Hello I’m Helen Bradley welcome to this video tutorial and today we're looking at what you need
to know before you start selling on sites like Spoonflower Esty Creative Market and Redbubble so
say for example you're designing patterns and you want to start selling on one or
some of these sites what do you need to know before you do what I am about to do which is open
up photoshop and get started designing well this is the totally wrong thing to do you shouldn't be
opening up photoshop because right now you don't know what you're going to sell
so what you need to do before you start selling is go do your research I know it sounds boring
I know it sounds tedious it's not nearly as much fun as photoshop but you really need to do it so
what you're going to do is you're going to crank up your favorite browser and you're going to go
and look for the information that you need now for example I’m over here at Spoonflower and I do have
a lot of stuff on Spoonflower I like Spoonflower because they have a pretty good help section that
explains to you pretty clearly what they need and Spoonflower is very different to all these other
sites well most of them anyway because Spoonflower wants the pattern swatch so when you upload to
Spoonflower you're not uploading a document like this you're actually uploading the pattern swatch
and from this Spoonflower makes a design that will fill whatever it is that you want to buy
you may want to buy a fat quarter of fabric you may want to buy wallpaper Spoonflowers just going
to keep the repeat going over and over again until it fills the document so it's very different to
the other site so if you're going to design for Spoonflower you need pattern swatches you also
will be able to see here that you're going to be designing in RGB color mode well sRGB color mode
you're also going to be delivering a jpeg or a png with your pattern swatch you want to save it at
your preferred print dimensions and 150 dpi these are critical things that you need to know before
you can even begin to open photoshop now other sites are very different for example Redbubble
actually wants you to upload the document that is going to be used to fill whatever it is that
you're making whether it be an iPhone case or a set of bed sheets so you're designing
something you're going to upload a document that's filled with your pattern or your design
and it's going to be at a size where it could be used for bed sheets or an iPhone case so
you need to think really big on Redbubble so think in terms of uploading a document that is
at least nearly 10 thousand by six thousand pixels in size here their dimensions here
this is going to cover their entire range of products that are offered on Redbubble
so on Redbubble it's not about the pattern swatch it's all about the finished document
and you can read here in the Redbubble help center exactly what you need to have created to be able
to make your products or sell your products here on Redbubble now Esty again is very different Esty
unfortunately does not give a lot of information about what you need to provide so for example
if you're selling scrapbook paper on Esty what I would suggest you do is go and look up scrapbook
paper on Esty and go and find some of their star sellers star sellers are people who are selling
a lot of stuff not only do you get an idea as to what might sell on Esty but you'll also get
an idea as to how you're going to produce those documents there are also some really good ideas
here and this is the one I wanted to show you here is this watercolor stripes I’ve got it open here
what this person did was that they created a single set of watercolor stripes and then they
just recolored it over and over again so they've got a huge number of scrapbook papers pages
in this document but they're all the exact same original design just recolored it's
literally a hue saturation adjustment layer that they've used this is bog simple stuff to create
but they're a bestseller on Esty now they're going to tell you here what they're actually giving you
their jpeg files that's really important they're also going to be RGB files my bet would be that
they are going to be that they're high resolution at 300 dpi they don't have watermarks and each
sheet of paper is 12 by 12. so 12 by 12 at 300 dpi means that these are 3600 by 3600 pixel sheets of
scrapbook paper now if you are unsure as to how to package these up what I would do is go and find a
fairly cheap package from a popular seller go and buy it download it open it up and have a look and
see how they're producing their content what's interesting here on Esty is that this person has
five images for selling their scrapbook paper not just their master image but some additional images
as well learn from what they're telling you about their product because that if you want to sell
on Esty if you want to sell scrapbook paper on Esty that's what you're going to be selling and
let's have a look at creative market now creative market again you're going to have to fish around
to find information out so here I’m looking at graphic patterns and so you could come in here to
these designers here on creative market and have a look and see what it is that they're producing
have a look and see how they're packaging their stuff what documents or what provision
they are doing in terms of giving you the original pattern the swatch or something
that's filled with it whatever so you need to do a whole heap of research before you
get started and I suggest that you gather things together in for example a file so I’ve got a word
file here this is for Spoonflower I’ve made some notes about what sort of things are
uploaded to Spoonflower I’m going to add sRGB to this so that I upload an RGB file I’ve also
copied some of the stuff from their website and I’ve provided for myself that link so if I ever
need to go back to it to refer to it I can so choose the sites that you plan to sell on
do some research determine exactly what it is that you're going to need to produce to upload and also
make some notes about the sorts of things that you might need to provide an intending purchaser
lots of images about your product how you're going to package things together
the more research you do and the clearer you are in terms of what it is that you need to
produce for that site the work that you do inside photoshop is going to go a whole lot more quickly
because you're going to know exactly what it is that you need to produce
the other thing is you might notice that things are easier than you thought for example as I said
this person's got one sheet of scrapbook paper they've recolored it 30 odd times and they've got
a bundle you don't need to overthink this stuff it can be quite simple to produce a set of scrapbook
paper you don't have to design 34 35 original sheets just one and recolor it not everybody is
like this but you'll see quite a few people who are selling stuff like that here's another one
they've just created a plaid design and recolored it over and over again if you want to boost a shop
and get started with quite a bit of product very quickly and easily then this is a way to do it
I hope this information has been of help to you and will streamline the process of getting started
making product to sell on the site that you choose to sell on before we finish up you'll find that I
have more photoshop training at skillshare.com including a lot of pattern making classes
when you sign up for Skillshare you get access to thousands of classes there including over 270
of mine in the description below is a Skillshare coupon for you which is at least as good as the
current Skillshare offer typically mine will be better please feel free to share this coupon with
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until next time my name's Helen Bradley thank you so much for joining me here on my YouTube channel