Casting the Net

Much like a fisherman trying to maximize the surface area when they cast their net into the sea you need to make sure the surface area of your marketing is sufficiently wide. You should be focusing your attention on key platforms that your customers may find you on.

Google: Google has several tools to ensure that you get traffic to your webpage. Google Search Console, Google Merchant Center, and Google Business Profile are all tools at your disposal to make sure you are reaching a wide audience. Check these often if you run your own website as these will give you keen insight into your website’s performance and click-through rates. Also, keep an eye out for validation errors as they may be preventing your site from reaching the maximum number of users. There are usually instructions on how to fix these errors and get your account back in good standing.

Meta Business Suite: Two of the largest Social Media platforms, Instagram and Facebook, are both owned by the same parent company: Meta. Meta has a product that they offer specifically for business to manage their social media called Meta Business Suite. This tool let’s you create posts, schedule them, respond to customers, manage ads, and set target goals. It is a little clunky in some places, especially in the way it handles reels and stories, but it is great for planning out your social media in advance so you don’t have to constantly remember to post every day.

Etsy: A lot of artists use Etsy as their main source of income. For some artists, this works out exceptionally well. The rest of us, who get burned by Etsy’s algorithms and fees, may venture off to create our own websites. That doesn’t mean to write Etsy off completely. Use it as a supplement to your main website. Make sure that your website is optimized so that the Google search results for your business return your personal website above your Etsy, but keep some of your inventory there so that you don’t miss out on that audience altogether. Just make sure to price your products on Etsy such that you cover the cost of the fees.

Of course, there are plenty of other options online for promoting your business. Other search engines, social media platforms, collectives, storefronts, and aggregator sites. The ones above are the largest and the ones you should focus on initially but don’t write off those smaller ones. Again, the wider you cast your net, the more people your product gets in front of, the better your chance of making those sales.

Do you have any tips for getting sales? Tag us with your ideas @bz_furfur and, as always, stay unique.

The post Expanding Your Business Reach Online: Effective Strategies for Growth appeared first on Burning with Purpose.

• Episode 1 – The Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How – In this episode we introduce ourselves, tell you a bit about the podcast, what to expect, and give you an idea if this is a podcast for you.
• Episode 2a and Episode 2b – It’s David and Renee and BZ Furfur – In these two episodes we talk about our respective businesses. How did we get started, what did we love, what were we looking forward to, and what were some of the challenges of starting a business?
• Episode 3 – Our Favorite Pyro Things – Much like the great Frank Sinatra we like to discuss a few of our favorite things. In this episode, we talk about the things that we love about pyrography and wood-burning.
• Episode 4 – Our Least Favorite Pyro Things – In this episode, we spill the tea and talk about things that we dislike about everything pyrography. Everyone loves a little drama.
• Episode 5a and Episode 5b – All About Doing Shows – Another two-parter. In these two episodes, David and Renee and BZ FurFur discuss, respectively, about how we do shows. Tips and tricks, what you need for your first market, and all the things we learned along the way.
• Episode 6 – Custom Orders: Dos, Don’ts, and Definitely Don’ts – Should you or should you not do customer orders? We discuss the pros and cons of doing custom orders, our process, and how we set prices.
• Episode 7 – What Sells and What Doesn’t… Choosing Items – One of the most difficult parts of running a business is finding your customer. In this episode, we talk about who our customers are, what sells for us, and how you can find your “people”.
• Episode 8 – Transporting and Protecting – Transporting products to and from shows and markets can be a challenge. When you are traveling with thousands of dollars worth of product it is imperative you protect your assets. In this episode, we discuss our tips and tricks on how to make sure everything is delivered safely and securely.
• Episode 9 – The Toolkit – We often talk about our toolkits. The necessary items that we travel to and from every show with so that we can MacGuyver our way through any situation. We both discuss what we travel with and what we can’t live without.
• Episode 10 – Pricing Your Work – If you are new to selling your art this is the episode you MUST listen to. We talk about how we set our prices, what things to consider when pricing your work, and how to pay yourself for your time. Also, you learn about the illusive “Spreadsheet”.
• Episode 11 – Fireside Chat – In this episode, we take a break from specific topics and just talk about art, business, and life.
• Episode 12 – How to Stay in Love with Art – It is so easy to become jaded when you are working every day on your art that you can forget why you fell in love with making it in the first place. We discuss what we love about our art and ways to keep that spirit alive.
• Episode 13 – Year in Review – This episode was our retrospective on 2024, what worked for us, what didn’t, who inspired us, and what we are looking forward to in the coming year.

