Oh hello dear stranger reading. Recently I went to my local flea market to sell my art goods. Here’s how amazing I did– Okay, by the title of this post, I’m sure you can tell I sold nothing. So I’m not going to sit here and play pretend.

 

I did pick up some tidbits of information that I’d like to share though.

 

  1. Keep your expectations low. Why? If you anticipate completely failing to sell a thing, you’ll be surprised if you do sell and happy that you were wrong, and if you’re right– well you won’t feel as bad as a bright-eyed hopeful. This is not to say sabatoge your chances. You should not do that.
  2. Make/have super cheap business cards. I make business cards on the flimsiest business card paper I can find from Wal-Mart. Why? In my experience, business cards rarely translate to clients or sales. They’re an extension of word-of-mouth. So I focus on a nice design but don’t focus on quality cards. Now if you find people treasure your cards, don’t make cheap ones.

 

 

 

I can’t think of any other advice tidbits. So I’ll speak on any other happenings that may have been interesting or stuck out.

I brought watercolor paint to paint with in case I was bored and didn’t bring my phone charger. It wound up being too cold and windy to paint things though. I spent time online on my phone during slower moments.

I spoke a lot to my booth neighbors and learned quite a bit about business, taxes, wholesaling, and we talked about a lot of stuff.

Booth from the back side. The lighting was horrid from the front side.

I probably bought too much homemade lemonade…

Would I do this again?

Yeah, maybe quarterly. The cost of  renting the space was a whopping $14. So expensive, I know. But I did pay an additional $20 in Lyft rides to get to and from there. So all in all, I’d say my expenses were $40(I paid to get up there on Lyft the day before to rent the booth. $10)

I think consistently showing up may increase my chances. However, as I work on the weekends and have to request a weekend day off for this, 3 leads and no sales isn’t quite convincing to come monthly. But I do like to share my work. Plus I got to speak to other local weebs. Always a plus.