We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Erika Plum a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Erika, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Yes, I have been able to create a full-time business for myself I would say. While I would say I am still in the humble beginnings of my full-time company, it has been a great blessing to my family and continues to have limitless potential for future growth.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started my business as I think so many have, in the chaos and throws of navigating the covid pandemic. I was one of many who lost their job, so I started to collect unemployment and making my plan to have something put in place for when that stopped. My first approach was in designing and creating vinyl stickers and then selling them on Etsy. I had discovered that there were so many out there and they really were so fun to stick on everything, but I also knew that there was enough room for me to throw my hat in the ring. I was excited to see a small growth in sales with some help from family and friends, and it gave me the start I needed to understand and naviaged the small business marketplace.

I soon started to play around with epoxy resin, simply because I kept seeing other people making things out of it and being a crafty individual I wanted to try it. I made dominoes, key chains, earrings and book page holders to name a few. However my lack of niche items became a very obvious hinderance to my growth. I knew I needed to decide in a direction to go, but I hadn’t figured it out just yet.

Alongside my own journey, my twin sister Shawn Maravel, was re-entering the indie author world after an eight year hiatus. So in a way we were building our careers and our social media presences together. She started to ask me if I could help her with a few things in her writing journey that tied to what I was already doing, illustrating. This is truly where I see my plan started to take shape. I first created a simple illustrated cover for her and her debut novel The River House. Followed closely by things like stickers, bookmarks, signature book plates, and character bookmarks which became newly popular around that time.

So while I was running my Etsy account with what felt like a big of a melting pot of products an designs, I was also catching the eye of other indie authors that knew my sister. And so I slowly made my transition into the “#bookstagram” world of indie author merch. I knew I needed to faze out from my old branding and product lines and clean up my account to focus solely on Indie Authors and their needs ultimately. I am now offering Illustrated covers, and book merch for preorders and marketing materials for indie authors on both social media and my original Etsy shop I created almost four years ago. It is a full-time job that keeps me busy and always learning more each day.

Regarding what I believe I can offer that may set me a part a bit, is my understand of the indie author budget and community as well as my ability to both design and create products from beginning to end. Such as bookmarks or stickers for example. In that sense I can be a bit of a one stop shop. Which I think helps to keep prices reasonable as well as the turn around time over all to be quick. I understand that budgets and time frames are often the biggest concerns for indie authors since they are often paying for everything out of pocket before their books even turn a profit. I take my job as being a part of their marketing journey very seriously because of that fact. A cover can make or break a books success, and high prices can leave little left. While I have to honor my own journey and need to profit and grow, I do my best to accommodate everyone involved the best I can.

I don’t know how I will continue to tweak and adjust my business and what it offers. However, I am really feeling as if I have successfully found my niche and quite literally created a business out of thin air. None of which would even be possible without my incredibly supportive sister, husband and family alike. I truly can’t wait to see how far I can take Custom by Erika Plum in years to come.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

Social media, and more specifically Instagram is where I connect with and create relationships with customers. Since I work with indie authors in the majority, I find we are all on Instagram trying to make it. As I get one customer and they share their products, other authors reach out to me and request work done themselves.

Again, working with my sister Shawn Maravel was the ultimate catalyst to my entrance and existence in the indie author community. From there for me it’s important to maintain loyalty through kindness, understand and supporting one another. I enjoy seeing others succeed as much as I desire to myself. So it’s a lot of fun becoming a part of a community that feels so connected in that sense.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I would say that my residence is always earned and proven in the trenches of dealing with technology. I am not a tech guru and I am always learning new things much like the stereotypical man who dumps out all of the pieces and neglects the instructions. While I do use them. . . sometimes. More often than not it’s through trial and error that I am figuring out things related to technology. Which means I probably take the long way around more often than needed. I also have had issues with printers and my circuit machines that almost had me walking away from everything on more than one occasion.

When I first started my business in March 0f 2020 I started it with buying a circuit dye cutting machine. I fumbled around as I figured out what I could do and how to do it efficiently regarding creating dye cut stickers, but in November of that same year it stopped working. It was having these error messages saying it couldn’t read the cut lines and I was in the throws of my first busy holiday season. After going onto a Facebook group page, I quickly realized I absolutes hate community pages on Facebook haha. No one understood the problem I was having and mostly made me feel really stupid (unfollow). Ultimately I had to make the leap of faith to know I had bigger dreams ahead and I couldn’t give up. So I ran out that night and got a brand new circuit simply so I could get my orders done and I would go from there and address the first machines issue later. . . Well. That brand new circuit did the same thing. I first thought it was that model, that something was wrong with the latest update and effected all of those models. So, I went out and got another one but a bigger better model thinking it would be what I needed, however I was told that I couldn’t exchange the first one I got that day because they weren’t an official circuit location they simply sold the machines. So instead of simply spending a bit more for the newer model I purchased two brand new machines in a single day so I could complete the orders I had and again deal with sorting out the details later. I am not sure why, but it seems I must navigate technology issues the hard way unfortunately. However, even though I wanted to quit many many times I never did. I took the loss in profit and the reason learned as humbling as it was and I moved forward.

Fast forward to maybe a year later and the same thing happened again. I was so frustrated. Everyone else making stickers had never talked about this mysterious issue I was personally having with my circuit. So of course I felt like it was me and something I was doing. As well as some sign that I needed to just walk away from it all together. However at this point I had already made this shift to see how the indie author world of book merch was going to treat me. Had I given up then I would have missed out on discovering that it was exactly where I was meant to be. So I once again scrapped my circuit, and decided to change directions all together and get a Silhouette Cameo instead. I would say my only regret is that I hadn’t done it sooner. Not only have I not had any issues *knocks on wood* but it also allows me to organize my projects and tackle multiple projects at a time. Leaving me feeling like I am truly a fine oiled machine!

I believe this test to my residence and ability to not give up has given me the strength to push past my comfort zones that always kept me caged up in the past. They’re for forcing me to improve and grow. I know I will have moments I want to quit and throw in the towel again, however I believe I can do so a bit more gracefully now going forward. Or so is the hope anyway.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/CustomByErikaPlum?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
• Instagram: @custombyerikaplum
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100067882482803

Image Credits
Took Myself