Overall our first season of Pyro Toasty Talks was a huge success. We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback and discussion in our Discord Channel, lots of fans following us on our Instagram, and a steady stream of subscribers on both Apple Podcasts and Spotify. So, catch up on what you may have missed last year, get yourself a T-Shirt, and make sure you subscribe in your podcatcher of choice so that you don’t miss when the new episode drops on March 5th and, as always, stay unique (and toasty).

The post Fueling the Fire for a Second Season appeared first on Burning with Purpose.

Starting out

When we started out we had to get the “lay of the land”. Having never been part of a market we had to first understand what was out there. The best way to do this was to go to some local events, talk to the vendors, see what they are selling, and ask them questions. We started by going to some markets at local breweries and getting a feel for the events; Where do people tend to congregate, do we see an overabundance of products similar to ours, are we seeing no vendors similar to us, and, if so, why. Once we had an idea of what was out there we started to dip our toes in and tried a few local markets.  The results were not always favorable with our booth typically breaking even at best. So we had to start casting a wider net.

Spreading out

In year two we decided to start applying for everything and anything we came across. Pop-ups, Farmers Markets, local events, anyone who would take an application. Pretty soon we were booking up two or three weekends out of the month with shows all over the region, sometimes up to two hours away. The exposure was great but, unfortunately, we learned very quickly that quantity does not always equal quality. There were a lot of shows that just weren’t worth the cost because we weren’t making back our booth fees. There were others that were cheap, and easy to make back our money, but it just isn’t worth the time. Not to mention; the less expensive markets require you to lower your costs such that you are barely able to pay yourself for your work.

Tightening up

In year three we started to narrow our focus. We picked fewer markets with a focus on those that we did well at in previous years and sidelined the ones that didn’t prove profitable or worth our time. For new shows we would be very selective, looking at social media for pictures of previous years to get an idea if the turnout is good and if it passes the “smell test” for our target market.  This worked out well in that we greatly reduced our overall time at markets and, for the ones that we did attend, we made a decent profit. 

From craft to art

This year we started out the year by thinking judiciously about the shows that we would take on, further paring down the list of vendors from previous years, and reaching out early to make sure that we are on the list for the shows that we do want to attend, and putting more focus into getting into art shows and juried shows that bring us closer to the target demographics that we want to reach. The goal now is to move from craft vendor to art vendor. This is a tough transition but, with a solid stable of markets, we can ensure that we can still sell products and pick up commissions while we focus on meeting those long-term goals.

Have you started your planning for 2025? What are some of your suggestions for finding the right market? Tag us @bz_furfur and, as always, stay unique.

The post How to Find the Perfect Market for Selling Your Art appeared first on Burning with Purpose.

OK, so I am going to admit, before last week I had never used Premier Pro. Most of my video editing experience is using iMovie and various web-based video editors. So, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. My observations may appear very basic to anyone who has used Premier Pro
2. The steps I take to do things are undoubtedly suboptimal

With that out of the way let’s see if we can get Premier Pro to help us with one of our biggest pain points: Creating videos for social media.

The Interface

Oh God! When I first loaded up Premier Pro I didn’t know what I was in for. The process to create a new project and import a video is pretty seamless. When I opened it up to start editing, however, my eyes started to bleed. This must be how people who have never used Photoshop feel the first time they open it up. There are so many widgets on the screen I didn’t know where to start. Fortunately, I looked for things that I was familiar with.

Under the video, you have some controls for playing, pausing, etc so I could watch the video. Under the video, also, I could see there was a timeline that had two layers. One for video and one for audio. There were additional empty layers for each as well so I could presume that there was some option to add additional audio, video, and possibly other layers. Clicking on either of these layers I could access a properties pane to the right which allowed me to adjust volume, color saturation, and other properties of the video. So far so good.

