We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Allison McKenzie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Allison , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?
We must certainly fumble around in the dark and make mistakes when starting a business. I was raised by two entrepreneurial parents who, from the early 80’s to present day, ran a myriad of small scale businesses (24 hour photo, gas station, convenience store, and tax preparation). They had a lot of knowledge to share with me, but, being in their 60’s at the time, they were drawing a blank on just what one does to be an illustrator selling their art. I had to pull a lot of clues from others who were doing what I wanted in the online space. In it’s hay day, DeviantArt was a site that I frequented and learned various small business strategies and scavenged for ideas. The main thing was commissions.
It was the end of 2009. I was a college student who could barely pay rent and had to work full time while trying (and often failing) to make it to all of my classes and complete homework. In what little time I had, I offered to take several private commissions from various art patrons who enjoyed my style. I whipped up a price guide and crossed my fingers. I had a few bites and dove right in. I recall accepting $25, cash, for a full body, colored character illustration. The client sent the cash in a sweet little thank you card. I remember at the time that was a LOT of money. Several decent meals, for sure. I very much enjoyed illustrating their original character as well- so I decided to leave my commissions open and eke out the time to complete those between my hellish homework load.
Fast forward to 2012, I had dropped out of college and moved back in with my parents. Feeling defeated and rather pathetic, I decided to really take commissions more seriously. At the time I had gotten my post high school job at Big Lots back, and while that was all well and good, it wasn’t what I REALLY wanted to do for the rest of my days. All I ever wanted was to make a living off my art. So, really, you just have to start at some point. Somewhere, anywhere. I hopped on DeviantArt again and made a post with a new price guide- portraits were a hot commodity, so I booked 30 each month for $35 each. I’d draw 1-2 a day after work. My dad, the boomer he is, wasn’t sold on the idea at all. He simply couldn’t conceptualize this as work. Selling digital art? Does not compute. I vividly recall calling him upstairs to take a look at my Paypal account (yes, I stopped asking for money/checks in the mail and made a business account online, ha!) He took one look at the $1,000 I had just made and laughed joyfully. “No shit?” I had finally convinced him. Things really got exciting when I put my final 2 weeks in at work and started doing art all day, every day. I haven’t had a regular job since. That doesn’t mean it has been simple, however. There were plenty of months where I barely paid my bills, panicking at the -$30 in my checking account. Typically, when I’m under immense pressure and the lurking fear of failure rears its head, I figure something out. Selling my collectible action figures and video games to get by. You do what you have to! I sincerely did not want to call it quits and go back to working at a register. I think it takes a lot of stubbornness and, at times, reckless abandon, to make a one-person business work. It’s the unknown and the risk-taking that often leads you to the next step. Which, yea, that’s pretty scary. You’re not on a payroll, you’re not salaried. You’re just a little dude falling from the sky, screaming.
I never really had a guiding hand, merely suggestions from my parents, but they didn’t see my vision completely. I had to look at what my artistic peers online were up to to glean inspiration for my next move. In 2015 I finally decided I’d make an art book. How the absolute hell do you make an art book? Instead of, oh I don’t know, asking people who have made books with a self publishing company, I looked up ‘how to sew books’. I went to Fed Ex with my set up page files, folded everything together, and used an awl and a hammer to make some holes. I had a menagerie of cute embroidery thread and got to work, hunched over for an alarming length of time sewing everything up. I sold these silly little hand made books for $25 (or $30 for a bundle that included additional 4×6 prints). I would do this by taking pre orders first- Just so I could print exactly what I needed, with the money ready to go. I did this for 4 years- with 2 books that I would bring back every year for Christmas. I’d typically sell around 40 copies each. I also took some with me to various conventions and always sold out! To be honest, I think people enjoyed the personal touch. Something endearing about it (perhaps). Though, I think my hand sewn book days are behind me now, but it’s a fun little chapter in my small business history.
From 2009 to current day, I’ve been posting art extremely often, most of which has been commissioned pieces. This ultimately brought more clients my way. I hesitate to say it but I’ve never had to apply for an art gig. Just making my presence and gallery known online on (pretty much every single) social media site, people found me and would reach out. This is how I got my work with Nickelodeon, Disney, Wayforward, Youtube entertainers, and voice actors. I think that’s a PRETTY strong testament to maintaining a visible online presence and sticking with it!!!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
What’s working for me right now is maintaining a handful of social media websites, running a personal shop, as well as an Etsy, running a Patreon, applying/working art booths at conventions, participating in charity fanzines, and accepting private commissions. This keeps me busy and pays the bills.
