[X] My Assistant

[AuraMasterNeal]

So you've found your hidden talent in spriting, be it banners, recolors, fusions, avatars, or something else, and you want to make a sprite shop, but aren't sure because of all the ultra-popular ones on the first page. Or you have made one, but have gotten little to no requests. If one of the two situations I just stated apply to you, then you have come to the right place! I am the owner of Torch's Banners 'n More, one that has been around for almost two years, and trust me, that second situation really applied to me when I first made it as "Torch's Banner Shop" back in August of '09. Being a veteran in spriting by request, I want to share some tips with those just starting out. So listen closely as I share my secrets to making a successful sprite shop, in no particular order.

1: Hire other workers, even if you think you don't need them.
I know a lot of people just starting out are very egocentric, thinking that they are the best ever and all that, and they think they can handle a shop all by themselves, but I can give you three good advantages to having multiple workers: 1, There is more of a variety of things to choose from; 2, If you get a popular spriter working for you, more people would come in and see what YOU can do as they look for the awesomeness of the other one; and 3, So the thread won't die if something happens to you, such as a virus on your spriting computer, or you going on vacation, or anything of the like. Do you see why you would need workers now?

2: Go the extra mile to make your work stand out.
This is actually more of a spriting tip than a tip for running a shop, but I'll tell you anyway. Let's say you are on the requesting side, and you requested a Shadow Absol at two shops. Shop A is an older shop that has been making sprites for a while, and they gave you this: . Shop B is a newer shop that was only made a week ago, and they made you this: . If you needed another shadow Pokemon done, which shop would you go to? Of course you would go to shop B, because they did scratch work on their sprite, and shop A only did a simple recolor when they made their shadow Absol. Same principle with other kinds of sprites. People would choose an awesome sprite from a new shop over a mediocre sprite from an older shop, so if you go the extra mile with your work, more people will come to your shop. If there are like 20 something shops that do one kind of sprite that you are really good at, however, join one of those shops, don't make your own.
2a: Variety!
When you have a shop, and you do only one thing (Like me starting w/ banners), try to learn how to do something else, too. Especially if you have little to no workers yet, 'cause then you need to account for every kind of sprite in the shop. To explain what I mean, let's say you go into a grocery store and all you find is apples. Sure, it's OK for that time you want to make apple juice, but if you needed bananas, they'd lose your business. The same applies for your sprite shop. You want to sell (metaphorically, of course) not just apples, but bananas, oranges, and pears too, so you can take the business of the place that only sells apples. The only way you could specialize in one kind of spriting is having a lot of workers and having each worker do only one thing. Sprites can turn out better when you specialize, but most people can't, because they don't have enough workers. Still, never make horrid sprites because you want a big variety. In spriting, if you can't have both, you want quality over quantity.
2b: Examples are good
"If people know what they are requesting, they are more inclined to request it." Lotus Flower

3: Advertise!
This is pretty self-explanatory, but there are a few ways you can do this. You can make your own advertising banners/userbars (or have someone else do it), and link them to your shop (if you don't know how to do that the code is

CODE

[url="URL of your shop here"][img] URL of the banner/userbar  (Right click, copy image location) here[/img][/url]

and/or put an "Advertising Banners" post as the second post(Yes, I mean double post) or a spoiler of the same type in your first post (I don't recommend doing this if you plan to use code tags because code tags and spoiler tags don't mix well... trust me). You can also ask people to give credit and link your username to your shop thread in the credit. Finally, you can just have people advertise by word of mouth, although that doesn't work as well.

4: Try to work fast.
This is very simple. A good limit would be about two days or so at the max, preferably faster, but if it's a sprite that takes longer, make a warning, and don't rush. One way to keep from taking two weeks to do someone's because of a very heavy workload would be to have a limited number of requests you can have at a time, preferably no more then 5. I don't personally do slots/queues, but I have seen a lot of others do them, though. A downside to this is that if there are a lot of hard requests in the queue, people may take their business elsewhere, although you could counter this by making it so that more time-consuming requests take up more than 1 slot, so you don't have 5 requests that take half a day to do in a row.

