You can have both of course. Being able to make your art pay for you is a reason to feel proud. I am aware though that money is often not the primary motivator for artists to work with me on Shufflesome designs. However, to me the business model matters with regard to how it influences how artists approach the work.
There are only a few artists who (profitably) make use of the freedom to buy and resell stickers with their art, rather than earning royalties. Where is the difference?
I make roughly the same profit in either case. You can make at least twice as much when you opt to take charge on your own account.
As an artist, i think the first thought should be: Do i want to make this product? It is not your art that is the product, it is the sticker with your art that is the product. To make aware of this question, i am now giving the artist price list to the artists right after they sign-up. I no longer wait until i am eventually asked for it.
I have rephrased my offering online a bit to give people the idea that thinking as a producer is the basic approach to make a choice about commiting to a design. If a design is meaningful to the artist and if he can imagine to actually produce it himself, then my choice will matter less i think. If i am looking for something else in a design, that must not avert you from creating the product.
I want to choose and to invest, but that should be seen as a priviledge that makes things easier for you, but never compromises or substitutes your choice.
This is a workshop. You come in to create and to exhibit, not to exhibit only.
Like the color in your art, i provide several ingredients to make the product. I am your agent/curator too, but i see my role shifting away from choosing and investing in art in favor of letting the artist be the chooser and investor. We'll see if that really happens.
As an artist, you don't have to wait until other people find a way to make your art pay for you. At Etsy.com for example, there are no middlemen between you and the world. You are actually required to be the producer to list your products. The middlemen are increasingly evadable in other realms, too, like in book publishing. In a similar fashion, the Shufflesome workshop can be a place for active creation as an artist-producer.
The trade-off: Collaborations sometimes start out with superficial, loose, rough ideas, little sense of purpose, but then bring out great results. This interactive route is more laborious, maybe also more intuitive, and teaches me that every encounter has to be treated as unique to eventually let something great emerge. This type of work might be suppressed, when artists have in mind that the art they submit requires funding out of their own pocket to create it.
To keep ideas flowing, the sign-up form includes the option "Decide later", to let the business aspects fall in place later during or after the design process.
I believe that the real output of any company are the people, not the products. The Shufflesome workshop is not only a place to get your art produced, but also a place to try yourself out as a producer.
