Black Cyber Fronday it's here!...

Yaaaaay!... wait, what? Fron-what? Ok, I'm talking about the sale during this weekend, starting on Black Friday and ending on Cyber Monday. If you are not related to those terms, a brief explanation would be: Black Friday is the shopping day after Thanksgiving Day in United States (which always falls on a Thursday). Cyber Monday is the online counterpart of Black Friday, regarded as a shopping day as well... just through the Internet. Sooooo, with that in mind, I'm running a sale for the whole weekend.

The fore mentioned sale consists in a free bonus print (8"x10") with the purchase of any print through my online store. This, along with a permanent free shipping policy makes for a great opportunity to buy pieces of my artwork. I wanted to blog about this because, aside from the obvious promotion of my online store (greedy me!), I also want to share my experiences managing it. Being this the first year when I count with a store that includes many choices to get it customized (thank you Ecwid!), I wanted to finally jump in and be part of the Black Friday world. Am I expecting a huge crowd of customers? No, not really, due mainly because I'm new. But, as I learned many years ago, I shouldn't wait until I'm fully ready in order to take the next step. Sometimes we just have to jump in, even if haven't completely set up our lifesaver. By the way, this is just an analogy, doooon't jump if you are not wearing your lifesaver :)

So, I mentioned that I have an online store with many many capabilities of being customized. However, there's always that point (or points) that even the most flexible of platforms won't let you achieve. In this particular case, that unreachable point would be my sale offer for this weekend: buy one print get another one free. As far as I could tell, the platform doesn't offer a choice to get a discount of 20%, 30%, 50% or even 100% for the second item. Yes, it has bulk discounts, but those will only work if a customer wants to buy two or more print of the same image. Most likely, any given customer will want the purchased print and the free one to be of two different pin-ups. So, after going around and around, I found a solution that works at an acceptable level (the main reason why I can only offer one free print per transaction). Is this the optimal way? No, but you have to work with what you have and do the best that you can. I'm not blaming Ecwid at all, because I know they are always trying to improve things and hopefully they'll implement that option in the future. I am more than happy with the options their software offer, the rest is up to me.

Not long ago I blogged about doing conventions, how we are  destined to screw up, especially at the beginning. I also pointed out that we shouldn't stop trying, that the important thing is getting started. Well, the same principle applies to sales, at least in my humble opinion. I don't have a dedicated team of experts optimizing my sales, studying the market, promoting my store. It's just me and only me (well, at least for now), but that's is why I love where I am, and the same reason why I can take risks. I am dictator when it comes to ruling my own life :)

So, after you read this, I hope you can visit my store at store.popeyewong.com and look around for a print you would like to own. Or maybe you don't want to purchase anything, but still want to support my work; if that's the case, visit my Patreon page at patreon.com/popeyewongart and consider becoming a patron of my art.

That's all for now. I'll be back soon to blog more about my life, the mess I always bring unto myself and how I get out of it. See ya soon!
~Pops.

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