Editing

This is where I got stuck and I needed to seek out help online. I wanted to cut certain parts of the video out and splice them together. It wasn’t immediately obvious how I could do this. Turns out the razor blade in the toolbar is for cutting your video. Pausing the video at the point I wanted to cut and clicking the razor blade tool on the timeline (it’ll snap to where the video is paused) splits the video. Then I could do the same for the point where I want the segment to end. I could then select the segment and delete it by hitting the delete key. Simple enough.

Once you cut the video it is going to leave gaps. You can select a segment and move them left or right to line them up again so that they transition from one to the other. The transitions are abrupt, though. So if you are just cutting out some uhs and ums this might be fine, but if you want a seamless transition from two different locales you might want to add some effects.

Effects

Once again, stumped, I had to search for how to add transition effects to my video. In the upper right-hand of the interface, we have a window with library, templates, and effects. There are a bunch of different effects available here but the one I was most interested in was video transitions. I played around with a few of them by dragging and dropping them from this window to the timeline where I wanted the transition to take place. Viola. Personally, I liked the Additive Dissolve.

I played around with a few other effects. I do like that you can do picture-in-picture if you want to do a tutorial where you are showing yourself performing the technique while showing yourself to talk about it. There is a lot to experiment with here.

Adding Text

There is a Text Layer you can add to your timeline as well. If you want to caption your videos, add commentary, or just label transitions you can add text using this tool. When it is added to your layers you can set the duration it will show on your video. Honestly, since we are doing a lot of these videos for social media, the tools provided by most of the social media tools do a pretty good job of letting you add text to your videos so I prefer to just use those. As I get more comfortable with the tools, however, my options may change.

Exporting your video

That’s it. once your video is done you can export it and it’ll be saved in a format that can be uploaded to any of the social media platforms. Fair warning: This processing portion is a system hog. I have a fairly old laptop but it handles most tasks pretty well. My computer was all but unusable for the 5-10 minutes it took to export a video. Unless you have a super powerful machine plan something to so while the video processes.

That’s pretty much it for now for Adobe Premier Pro. I may do a follow up post at some point as I learn more about it but I think it has a place in our toolkit for editing videos and creating content for our socials. If you have tips or tricks for Premier Pro let us know @bz_furfur and, as always, stay unique.

The post Creative Cloud Week 2 – Premier Pro appeared first on Burning with Purpose.

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Tutorials

If you don’t really know where to start with PhotoShop it can be really daunting. It is nice that it comes with some built-in tutorials that familiarize you with some of the finer details. I will say that, having worked with Photoshop previously, and with Gimp, which both rely heavily on layers it was pretty easy to follow along with the lessons. If you are less familiar I don’t know how comfortable you are going to feel with navigating the interface. It does come with sample images so you can follow along with exactly what the teacher is doing, even if you are just clicking exactly where she is clicking, it will help to start developing some of the core muscle memory you are going to need if you are using it every day.

The Tools

All of the typical tools I expected to be a part of Photoshop were present and accounted for. Having switched to Gimp, however, some tools have been added since the last time I used Photoshop that has some quality-of-life improvements. The Frame tool for adding placeholder images, variations on the lasso tool, and history brushes, but the one that I found the most useful was the Object Selection Tool. I am not sure how long this has been a part of Photoshop but, honestly, this tool alone is worth the switch from trusty ole Gimp. What this basically does is, if you select an object in your picture, it highlights the object’s edges and lets you copy them to another layer. What I found so useful, however, was how accurate it was. For every image I worked with it was able to properly identify the edges of the object so I could move them to different layers and change the background.

Layer Effects

A majority of the time I spent exploring Photoshop was spent working with various layer effects. Adding drop shadow to pieces, saturating/desaturating foreground objects to match the background, and adding hue/saturation layers. Now this is not something I worked extensively with in the past so I relied heavily on the tutorials to show me how to use these features, but I was able to get some excellent results after just editing a handful of pictures. By moving the foreground objects to another layer I was able to increase the vibrancy of certain colors while desaturating the background on that same image creating a picture that highlights Zona’s pieces without having to completely remove them from the natural environment that we took the pictures in.

