❄ How to Sell Art on Wolvden ❄

Selling art on wolvden can sometimes be challenging to navigate given the great amount of variety of styles, types of sales, pricing, formatting, and handling commissions. However, fear not, you're not alone! Here is a step-by-step process for selling your art on Wolvden.

Note: This tutorial includes some sections specifically made for beginners, however this tutorial is made for everyone <3

Table of Contents
❄ Step 1: Finding Your Niche ❄
❄ Step 2: What Type of Art to Sell ❄
❄ Step 3: Presenting Your Shop ❄
❄ Step 4: Pricing Your Work ❄
❄ Step 5: Your TOS ❄
❄ Step 6: The Big NO's of Selling Your Work ❄
❄ Final Step 7: Getting Your Shop Out There ❄
❄ Additional Tips to Improve Your Experience ❄

❄ Step 1: Finding Your Niche ❄

What is a niche?
Before going anything, you should probably decide on a niche. A niche is a type or genre of art, generally pertaining to a specific group.
Some niches include:

❄ Wolves/Canines         
❄ Mechs                         
❄ Humans/Humanoids   
❄ Fandom/Oc related art

Why do you need to find one?
While it's not necessary, having a general niche for what you do can help with advertisements, setting rules, and bringing in commissioners. If you cater to a specific fandom or type of art, you may be more likely to find commissioners by advertising that particular genre.

❄ Step 2: What Type of Art to Sell ❄

On wolvden, just as there are many niches of art to cater to, there are also different types that you can provide such as

❄ Also known as YWH/YCH   
❄ Fullbody/Headshot/Bust       
❄ Character tags                       
❄ Page Dolls                             
❄ Adoptables                             
❄ Pixel Art                                 
❄ Custom Decor                         
All of these different types are common types of art found on Wolvden and are all valid choices for selling art! However, because each type of art is different, here's a small guide pertaining to each type (Seeing as Fullbody/Headshot/Bust is self-explanatory, it will not be covered in this tutorial. Custom decor will also not be covered due to its own level of complexity).

YWH/YCH

YWH/YCH or "Your Wolf Here?" is a type of art which includes creating pre-made bases and coloring/editing them to match the character or wolf design of other peoples artworks. For example, this is a YWH base
This base can be colored to match the markings of another character design or given small modifications to match the form such as this:

Character Tags

Character tags is a type of art that pertains specifically to wolvden/lioden. A tag is the icon a player can set to represent them on their profile page and in forums. Due to wolvdens rules, tag art has a specific dimension parameter of 150x150. A good tip relating to this is to start off with a 300x300 or 600x600 format before scaling it down to the appropriate length, however on some applications this can be challenging. Tags can look in several different ways, for example:

Page Dolls

Page dolls is the term for decoration used to profiles, dens, and forums. These generally consist of a simplified/small image of a character, sometimes animated. This being said, page dolls can be anything and come and several different styles- the only true consistency in their look is typically a transparent background. Example:

Adoptables

Adoptables are a type of art that involves making characters/designs and selling them. Adoptables can include custom species, humans, even items! The only true requirements for an adoptable are that the design is created by you and being sold to someone. Ex:

Pixel Art

Pixel art is, as likely guessed, a type of art that involves using individual pixels. Pixel art can be both complex or simple, entirely determined by the number of pixels in the image. Pixel art is typically quite small for simple-looking work, however they can act as page dolls and tags just as well. Heres is an example and general size guide (Guide found here: https://tips.clip-studio.com/en-us/articles/4969)

❄ Step 3: Presenting Your Shop ❄

Although not necessary, one of the more important steps for selling your work on Wolvden is the presentation of your shop. What do I mean? Well, while scrolling through some shops, you may see some shops that utilize HTML, code that can provide a specific look to your page. While many shops generally skip this step as it can be tedious, a shop with nice HTML can be more inviting for commissioners and shows an initiative to put in additional effort for higher quality.