5: Have rules and strikes for breaking them.
Very self-explanatory. "Don't rush me" and "Use the form" are two big ones that you should have. To make it so you have to read the rules to get your request, some people will put "Put an absol in your post, not a " type rule in to prevent people from just seeing the image and getting by w/o reading the rules. Now on to strikes. One way you could have it set up is: "Strike 1: 1-day suspension from the shop. Strike 2: 1 week suspension from the shop. Strike 3: Banned from the shop" or something else along those lines.

6: Choose an interesting name, an interesting font, and an interesting description.
"I mean, would you rather go to "Ice Cream Shop" or "Fluffilicious Dairy" for ice cream? Reference to popular books, TV shows, or just make up a word that sounds nice when you try to sound it out. Avoid naming your shop directly after what you do coughfiahge, like "Avatar Shop" or "Splice Shop". That only makes it seem like you're limited in what you're able to produce, and it veers potential customers straight out of the way." CDB Beck

Closing Words

If you can't or won't do one or two of these, it's fine, I've seen some semi-popular shops survive without one of them. If you have tried all of these and your shop still is ignored, keep trying, work hard, and someday your shop might be as popular as mine... or even Dr. Ock's!

If you think I missed something in this wall of text, feel free to post and say what. It's also fine to post "This is so helpful thanks for making it!" posts, or any other comments in this thread. Thank you for reading this whole thing, too.

This post has been edited by Torch: Mar 9 2012, 07:51 PM

[Shiemi Moriyama]

This is very cool c: Although I'd have to "complain" about #4. What if the thing that was requsted takes a while? What if you follow it, you go fast, and the Sprite is ruined because you rushed?

Some other Things to add, is to add an Optional Strike System, and why you shouldn't have too many slots. Another thing is to check to see if your work is too "Cliche" What I mean is - Let's say you can do Fusions and Recolours, but you see a whole bunch of shops that do them. Instead of "Clogging" the Forum with yet another Recolour and Fusion Shop, don't bother to make one, but ask to be a Woker at one that already exists.

Just some helpful tips to your Tutorial C;

[AuraMasterNeal]

This is very cool c: Although I'd have to "complain" about #4. What if the thing that was requsted takes a while? What if you follow it, you go fast, and the Sprite is ruined because you rushed?

Some other Things to add, is to add an Optional Strike System, and why you shouldn't have too many slots. Another thing is to check to see if your work is too "Cliche" What I mean is - Let's say you can do Fusions and Recolours, but you see a whole bunch of shops that do them. Instead of "Clogging" the Forum with yet another Recolour and Fusion Shop, don't bother to make one, but ask to be a Woker at one that already exists.

Just some helpful tips to your Tutorial C;

This is supposed to be about making one, so that last one is probably not gonna have its own section. Besides that, that is very helpful feedback. Thanks .

[Doctor Octopus]

... Quite honestly, I'm honored to have been mentioned in something like this. ^^; I never thought that the Fusion Factory would ever get as popular as it has. part of the reason why I was so reluctant to close it *sob*
('Course, part of the reason why the Factory got so popular was because, well... nobody else does overworlds, plain and simple. XD I was lucky to find a relatively new idea that caught on so well.)

Another tip you may want to include for any prospective sprite/graphics shop owners would be to expand your repertoire. Say you start out with one thing that you're good at - for me, it was userbars. The Fusion Factory was indeed, at its starting point, solely a userbar shop.
Then you see something else that sparks your interest. Try your hand at doing something like it, and over time, you can perfect it. My overworld animations? Got it as an idea to show off my shinies, and taught myself how to animate from there. There were several bumps in the road as I learned what worked and what definitely did NOT, but after some trial and error and a loooot of practice, I've got it down to a somewhat exact science. XD

Even if you're not that great at it, keep practicing. You'll find little things along the way to make whatever you're working on look better, and settle into a style that is distinctly yours.

