first $20.
lessons from a sticker drop.
i made stickers. i sold some. i made $20. i learned more than i did from any youtube tutorial.
the plan
my games haven't made any money yet. so i thought — what if i sold something physical first? something cheap, something easy, something fun.
stickers. four designs based on characters from games i've made. printed at home with a sticker printer my mom let me borrow.
i told a few people. some friends ordered. that was the whole sales channel.
the math
- each sticker: $2
- cost to print one: ~$0.40
- shipping in an envelope: $0.73 (lol)
- profit per sticker after shipping: ~$0.87
i sold around 23 stickers. about half were single orders (so each one paid full shipping). after everything: ~$20.
what went wrong
1. shipping ate the margin. i hadn't really thought about shipping. for a single $2 sticker, shipping is almost as much as the sticker. duh.
2. i shipped slowly. a few people waited 5 days because i kept "doing it tomorrow." next time: ship same day or next day. always.
3. my photos were bad. i took them on my desk in bad light. the colors looked off. people who saw them in person bought more than people who just saw the photos.
what went right
people actually liked the designs. the most popular one was the cube character from DASH. (he didn't have a name yet. he does now — see the about page.)
$20 is $20. i'm not joking. that's $20 i didn't have. it covered the domain renewal for a year. and it proved that people will pay something — even a small something — for stuff i make.
what's next
more stickers. better photos. faster shipping. maybe t-shirts later. maybe a "shop" page on this site one day where you can actually click a button and buy. (right now the shop section says "coming soon" because it is. i'm not pretending.)
— glitch.v4