Generative AI

This was a part that I was really interested in because, it’s a big selling point of the latest version of Photoshop, and it is unique to their product. The idea is you can add a layer to your image by describing what you want the layer to be and it will create that for you, giving you a couple of variations to select from. Personally, I found it to be a little hit or miss depending on what I asked for. Granted, some of this might be because I am not an expert at writing prompts. A prompt such as “Modern office with natural lighting” yielded some pretty good results whereas “mancave with rustic look and blank wall” looked more like the hull of a Viking ship than a family’s basement. That being said, I was able to get some nice background to contrast Zona’s pieces and was overall happy with the results.

In Conclusion

Photoshop’s pros outweigh it’s cons. I didn’t run into a lot of the bugs that people warned me about, performance was good, even on my clunky old Macbook Pro, and most of the features worked as expected. I think the generative AI will get better with time and as I spend more time familiarizing myself with the tools and tutorials I’ll surely feel as confident with it as I did with my previous tools. At this point I am confident this will become a part of our workflow. Stay tuned as I am going to start practicing with Illustrator next and I’ll have another update for you next week. Until then stay unique.

The post Creative Cloud Week 1 – Photoshop appeared first on Burning with Purpose.

The Tools

• Adobe Photoshop Week one we’ll be looking at what the latest version of Photoshop has to offer. I haven’t uses Photoshop since version 5.5 and, over the past decade or so, I have primarily used Gimp for my image editing. What I am particularly excited about is it’s generative AI and how that can be used to enhance some of her pieces when preparing them for social media and product shots. We’ll see how the features fare against the free alternatives and other web-based programs like Canva. 
• Adobe Illustrator Week two we’ll be familiarizing ourselves with Illustrator. A big part of what we do is working with vector graphics and we have adopted a wide range of tools for this workflow. Hopefully, Illustrator offers us the ability to streamline this workflow and reduce some of the other tools we have rigged together with rubber bands and paperclips. In the past we’ve used Inkscape for a lot of our vector work and, hopefully, this is a more intuitive / stable tool.
• Adobe Premier Pro This one I am excited about. We don’t really have a great free / cheap video editing tool that we can use for our social media videos. We’ve used iMovie but that isn’t very flexible. Most of the online tools don’t have enough robust options. Fortunately we have a friend who specializes in video editing so we’ll probably be phoning a friend if we get stuck. 

The Extras

• Adobe Stock The membership came with a 30 day trial of Adobe Stock. We’ll definitely be taking a look at what assets are available and how they compare to some of the other asset libraries that we are using. Since this doesn’t come as part of CC we don’t expect we’ll be paying the added monthly fee unless it is head and shoulders over some of the cheaper options available.
• iPhone / iPad apps We’ll definitely take a look at these. I primarily use the computer for any of my editing but I am sure Zona will be giving some pros/cons on the mobile companion apps.

We’re really excited to share the experience of learning these tools with you. Do you have something specific you would like us to focus on while we are learning these tools. Tag us @bz_furfur and, as always, stay unique.

The post Mastering Adobe Creative Cloud appeared first on Burning with Purpose.

Brian: I am thankful for opportunities. This year has been a year of new possibilities: possibilities for the business, for my family, for my job, and for my education. 

The Business: Although the economy was tough this year the business thrived in many other ways. It gave us the chance to look for innovative ways to expand the business into different products and new venues. This year was the inaugural season of our Podcast “Pyro Toasty Talks” with David and Renee. I also had a chance to put some of my IT skills to the test and completely redesigned our website.

Family: We are crossing a threshold as a family as our boys are growing into young men. With college on the horizon, working part-time jobs, driving, and, of course, girls, we are starting to see what life beyond the nuclear family is going to look like. These are bittersweet times, but they are still something I am thankful for as it means that we’ve done our job of preparing them for life beyond the Greig household.

