get your project going/fund your crazy idea)
BOOKS/eBOOKS (and more)
• lulu
ART (general)
• artbreak
• artfire
• zazzle
• yessy
additionally, here are some of the people we’ve used recently to print various merch…
• VGkids – stellar people. stellar products. most all of the shirts/posters we’ve done lately have come from VG.
• bellwether – the great folks responsible for some upcoming releases…we found them via murder by death who use them for almost all of their CDs/DVD needs.
• one inch round buttons, buttons, BUTTONS…here are some of the new ones we just had made up for the store:
and last but not least…
• pirates press responsible for the gorgeous evelyn evelyn vinyl.
• furnace – UkuleleHead red & orange vinyl and the forthcoming release of the dresden dolls’ “a is for accident” on limited edition vinyl…REMASTERED!