As you know, I’m a rather lazy sort of fish. I’m a live and let live type who goes with the flow. I also tend to be rather awkward and embarrassed when showing off the fruits of my creative loins.

Yet, not quite a year ago, I opened a Redbubble shop and nobody even held a gun to my head to do it!

Redbubble has been a huge success for me. I don’t necessarily mean sales–although those are super nice, especially since I’ve gotten 178 wonderful emails that say “You’ve made a sale!”…

…But, I mean more in a creative way. I’ve been really good this past year about adding new drawings here and there. Sometimes, I get on a roll and will add several in a week.

Lately, I’ve been drawing strange animals like Quokka…

And yak…

Because I got it into my head to do an alphabet poster with one animal for each letter of the English alphabet. As of now, I’m only one zebra short of a full alphabet.

One zebra short of an alphabet sounds like some sort of disparaging remark implying that someone’s crazy.

Anyway, the point is, having a shop has actually made me more creative, which is a really awesome thing.

Redbubble has been great for a lazy fish like me. They handle the listings, payment, the manufacturing of the products and the shipping of them. All I have to do is draw yaks and collect money.

As much as I love Redbubble, and it has been awesome getting 178 “You’ve made a sale!” emails, I haven’t made all that much. My slice of sales is very small, which is fair since I don’t have to do anything.

My best-selling design, Cerberus, the three-headed dog has only netted me $25.31. And that’s my highest grossing design.

Not that I’m complaining, because I’m not. That’s still $25.31 in free money that I got for a drawing that was just sitting on my hard drive, collecting digital dust, which is really spectacularly cool when you think about it. However, my earnings aren’t even close to enough to quit my day job.

Being a greedy sort of fish, I’d like to make more money. So, in addition to my Redbubble store–which will stay there, churning out stickers and shirts–I just opened a store on Etsy.

Unfortunately, when I signed up at Redbubble, I didn’t give any thought to the name, since I figured I wouldn’t follow through with it. I just mashed my fingers against the keyboard and out popped the utterly insignificant combination of letters, MSTIV. Redbubble won’t let me change my name, so I’m stuck with it.

My Etsy store, similarly insignificantly titled MstivShop, will sell signed and numbered 5 x 7″ prints for now, because that’s all the photographic paper I have. I may add larger sizes down the road, but for now, you can get a signed and numbered print of most of the animals in my Redbubble store for only $15 (plus shipping and maybe tax–I’m not sure how that works yet).

I also spent my Redbubble earnings this month on some business cards for my Redbubble shop with a scanable QR code that I can pop into any orders from Etsy for a double whammy of marketing.

Look at me, all professional and shit. So, go buy your limited edition signed and numbered Mstiv prints and get a Redbubble card for free while they last (which will probably be forever)!

That’s about all the promotion your likely to get out of me. Carry on with your internetting and have a Quokka day.

Anyone have any experience with selling stuff on Etsy? What say you?