This post has been edited by Doctor Octopus: Jun 30 2011, 07:37 PM

[SpiritoftheOcean]

man this stuff is good advice

[AuraMasterNeal]

... Quite honestly, I'm honored to have been mentioned in something like this. ^^; I never thought that the Fusion Factory would ever get as popular as it has. part of the reason why I was so reluctant to close it *sob*
('Course, part of the reason why the Factory got so popular was because, well... nobody else does overworlds, plain and simple. XD I was lucky to find a relatively new idea that caught on so well.)

Another tip you may want to include for any prospective sprite/graphics shop owners would be to expand your repertoire. Say you start out with one thing that you're good at - for me, it was userbars. The Fusion Factory was indeed, at its starting point, solely a userbar shop.
Then you see something else that sparks your interest. Try your hand at doing something like it, and over time, you can perfect it. My overworld animations? Got it as an idea to show off my shinies, and taught myself how to animate from there. There were several bumps in the road as I learned what worked and what definitely did NOT, but after some trial and error and a loooot of practice, I've got it down to a somewhat exact science. XD

Even if you're not that great at it, keep practicing. You'll find little things along the way to make whatever you're working on look better, and settle into a style that is distinctly yours.

That's why I changed my shop name from "Torch's Banner Shop" to "Torch's Banners 'n More", because I learned how to do other things. I'll add it.

[Ailhay]

Thanks this is helpful

[CDB]

This seems like a pretty helpful topic, but it's pretty dead :< CDB here to add some more content~
Eventhoughmyshophasdiedmorethanthreetimescough

+Choose an interesting name, an interesting font, and an interesting description.
I mean, would you rather go to "Ice Cream Shop" or "Fluffilicious Dairy" for ice cream? Reference to popular books, TV shows, or just make up a word that sounds nice when you try to sound it out. Avoid naming your shop directly after what you do coughfiahge, like "Avatar Shop" or "Splice Shop". That only makes it seem like you're limited in what you're able to produce, and it veers potential customers straight out of the way.

+Be nice to your customers. Don't pick on the tiny things.
From what I've seen, the rules that shops love to use continue to change. In the past it was a special phrase, and now it seems that Pokemon icons are popular. I used to do something like that, but when I realized that it only meant more work for me and more work for the customers, I've taken that rule away. If you do have something like this, though, and a customer forgets to put something, just kindly remind them and do their request anyway. If they miss a word or two from your forms, who cares? As long as you understand their request and they understand you, everything's fine.

+Try not to stall out your requests.
I'm pretty sure FiaHGE is infamous for having super long delays and waves of inactivity. Try not to pull things like three-week vacations cough when you have twenty requests to do. I'm sure school, a job, and all those other fun real-life things take up time, lots of time, in fact, but if you're trying to juggle between three essays and an art shop, drop the art shop. Put it on hiatus, and when you have free time again, open it back up.

+Inform your requesters when their requests have been done. Let them rush you if you're stalling.
I know it hurts your pride when people tell you to hurry up, especially since you're doing the work and they're not paying, but snapping back with something like "I'm doing the work, and since you rushed me I'm going to do yours last." will only bring down your reputation and scare away whatever customers you've had. Be nice and say "Thanks for reminding me", and they'll return and say "No prob" and when you give them their request they'll say "Wow, you're awesome."

+Keep your rules to a minimum. Don't write walls of text and expect people to read them.
I've pretty much reduced the rules in FiaHGE to "Don't spam" and "Give credit please." From what I've seen people have started to minimize their rules as well, and that's a good thing. Dangling chains around someone's neck and forcing them to sell their souls to you doesn't do very well these days.