The Title

The first place presentation starts at, however, is in the title. The title is the most important feature of your shop as the name and look of it is what can ultimately bring additional traffic to your shop. Looking at the shop titles below, you may see a particular eye-catching trend for names

Typically speaking, shops that use emojis with unique colors are the most eye-catching on first glance and are more likely to receive traffic regardless of the type of art or the level that it's at. Human brains are like crows and shiny things except with colors, to keep it simple. So, when creating a title for your shop, using colorful accents as borders may be a good choice (Emoji's can be found here: https://emojipedia.org/). For an added layer of convenience and interest, adding the available number of slots for your shop, the type of art (YWH/Customs/Page dolls/etc), and Capslock words can add additional appeal.

Forum Page Setup

As most sellers know, all shops are located in the forums. One of the greatest features of this is HTML formatting! While it can sometimes be tricky, adding HTML to make your page stand out can not only make it look aesthetically pleasing, it can also feel more welcoming and show the effort you put into your work. Forum pages come in many looks and styles such as these:

Please go support Rua's work <3: Here

Please go support Rayla's work <3 Here
_______________________________________________________
HTML can be as simple or as complicated as you want- it's all dependent on what you're up to. Below are a few simple but effective HTML codes you can use to spiffy up your page (This post is full of them!) Remember to remove any * symbols within the code for it to work. Anything in ( ) means fill in.

For posting images:
<*img src=(Link to the image, must be on an image hosting site like imgur or discord, must have .png at the end)*> [FOR EDITING THE SIZE: "?width=711&height=670" alt="" style="font-size:.875rem;width:50%;" />" remove the two ending quotes, the ? should be on the end of your image url. ONLY MODIFY THE WIDTH AND HEIGHT PARAMETERS]

For Linking Pages:
<*a href=(link)>(Insert words/title/or the link)*>

For making words bold:
<*b>(Words you're bolding)<*/b>

For creating a line break:
<*br>

Lastly, here is the Box setup I use for my own pages. The hex codes can be changed by replacing the hex codes in the html (pretty much anything with #) You can also add or remove the borders, edit the font, or change the word sizing. (this requires a little bit of extra html knowledge. Just fiddle with it, you'll get it <3)
[<*p style="text-align:center;color:#(Hex code);font-family:'(font style)';"*><*span style="background:#(Hex code);border:0px solid #(Hex code);float:left;height:auto;width:90%;margin:1px 30px 10px;padding:15px;"><*span style="font-size:24px;">(insert title)<*span style="font-size:14px;"><*/span><*/span><*/span><*/p>
<*p style="text-align:center;color:#(Hex code);font-family:'(font style)';"><*span style="background:#(Hex code);border:3px solid #(Hex code);float:left;height:auto;width:90%;margin:1px 30px 10px;padding:15px;"><*span style="font-size:18px;">
<*span style="font-size:14px;"><*/span><*/span><*/span><*/p>]

The result looks just like this page!

❄ Step 4: Pricing Your Work ❄

Arguably one of the most difficult things to do when it comes to selling your work is pricing- and rightly so! With so many different art styles, level of art, currencies, and time restrictions, it can be tough to decide what to price your work at.
_______________________________________________________

First things first when it comes to pricing: Conversion rates. Whether you're selling high-quality art, simple art, a specific style- you name it- knowing your conversion rates for currencies and items is the most important thing.

In regards to conversion rates, we currently have one stable rate: Gold Cones to USD (sorry for my non-Americans out there, you may need to use an online converter).

The pricing goes as follows:
1gc = .25 cents
or
4gc= 1 dollar
_______________________________________________________

Now we have our pricing baseline. But when it comes to SC things can become rather tricky as the wolvden market is in a constant fluxation between the two. At the time of creating this, the current rate on the trading market is 1gc = 350sc. That being said, it's okay to choose a rate that does not follow this. For example, if you need more gc, you can raise the cost of sc for your work to encourage gc purchases or vice versa. I personally use a rate of 100sc = 1gc because it makes conversion rates easy to work out and it keeps both pricing methods equal.

Out final conversion rates look like this:
4 gc = $1 USD
1 gc= 350sc (based on the trading market at the time of posting)
$1 USD = 350sc (based on the trading market at the time of posting)

After understanding your conversion rates, the next and probably obvious step is to set your prices. As i said before, this is a huge challenge and can sometimes take a little trial and error, however, here's a few tips that can help with that.

