My first full year on Spoonflower
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Happy New Year! When I started selling my designs on Spoonflower, I wanted so desperately to be able to see how others were doing it. It can be difficult to get started with something new and stay motivated when you don’t fully understand what’s possible and how quickly you can reach new milestones. But I found people tend to be hesitant about sharing too much detail. They’re happy to generally share how things are going, but are reluctant to share the raw numbers behind everything. And for a brain like mine, the numbers are so helpful in providing context and showing the fluctuations behind long-term success. So I decided I would put my money where my mouth is (sort of literally) and be that person. I’ll be pulling back the curtain on my time on Spoonflower in 2024, with real numbers! For context, this was my first full year on the platform. I began publishing my designs there in October 2023. Before we jump in, I want to share a small disclaimer to my fellow designers on Spoonflower. While I’m going to share my real numbers, remember that everyone’s journey, process, and experience are totally different. Just because my year looked a certain way, doesn’t mean yours should have looked similar. What I really want you to take away from this is the overall thoughts and actions that led to my results throughout the year. Your exact mileage may vary, but I do believe that taking steps generally in the right direction will lead to positive results over time. So with that said, let’s jump into the juicy stuff! My commissions quarter-by-quarterIn 2024, I earned $221.22 in Spoonflower commissions. I created and published over 1,000 designs to my shop this year, ending the year with a total of 1,177 designs. Not all of these designs are completely unique, but include multiple colorways and scales of various designs (I’m not a total robot 🤖). Here’s the quarterly breakdown plus some additional stats— A couple of key observations…1. Sales and commissions experienced a noticeable dip in the middle of the year.This is because I had a bit of a mid-year crisis. I had spent a few months investing time into Spoonflower and felt like the results weren’t happening fast enough and made the assumption that my strategy wasn’t working. So between May and September, I pivoted to other forms of selling and marketing my work. What I didn’t realize was that things were working, they just take some time to build. If I had stayed focused, continued to learn about the platform, and create new designs, I probably would have seen even more growth this year than I did. If you read my previous newsletter on my 2024 year in review, you’ll know that my biggest lesson this year was to focus on one strategy at a time and not jump ship to early, and this dip played a major role in my learning that lesson! 2. Commissions earned peaked significantly in Q4.After learning the lesson above, I spent Q4 fully committed to growing my shop. I was maxing out Spoonflower’s weekly design limits and creating as much as I could. Out of the 1,000 designs I published this year, more than half were published in Q4. I was also taking the time to learn more about how customers shop on the platform, what they were looking for, and how I could get my designs in front of them. I shifted my focus to designing for wallpaper and home decor products and using keywords in my listings that those customers were searching for. I don’t believe my success in Q4 was a coincidence or happened by accident. It was due to the intention and focus I put into doing what I felt were the most important things and cutting out all other noise and distractions. Some additional statsTop-Selling DesignsMy top-selling design in terms of number of products sold was a pink rose floral pattern in a damask style. And my top-selling in terms of commissions earned was an abstract dotted moon pattern, one that I actually created last year. Top-Selling ProductsMy most sold product was fabric by the yard. This was exciting and actually surprising to see. For most designers, especially those new to the platform, customers are wanting to see samples of their designs before they start placing large orders, which leads to sales of a lot of swatches. So it was great to see that my customers felt confident enough in the designs they were seeing to pull the trigger on a larger order. My highest earning product was also fabric by the yard, however it was followed closely by wallpaper and curtain panels, which were only a few dollars behind. This was due to my increased focus on these products in the latter part of the year. I love designing for home decor and these products earn great commissions, so I will continue to focus on that in the year to come! Goals for 2025Taking away my learnings from this year, I will be keeping my focus and goals for 2025 very limited. There are so many things I could do to grow my shop, but if I focus on all of them at once, it will be difficult to make any progress. I created a ton of momentum in 2024 just by focusing on creating and taking the time to research trending themes and what customers are actively searching for. So right now, I have two big goals—
And that’s a wrap for my time on Spoonflower in 2024. I’m going to continue to use this space to share what I’m up to and how things are going. If you’re a Spoonflower designer as well, respond to this email and let me know what your big goals are for the year. Or if you’re reading this on the web, you can send me an email (rachel@showherwork.com). I’d love to hear from you! Until next week, ~Rachel P.S., if you enjoyed this email and know a friend who might be inspired by it too, please forward it along! And if you ARE that friend, subscribe here. |