+Don't beg for requests. If no one requests, ask yourself why. Is your work of poor quality? Is it because you put too many rules? Begging people to request is hardly worthwhile, and when you do do their requests it's not because they like your work, it's because they pity you.
It's annoying to see people who have never tried to improve the quality of the work beg for requests and bump their topic to the top while burying the actually decent shops. There's always room for improvement, and if no one likes your work at the moment then read a few tutorials and try a few things out and who knows? Your shop may be the next one to have more than a thousand replies.

+Do something original.
This seems pretty obvious, but people like new things. People like trends and fads. If you think of something that almost no one has done before, and it's a good idea, then it will catch on. It might not even be your own idea; it could be something you saw on another site and thought "wow, this is pretty cool. I wanna try this." As long as you can keep the laymen's interest, your shop won't die.

Wow big wall of text. I might add more, but this is all for now :>

[Lotus Flower]

CBD, i think you'll be proud to know that I spiced up my name (rather than GoddessOfPokemon's Userbar Shop, I put in Goddess's Sky High Userbar Shop) not a big improvement, but still a bit better.

I also completely forgot about the "credit" thing. Everyone knows to nowadays, but I'd hate for my work to be dangling around and people wondering "wow, where does that come from?", and never actually come to my shop

All wonderful advice.

Now to torch's advice:
First of all, those 'shadow absol's' aren't showing up, at all. On any computer or cellular device. Has anyone else had this problem?

Also, Torch, I read your thing many times before even starting a shop. Now that I've done a shop, I find myself realizing that I used most of these things subconciously! I wasn't even looking at the topic, and yet, I found that most of the teachings from this topic were guiding me along...

---
Some other advice (that I'm going to follow shortly)

Make important things bold.
Rules, forms, and other things, should be marked in some way so it doesn't blend into the rest of the text.

Examples are good
If people know what they are requesting, they are more inclined to request it.

This post has been edited by GoddessOfPokemon: Nov 7 2011, 05:10 PM

[CDB]

Oho, not to worry :> I've been here for a while now and the names are always improving

When I first opened a shop it was just called "Cyndaquil's Shop" and as the years went by somehow it evolved into "Fire in a Hole"

The longer you've been here the more liberties you're willing to take :>

[Shiemi Moriyama]

Ohhh Spicy Names, yes. I had a Shop once over on Pokebeach that was called "A Shoppy Shop of Shopperful Shoppness"


Yes.

[Actinium]

My shop is pretty sucessful, and I finally have time to do all my requests! For anyone reading this, if you have a few common skills, try and learn new, less common skills. Pretty much everyone here can do a recolor, or something simple like that, and that's good having the normal stuff, so if your shop is the first thing picked, you'll get to do the recolor. Still, you gotta mix it up, right? Being able to do avatars of many different styles helps, and being able to do something that no one else does is also good. I make Kirbymon, for example. This is just a tip of advice, an it's also good to keep making new things. I'm thinking of changing the shop's name after my requests are done.

[AuraMasterNeal]

I will put some of these ideas that I haven't addressed yet in the main post. Thanks for them!

[Matto]

Thank you, but no one is coming to my shop, any help to attract people to request?

This post has been edited by ProfessorLayton: Mar 26 2012, 01:24 AM

[AuraMasterNeal]

Thank you, but know one is coming to my shop?
Any help to attract people to request?

Make your grammar better?

[Mordecaii]

No one comes to my shop either.

But I think it's because of the 'rainbow genre' art that I tend to add to every single thing I do. Hm. xD

[Yamper]

No one comes to my shop either.

But I think it's because of the 'rainbow genre' art that I tend to add to every single thing I do. Hm. xD

Just took a look at your shop.. you don't actually have any examples to begin with. Most shops have examples so people know what to expect

[Cynclosa88]

Wow! Thanks for the advice! I want to start a shop, can I PM spriters to join my shop? Or what? Can I make the shop now and add workers later?