Job: Last year I made the decision to take a job at another employer. This would be my fourth company I’ve worked for in my 20 years in IT. It was a risk and I had to seriously consider the risk and reward. Fortunately it was the right choice and this year I achieved much more at this job than I have at others. Working with people I respect, and who respect me, has made it so much easier for me to start every day and achieve my goals. 

Education: This is a big one for me. This year I started my Masters degree. Over two decades have passed since I got my B.S. and I never thought I would be able to go back to school. Now, here I am, two semesters into my Masters Degree course and I am starting to realize this is something I can achieve. 

And, of course, I am thankful for my wonderful wife, Zona, who has encouraged me to seize these opportunities. Without her support I could very well have let these opportunities slip away and been content with what was ‘safe’. 

Zona: I am thankful for growing my friendships with my online friends / peers by spending time together, in person.  Having moved from NY to NC I don’t have a lot of friends who I can see in person. I have met a lot of people virtually through pyrography, some of whom I’ve met in person, and it is nice to meet people who are close enough that I can meet with them more frequently.

I am thankful for my opportunity to grow as a pyrography artist. By connecting with others who I look up to. It is nice to be able to talk to the people in the industry I consider mentors. They have pushed me out of my comfort zone and empowered me to create things that I, otherwise, didn’t think I could.

I am grateful for my loving husband who pushes me and supports in my dream. Without him I can assure you, I would not be doing this.

This year I sold several pieces that I was very proud of. When I was at my lowest I sold some of those larger pieces which gave me validation. Validation that I am doing what I should be doing.  I am thankful for those customers.

There is a lot for us to be thankful for. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and a great start to the holiday season. What are you thankful for? Tag us @bz_furfur and let us know. And, as always, stay unique.

The post Thankful 2024 appeared first on Burning with Purpose.

The Big Three

There are three things to consider when deciding what to create: What do people want to buy, what are you good at, and what do you love to make. Starting out you may not know the answers to the first two, but you probably have a good idea about what you want to make. So that is where you start. Here’s the rub; the things that you love to make may not sell great initially. You have to test the market with things. The most important thing to remember is that not immediately connecting with your audience isn’t a bad thing. Pay attention to what people are saying they like/don’t like about your work so that when you can start answering that question about “what people want to buy”. Pay attention to which items do sell and consider making more of those.

You also need to try to answer that third question: Things you are good at. There are a few ways to do this. It can be hard to sometimes to have an unbiased critical eye on your own work so seek advice from others. Ask friends and family. Post online to FB groups, Instagram, and Reddit and ask for others’ opinions of your work. Ask people at markets. Sometimes I’ll have two versions of the same piece that is each slightly different and I’ll ask customers which they like better. Be warned; if you post online, be prepared for honest criticism. If you cannot take harsh critiques or aren’t used to receiving negative feedback you should brace yourself when posting your work online because honesty can sometimes be hard to hear and some people can be downright rude.  Just remember that your work is not a reflection of who you are and, with criticism, you can only improve.

Narrowing your scope

Now that you are starting to get to know the big three it is time to start segmenting those into different categories of work. I am going to break these down individually:

• Aspirational Projects These are the things that you love to make and people want to buy but you haven’t mastered the skills yet to create them. For me, these are photo-realistic portraits. I get asked for them all the time, I would love to make them (especially pet portraits) but I don’t feel my skills are there to quite do these pieces justice. I aspire to be good at this and one day I will but, until then, they are out of my wheelhouse.
• Things that make money but can burn you out These are those projects that you have made that everyone loves, you have perfected the skill of creating them, but you just aren’t passionate about doing them. I had a lot of success with coasters early on. I made dozens of coaster sets and, eventually, got sick of them. They sold well so I kept making them but eventually, I got burnt out. So I raised my price on them so, if people really want them, they can still buy them but I don’t find myself making them as frequently which means I am less likely to be frustrated when an order comes in for them.
• Things that you make for yourself There are going to be those things that you make, that you love, and that look fantastic but never seem to sell. This can be because they only suit your particular taste or because they just don’t have the broad appeal of some other things. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do those things. You do what you do because you love it. If these projects bring you joy then make them, hang them up in your house, and share them with your loved ones. Not every piece is going to sell and that is ok. It is about keeping your passion alive and, if you can do that by making the occasional piece for yourself, c’est la vie