First, ask yourself these questions:
1. What style of art am I providing?
2. How long does it take me to create this type of artwork?
3. How much time availability do I have?
4. How much would I be willing to spend on my own work if I was a buyer?
5. Would I consider my experience level to be novice, intermediate, or experienced?
6. What currency am I willing to accept?

After answering some of these questions, you may have a better need on your requirements for pricing. Generally speaking, the more experienced your work is, the more time it takes to make, and the style you're providing can all raise the price of your work significantly.
For me, I consider my work to be fairly experienced, but I prefer to charge on the cheaper end of things for smaller things such as headshots and tags. Here are my own prices if they help to provide a guide:

The rest is up to you when it comes to your pricing- unless you want to do one of those Pay What You Want deals-

❄ Step 5: Your TOS ❄

While not as commonly used, a TOS can help you to have a smoother commissioning experience and to express the time it may take to receive your work, what rules you use, how many commissions you accept in one batch, etc. For specific sales like auctions, adoptables, and Ychs, your TOS may be longer with additional rules relating to the type of sale you're providing. Below is an example of my own TOS from my art shop.

❄ Step 6: The Big NO's of Selling Your Work ❄

As fun as selling art is, I do have a few BIG no no's for selling your art

❄ This one is obvious, but if it is not yours DO NOT SELL IT. If you commissioned a piece of artwork, this does not mean it's yours to sell, only to own. This applies to using bases as well. Bases are great for designs- that being said, most bases are not allowed for commercial use. If your base lender allows it to be used for commercial use, FOLLOW THEIR TOS.

❄ Never make a promise you can't keep. If you think you can get it done in 1 week, say it'll take two. The last thing you want is to make your commissioners worry. This also applies to the style and quality you can provide. If you can't provide it, don't say you can. It's okay to not be able to provide that service, there will always be other commissioners and that commissioner can always find another artist <3

❄ If you charge your commission fee upfront, DO NOT SPEND ANY OF IT UNTIL THE COMMISSION IS DONE AND APPROVED. Whether you believe you can pay it back or not (should something come up that you need to), don't risk it. Bury it. Just Bury it.

❄ Never delete your receipts for commissions. What I mean by this, is that every time you are sent a gift or trade, you are sent a message by wolvden. DO NOT DELETE THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. If you need to verify you have or haven't been paid, you absolutely need to make sure that you do not delete your receipts, otherwise, you have no proof. Trust me, just don't. This can also be applied to any conversation in PM's relating to commissions, however, after a month or two, these can be deleted to prevent the inbox from clogging.
(Thank you for letting me use you as an example Sabu <3)

❄ If you have been scammed- don't panic or yell at them, be mature. Put in a mod box ticket to see if they can assist you. If they can't, remember to blacklist that user from your commissions'page and potentially even use the lineart/wolf for their piece as a YWH.

❄ Final Step 7: Getting Your Shop Out There ❄

The final step of importance for you is advertising. Regardless of anything in the previous tips above, if you do not advertise, you are going to struggle.

Ways to advertise

❄ The art sales chat box is a great place to advertise. The same tip with the title of your form applies here- add color! Emojis can make your ads far more effective than just text- grab people's attention! 

❄ Adverise on Discords! The more the merrier- anything helps in advertising!

❄ Boost your forum post every day for the casual passerby.

❄ Additional Tips to Improve Your Experience ❄

Additional tips

❄ 1: Create a Commission Tracker
If you're anything like me, you definitely need a place to keep tidy everything that you're doing. You don't want to forget anyone's commission! For mine, I have my categorized by the commissioner, type of commission, price, additional information, status, and time estimate. Linked Here


❄2: Create a Receipt Book
This isn't entirely necessary, but it's definitely nice to have. In order to keep complete track of your commissioners' payments, it might be helpful to create a receipt book like so (The check for me means whether the commission has been completed since I charge prior to starting):

(Thank you again Sabu <3)

❄3: Create a Commission Form on Your Forum Page
While again not necessary, this just helps to keep things orderly. Here's an example from my page: