Looking for suggestions from experienced traditional and digital fiverr artists and alike

[luisa_sa]

Hello Fiverr forum, it's me once again looking for useful suggestions from successful Fiverr artists (or anyone with some experience willing to help).

Since the last time I asked for help here on the Fiverr forum, I think I've quite improved my gig: short and clear description of my services, basic gig with affordable price and gig extras. I've even uploaded a short video of me drawing thinking that the gig would be more appealing. I've done all of this and yet received only two orders totally. Well, I've been contacted a few times by people but they ghosted me as soon as they knew that shipping the original drawing would cost them quite a lot.

(Okay, this topic looks more like a rant than anything else, I'm sorry for that)

Anyways, here's the link to my gig: Draw realistic color pencil portraits sketches by hand by Luisa_sa | Fiverr

If you could give any piece of advice, I would really appreciate it.

P.S: at this point I'm even thinking to create a new gig for digital hand-drawn portraits even though I haven't got much material (just two drawings and maybe a clip). Thank you for reading this far 🙏.

[mariashtelle1]

Okie dokie, I love realistic drawing style and you are good at it 👍 

In general your gig looks good and I like the video, that adds authenticity that you are drawing it. 
 

BUT as an artist I can tell you that selling portraits is not an easy job. I’ve been selling portraits for some time but dropped that at some point. 
You need to understand the needs of a client m, it’s not only about you offering quality portraits it’s about how your clients can use them, it about the end product. Yes, you are showing scanned versions (though I would recommend to switch to digital all together- see my point below), but how the client will use it? Users like simple solutions so you need to explain to them for example that a scanned version you can print on this and that size as a gift, or just use a Joel file that you send, which also is not ideal because no one will gift a portrait as a picture from phone to phone. It might work if person orders for themselves but that’s also pretty rare. 
 

I would also advise you to switch to digital drawings, because there are revisions and with drawing on paper it will be pretty tough, plus scanning also is not the best if your clients need to print it later on (keep in mind that if you are adding some colour to it, it might print in a different colour from what you scanned, so you also need to understand cmyk and rgb versions) 

 

[luisa_sa]

First of all, I'm really glad you answered, thank you! 

55 minutes ago, mariashtelle1 said:

You need to understand the needs of a client m, it’s not only about you offering quality portraits it’s about how your clients can use them, it about the end product. Yes, you are showing scanned versions (though I would recommend to switch to digital all together- see my point below), but how the client will use it? Users like simple solutions so you need to explain to them for example that a scanned version you can print on this and that size as a gift, or just use a Joel file that you send, which also is not ideal because no one will gift a portrait as a picture from phone to phone. It might work if person orders for themselves but that’s also pretty rare. 

Yes, I see your point: users need to be told (or at least suggested) what they can do with a digitalised drawing; but then, again, a small percentage of people would actually have it printed for themselves, which is an extra cost as well. 

58 minutes ago, mariashtelle1 said:

I would also advise you to switch to digital drawings, because there are revisions and with drawing on paper it will be pretty tough, plus scanning also is not the best if your clients need to print it later on (keep in mind that if you are adding some colour to it, it might print in a different colour from what you scanned, so you also need to understand cmyk and rgb versions) 

Yes, I've been thinking to switch (at least here on fiverr) to digital drawings. Speaking about that, I use Autodesk Sketchbook on my ipad air 3, do you think that it's fine with exporting files and such? Once again, thank you for taking time to write me!