Life has been so hard lately, I’m going to school which means I’m working less hours and barely scraping by. I have all these art skills and backgrounds in animation and design, a plethora of computer knowledge and I’m pretty crafty. But I cant for the life of me seem to figure out what I should sell. I’ve tried Etsy, with a few paintings, some 3d prints I’ve designed, even a coloring book I made, but alas, I’ve got a total of 2 views and no sales.
Maybe I just don’t know what people want, what would you guys buy online?
This may sound harsh, but the fact that you have to ask is already a barrier. Anyone in the arts making money from their art, is making money because they stand out. With so much easy access to programs that create, there is a surplus of artists and no enough consumers of art.
As for Etsy, they are going to start deprioritizing copycat pieces and getting behind more original content, because their website is flooded. Competition on that platform is about to get harder.
People famously say making money with 3D printing is hard. If you still want to try, then you’ll need to go around and try to solve for issues people haven’t thought to solve and go print those solutions.
If you want to do things like coloring books, your best bet may be to go around to daycares, doctor’s offices and other places children may get bored and ask them if they would want to buy from you. The problem you are facing there is that most little kids today just play on iPads.
Following on this, I ran a successful Etsy store from 2019 to 2025 (I closed because of Trump). Etsy is terrible, and a lot of serious vendors move to their own site, usually via Shopify.
To give an idea, I used to sell a performance prop that was $90. I had to pay between $5 - $15 in shipping and lost about $25 to Etsy fees. At the end of the day, I was getting $60ish