For more context, running two shops has two purposes. I link to my Ecwid built storefront via Twitter, Facebook, IG, etc. I funnel folks who find me there to my shop directly. What if I have art that nobody knows about, but they are looking for something on Etsy? You are able to utilize hashtag/keywords to apply to your listings- so anyone searching for ‘it’, will find it that way! Then, you pack your business card with the order so they can then keep up with you elsewhere!
To get into a more detailed look into running print/merch shops, there’s the juggling of various suppliers for things you HAVE to have and HAVE to get at the best price to make sure you’re not just paying people to buy your art. Hunting down shipping containers for paper products (stay-flat cardboard mailers being a necessity), stamps.com (or another company), home scale, thermal label printer, and thank you cards/fliers/business cards. There’s plenty of extra touches to consider. I hand write all of my thank you cards, which I also buy in bulk, as it’s cost effective! I also have a heart punch and beautiful scrapbooking paper. I sprinkle those in each package and have dubbed them “paper hugs” (corny, right?) Ideally, you want that personal, thoughtful, human touch. Look at it as though you are sending a gift to a dear friend. Create something with care and sweet details. Sometimes getting something in the mail can completely turn your day around. Think of all the people that buy your art, who pace in front of the mailbox, waiting. Make it perfect and memorable for them!
Circling back to Stamps.com- this is one of several options that make life 10000% easier (they are not paying me to say this- but if you want to…Stamps, call me). I used to waste everyone’s time at the post office when I’d manually have them prep 20+ packages. Trust me, nobody involved had a good time. I remember shipping out my hand sewn art books for Christmas- I was at the post office from 1pm to 5pm. Moronic! Print your postage at home so you can just waltz in and drop your packages off at the counter. (This is turning into a tutorial, sorry).
With Patreon, this can be a massive game changer, if- and only if, you have built up an existing audience off site. You funnel people from Twitter, Facebook, IG, etc by promoting your Patreon. Now, once you’re on Patreon, you have a lot of options. You can offer absolutely nothing, or a variety of things! Either works just fine, honestly. ‘General support’ is commonplace in the art patron world. Most of the time, or at least, more than you might realize, folks just want you to keep making art. They ask for nothing in return but for you to keep doing what you do best. There are also people who love receiving special benefits from supporting you each month. I personally love physical gifts- but this can be a lot of work, so I don’t recommend it to everyone. I offer a package of prints/stickers once every 2 months, and the size of each package depends on the tier. It starts at $5 and ends at $50, with tiers in between. Patreon allows patrons to provide physical mailing information and then you just prep and ship every time your patrons are charged. I think snail mail is exciting and personable. For my higher tiers, I do handwritten cards as well- which can be a nice touch and a way to properly express how much a patrons continued support means to you. I’ve had steadfast patrons since 2014!!! You really get to know folks this way and I think that’s rather beautiful.
Patreon is also a great place to post high res images of your art, behind a paywall or free, as well as photoshop files and process work. I personally like to share my sketches, line art, and color layers so people can see the different layers/steps. I’m less of an art teacher though- so others have found success by supplying their Patron’s with art tutorials as well. All that to say, you have a lot of freedom to curate your Patreon as you see fit. I’ve changed mine up a lot over the years, so it’s not set in stone, which is nice.
With boothing at conventions, you open yourself up to many new patrons and clients! I can say, however, working locally or as close to home as possible yields better results in the end versus traveling across country/out of country. Plenty of people can make great profits far from home, but I personally don’t- so you’re not a failure if you barely broke even at New York City Comic Con. Flights, shipping, booths are just too expensive. Nothing wrong with sticking close to home. It’s not just a big city thing either! I became endearingly entrenched in the Coeur d’Alene Idaho/Spokane WA convention circuit and made tons of friends and good money! I even got a special guest booth since the local paper ran an article about me. Though, now I’m in LA- small fish, big pond? Don’t be intimidated- There are SO many tiny gems in the city, too. I recently got involved with Burbank’s ‘Game Realms’, which is a game shop that hosts all manner of events for locals to enjoy. They offer a one day artist alley for LA artists several times a year and are always looking for new folks to feature. It’s not only a great way to make a little extra cash, but you walk away with a lot of new friends and leads on other local events! Community is something that I think is wildly beneficial for a wide variety of reasons. Putting yourself out there and getting to know others in the same interest groups (gaming, anime, cosplay, etc) is such a panacea for the soul. Don’t get caught up in the biggest cons in the country. Sometimes those will be your worst shows.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Social media is pretty pivotal to making it as a freelance artist and small business owner. I began making my presence known in 2005 while I was still in high school. I hadn’t begun ‘working’ yet, but just existing in the art space and learning my way around was impactful enough. Seeing how older artists were succeeding online was something that stuck with me.
