How much does it take to own a business?

This week I went to pay my business credit card bill and I didn’t have the money to pay it. The rubber hit the road. I’m out of money. To be honest, the rubber would have hit the road sooner if my husband wasn’t supportive and if I had not bought a kiln.

Every year, we put aside around $3200 a year for me to use toward my artwork. It started as a fund to pay tuition for UVU. I would take one class a semester and it was enough to pay the tuition and any art supplies I needed. When we moved to CT, I decided to work on art on my own. (Tuition at the local university here in CT is more than UVU in UT.)

So for the past 4+ years, I’ve been using that $3200 for art supplies, postcards, a PO Box, Adobe Creative Cloud, workshops, retreats, conferences, etc. But this summer, I wanted a kiln. It was June, the $3200 had just arrived and I felt rich. I only needed $1800 of it for the used kiln. I thought, “I just won’t buy as many art supplies until next year when the $3200 becomes available again.” And I didn’t. I was really careful with what I spent my money on.

Then SCBWI opened up registration for the Winter Conference in NYC. I weighed the pros and cons. I decided that writing, illustrating, and publishing books for children was the one thing I wanted to do in life. I asked my husband what he thought, and he said, “Go ahead. We will make it work.”

I did. I had a fabulous time. Somehow we made it work. But I still have this credit card bill with not enough funds to pay it.

As I was going over my bill, I saw there were some recurring charges as well as a few amazon purchases that I was expecting. I decided to do an audit to see how much money I had to spend just to keep the lights on as an illustrator. Here are some of my recurring expenses:

If I didn’t make any money and didn’t buy any art supplies, the cost to keep the lights on equal about what we put aside each year for me to make art. And I don’t include rent in here because I have my studio in our unused dining room. I could claim it on our taxes, but I don’t because I’m still not netting any profit. (See next paragraph)

When I add up what I made as an artist last year. I netted, after taxes—cuz that how they pay me— about $800 at the local 5-6th grade school for an after school art club. I earned about $1125 at the local art center for teaching kids after school. And I was paid $240 by one library to do a workshop. Which means I brought in about $2165. Then I have an online shop. I brought in $471.53 in revenue. Once I take off what the products cost me, the fee I was charged to take a credit card, and shipping that I miscalculated, and sales tax I paid to the state of CT, I probably only netted half of that. (I’m estimating, so it might be even less.) If you look above at the yearly needs for Shopify, you’ll see it costs me $495.12 per year to pay for the shop hosting.

So I had a conversation with my husband. Should I knuckle down and plan a campaign to sell more product? Should I close my shop for most of the year and open it only periodically so I can create FOMO?

The conversation went something like this:

He listened. Then he said, “You have a really small audience of people. The mouth of your funnel isn’t very big. You are trying to milk the same 10 people, trying to get them to buy your merch. You’ve been working on this for awhile now and it’s not got a lot of traction. I think you are great at marketing. I think you need to work on making your funnel bigger. And that means a YouTube channel and TikTok videos. Facebook is a dying platform. You need to find the people who care about what you are doing and that is on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Your one thing that you need to do everyday is video content.”

So, what does that mean for my shop? I asked.

Close it. Close it until your audience is asking where they can buy what you have to offer. Spend the time and energy you have been spending on your shop on video production. Make the videos you enjoy watching. You are already paying for Adobe Creative Cloud. You use Photoshop every day and Creative Cloud gives you access to Premiere. You can eventually have YouTube pay for your Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

What about my Birthday Postcard Club?

It’s bringing a lot of joy to your family and friends. Some people know you are an artist because you have sent them a note on the back of a postcard. It is getting your name out there. It’s probably worth it.

So……., I’ve decided to close my shop and knuckle down on creating video content in an effort to make a larger funnel by increasing my audience.

If there is something in my shop that you have been putting off buying, now is the time to buy it.