Read on Twitter
This is a really great post about going viral with real numbers & insightful conclusions
Inspired, I want to share my own going viral experience with rough number estimates in the thread below--because my experience was pretty different & I think shows WHERE you go viral matters https://twitter.com/LuBellWoo/status/1360655865368334339
Inspired, I want to share my own going viral experience with rough number estimates in the thread below--because my experience was pretty different & I think shows WHERE you go viral matters https://twitter.com/LuBellWoo/status/1360655865368334339
In 2016, I posted these two images on Tumblr, which I called the "Magical Art Therapy" series. To my surprise they quickly took off, gathering thousands upon thousands on notes. Right now the two posts have ~45k notes combined, and presumably have been seen by many thousands more
My Tumblr posts are the main place people see these--as far as I know they've never been reposted to a big site like Boing Boing like Lucy's image was.
The Tumblr posts have links to my Redbubble store. I've sold ~1,500 Magical Art Therapy products there since 2016.
The Tumblr posts have links to my Redbubble store. I've sold ~1,500 Magical Art Therapy products there since 2016.
I get about $200/year from Redbubble--the income vs. sales numbers are low because most customers buy cheap stickers and postcards, which net me little on a print-on-demand website. The Tumblr posts drive many of the RB sales--whenever the notes pick up again I see an increase.
It's not a ton of money, but getting an extra $200/year mostly because two viral posts have never stopped circulating on one social media website is cool. But the really cool thing is that is jumpstarted a fanbase for my work, like Lucy talks about at the end of her blog post.
In the first months of those posts circulating, my Tumblr followers grew from a few hundred to a few thousand. Years later I started selling enamel pins and zines based on those designs and made a lot more money--I'm bad at numbers but it's 100s of items & 1000s of dollars.
The pins as a whole outsell everything else I offer online. The zines outsell everything else at cons, where many customers tell me they recognize the images from Tumblr after stumbling across my booth. I think many people who follow & support my work today came from those posts.
Now, I want to discuss conversion rates. In her post Lucy estimates millions of people saw her sailor print resulting in 85 sales. I guess hundreds of thousands have seen the original Magical Art Therapy tumblr posts resulting in 1,500 sales (using RB only bcus it was linked).
Why are my conversion rates so much higher? I think the biggest factor is WHERE my artwork went viral and what type of AUDIENCE saw it! Lucy's artwork went viral on big, general-interest "neat things online" sites like Boing Boing, My Modern Met, and celeb social media accounts.
I think the bulk of the audience for those kind of accounts just want to see cool/interesting/funny viral content. They aren't following because they want to discover indie artists or buy artwork and see those pages as a way to facilitate that. If they happen to, it's incidental
Now, my artwork went viral on Tumblr, which was very arts-focused in its heyday (
). While a wide variety of blogs have shared these posts, they specifically made the rounds and got the biggest boosts on Tumblr blogs that shared artwork and/or themed aesthetic inspiration.
). While a wide variety of blogs have shared these posts, they specifically made the rounds and got the biggest boosts on Tumblr blogs that shared artwork and/or themed aesthetic inspiration.
I think the reason I had a higher conversion rate really rests on the likely-fact that someone who follows, like "Witchcraft Inspiration" Tumblrs is way, way more likely to be looking to buy art that matches the aesthetic they & the blog-runner share than someone who follows...
...big viral content aggregator websites. "Discovering new artists to follow & things to buy" is probably part of the draw for many followers of those types of Tumblrs. It's a much smaller audience, but it's a higher "quality" audience that wanted specifically what I was offering
I hope this thread gives some additional insight into what can happen during the "my artwork went viral" experience. I feel like conventional wisdom in comics circles is that going viral doesn't really help you either financially or audience-growth wise...
based on people having experiences closer to Lucy's, where there artwork (or funny posts) went viral on big pages with broad audiences. But going viral on smaller pages with more art-focused audiences jumpstarted my career! I hope my story provides additional nuance to the convo.
Thank you for sticking my long thread. If you'd like to check out the Magical Art Therapy products I've mentioned...
My RedBubble store (prints, postcards & stickers) is here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/roseberrycomics/shop/?collections=534086
My Gumroad store (zines & enamel pins) is here: https://gumroad.com/roseberrycomix
My RedBubble store (prints, postcards & stickers) is here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/roseberrycomics/shop/?collections=534086
My Gumroad store (zines & enamel pins) is here: https://gumroad.com/roseberrycomix