I had mentioned earlier that I was a college dropout. Just to get it out of the way real quick- no, you don’t need a degree to do freelance art or run a small business, so don’t get too stuck on the idea. It’s an expensive regret…
Anyway, several months after leaving college, my peers who initially gave me grief for quitting were mysteriously in my DMs, asking how I’m making it work. Turns out, college spread them pretty thin and they weren’t able to find jobs immediately after graduating. “How are you getting commissions??? I want them too!” So, I told them exactly what I did. Not surprisingly, they didn’t really like my answer. I explained that they needed to make an account on several sites and post often. If you can’t post every day, post a few times a week. Keep your pages active, make your contact info available, and make a price guide that is readily available and easy to find. You also need some sort of consistency. If you post all your college homework, nobody is going to understand what it is you do. I suggest making examples for portraits, half body, and full body illustrations with varying degrees of detail or backdrops! People need to know exactly what they are paying for.
I also warned that doing this can take up to 2+ years before you see steady results (aka: booking out an entire month), less if you’re exceedingly lucky. Well, they replied, only wanted to know how to get a bunch of commissions immediately. Is there an easier way?” Not really. Or at least, not that I’ve found. I’d say if you’re that desperate to book some projects, ask friends and family- and have friends and family ask their friends- someone usually needs a dog portrait! I suppose there may be some hashtags for #commissionsopen but those get flooded with competition quickly. Worth a shot I suppose? Never say never, but ideally you want to grow your own little community online, and that just takes time!
I recently started over on a new Twitter, IG, and Tumblr because I wanted to try a new style/subject (and also, hyper focus on a niche fandom), and ultimately, a big shift like this will totally alienate your current audience, so wield this gently! It took about, surprise, two years to get a steady flow of commissions on my new alts! I had to put in the time, make my style known, make friends, and participate in the fandoms community- over time, it all started to work itself out! Problem is, now I run way too many pages, oops. That’s a challenge you do not have to partake in, I’m just a freak and Red Bull is my power.
Unfortunately, social media moves fast. You can’t really get away with posting once every 6 months and still make it happen. The feed is bustling all day every day, so even if you post the same art, you’ve got to keep this thing alive and breathing. Luckily a lot of social media sites offer scheduled posting so you can set it up in advance! I don’t want to echo the sentiment that ‘it’s the algorithm’, when it realistically a variety of things, but the algo certainly doesn’t help. That and social media demands change on an almost yearly basis. I for one am falling way behind when it comes to IG because I am not interested in making reels. Well, reels are what gets tossed into the recommended feed. Tik Tok is another place artists are thriving. If videos are your thing, you’re in luck- that’s what the internet wants right now. Overall, never get too comfy and don’t put all your eggs in one (social media) basket, because it WILL change.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I think one of the hardest things was having a dream, achieving it, and then not knowing what to do with my life. The other was placing a lot of pressure on myself to be a worthwhile human and someone my parents could be proud of. I also wrestle with the fact that I’m a very independent person and I struggle working under people. I think it’s because I’m so damn opinionated and I know what I want. I tried a few gigs working on a team for a studio and it was miserable! Others absolutely thrive in those environments. My best advice is to try everything. That’s the only way you’ll know exactly what you need and what you want. You may have to mourn the loss of a dream when you realize it ultimately wasn’t fulfilling in the way you had hoped.
The other issue is our mortal coils getting in the way of our ambitions. I was sick for 10 years. I somehow pushed through, focusing on my work- as it felt like my only purpose (and still does, if I’m being honest). I experienced a lot of physical pain that made doing conventions really hard. Depression keeping me from creating. An eating disorder that sapped my strength. These were monumental challenges that, at the time, threatened my ability to provide for myself, which led to becoming a (self perceived) burden on my family. I think my gasoline at the time was my parents. They got so sick- and being on deaths door myself was a wake up call. I had a choice to get help, where my mom couldn’t make her cancer go away. I ultimately chose to live for them- and to live meant to draw. It’s my greatest power. To take control and create was the only way I got through my worst days.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://allimackart.ecwid.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allison_mckenzie_art/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skirtzzz
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/allimackart
- Other: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/allimackart Newgrounds: https://allimack.newgrounds.com/ Tumblr: https://allisonmckenzieart.tumblr.com/