The Sweet Spot

Obviously, as time goes on you’ll start to find that sweet spot.  The place where all three converge: Things people what, that you love to make, and that you are good at. Me, when I realized how much people loved my florals, it occurred to me that I found something special. Something that makes me happy, that I have honed my skills at, and that people absolutely adore.  Once you find that, try your best to capitalize on that. Make large statement pieces to draw customers in, make small affordable pieces to get those volume sales, and make mid-size pieces for those people who want some beautiful wall art but can’t afford the big statement piece prices.

Remember, finding that sweet spot isn’t going to happen overnight. It takes time to hone in on each one of these categories. If you listen to our podcast, PyroToastyTalks, you’ve heard Renee and I talk about this in “How to Stay in Love with Your Art”. Take your time, have fun doing it, and make sure you are constantly learning and adapting along the way.  Have you found your sweet spot? Let us know and tag us @bz_furfur and, as always, stay unique.

The post How to Find Your Niche in the World of Art and Pyrography appeared first on Burning with Purpose.

1. Price point: The biggest driver of how your product will be seen is how much it costs. You want to set a price point that will cover your costs and ensure you are compensated adequately. At the same time, you need to make sure that your prices are palatable to your customers. Do some recon; go to markets in the area before your market and see what comparable work is selling for. If similar works are selling for less than what you are charging you need to consider a few things.  Can you afford to lower your price? Are there less expensive pieces that you can make that would better suit this clientele? If neither then maybe this isn’t the right market for you.  Listen to what people say as they browse your booth. If they are commenting on the price (too high / too low) take note of that and see if you can adjust your prices accordingly in the future
2. Display: How you present your work is going to play a major role in how it is perceived to your customer. How do you want people to see your work? Are you going for a craft show, small business, or fine art? If you are trying to appeal to the craft show crowd think of lots of simple, cute, low-price pieces. Display is important but not as important as matching the price point of your customers. Small businesses you should appeal to customers who are looking for quality and value. Having a good variety of products along with some high-ticket items is a good balance. Offer “deals” such as two for one or buy one get one half off. Cross-promote your products and try to upsell.  If you are going to fine art think about fewer, expensive pieces.  Leave the low and medium prices back at the studio and present only your big-ticket items. Invest in good quality displays (pedestals, acroterion). This crowd is looking for quality and isn’t generally thinking about price. So your display should reflect that.
3. Style: When you start out you may have a very specific style of your own. This could be subject matter, technique, color palettes, or detail. It is good to stick to your style as that is what will eventually set you apart from other artists. At the same time think carefully about what customers ask for. Are a lot of your customers asking for pet portraits? Try your hand at them. It may not be your passion but being able to give people what they want can pay the bills while you spend the bulk of your time working on the things you want to work on. As you work on these pieces you may gain new skills as well that you can then incorporate into your pieces. Try not to be too stubborn in what you are willing to create if it means that you are alienating yourself from your customers.
4. Marketing: this is something that is going to change constantly throughout the life of your business.  You may find that your social media posts aren’t getting much traction.  Look at what other people are doing, read up on what the people are saying is trending, and adapt your strategy accordingly.  Maybe Facebook is prioritizing lives or Instagram is promoting reels. Use this to your advantage. If you have money to invest in marketing spend some money on a campaign. Run a contest or a giveaway to increase engagement and gain followers.  The important thing is to try new things until you find something that works. Then, when that thing doesn’t work anymore, try other things until you find something new that works.  Rinse and repeat.

Learn to adapt your business to best suit your customer and you are on your way to being a successful small business. Remember, this doesn’t mean you change your style every time someone suggests something to you. You don’t need to chase trends or try to make everyone happy to be successful. But look for indicators of what is selling, what is working of others, and what you read online, and make adaptations as you go along to better meet people’s needs and wants. Have your own tips? Tag us @bz_furfur and, as always, stay unique.

The post Building a Flexible Art Business: 4 Key Strategies for Success appeared first on Burning with Purpose.