I have been collecting the Masters of the Universe Origins line of action figures. I grew up in the 1980s and loved the original action figures, but wow these Origins figures (released in 2020 and continuing through 2021) are AWESOME. They have more articulation, the price point is great and they display really nicely!
There's a He-Man / Battle Cat set available called BATTLEFIELD WARRIORS. The standard U.S. box packaging looks like this:
For the die-hard collectors, there are other box packaging options available. I live in Canada, so the box packaging has different languages on it:
These Canadian/multi-language variants are more scarce than the regular, U.S.-based Target edition (although the figures look to be the same in both versions).
For the die-hard collector out there, having an alternate version with the box art showing in different languages is pretty nice! Make sure if you are looking on ebay to scan through and see if you can find a multi-language variant—they may be more scarce as a long-term hold.
If you're a digital crafter or a print on demand artist, it can be very time consuming designing your own t-shirts, coffee mugs and apparel. A big time saver is to use professional design elements in your own designs. Creative Fabrica is a company that I have happily used for years to help make my print on demand designs like shirts and fine art prints. Their products are typically SVG files (vectors) and/or PNG (image) files that are pretty high quality (300 dpi).
(This is an affiliate link - if you buy something, I would receive a small commission).
Creative Fabrica is having a big sale from August 13-16, 2021. Here's a video detailing the sale and also walking through a neat font trick that you can use to make designs very quickly!
Having a decent passive income stream or home-based side business is really important. It can be stressful starting out—you aren't sure if your SVG files are correct, you don't know if your Etsy thumbnails are any good and will anyone actually find your digital products in the sea of competition on Etsy? I did a video here on getting started selling digital products on Etsy:
Here's a deep dive walkthrough where I cover how to make the digital files (SVG, EPS, DXF and PNG files) using free software. I also cover how to bundle them up and list them on Etsy.
This video is long but it covers everything to get started. Here are some key points to get you going:
Niche marketing: do some research on Etsy first to see what is selling. You can click on the Etsy store (not an individual listing but the whole store) and see how many sales they have made). It can get a little depressing if you are starting out and you are competing with a store that has 10,000 or more sales. I would recommend making bundles of SVG files and making them high quality and unique. Unique is the key. Crafters don't want more Disney princess files. There are already 5 billion of them on Etsy. But what about a very specific type of niche that kids are into these days? Maybe it's astronauts, or rap music or funny slogans.
Who is your audience: typically the average consumer of digital files on Etsy are crafters. An example is someone who uses a Cricut machine (a machine that makes crafts out of paper and other materials) but they don't know how to make the SVG file themselves. They are not computer savvy. This represents an opportunity for you. If you make a clean-looking bundle of 20 SVG / PNG / DXF / EPS files, with a decent thumbnail, you will make sales.
Getting that first sale: making your first 10 sales is the most difficult part. No one wants to spend $3.00 on a shop that has zero sales. So one strategy is to sell a couple of designs to a family member and have them purchase it through your Etsy shop. Even having 2 sales is infinitely better than having zero sales. You want some legitimacy on your shop and that means having some sales to start.
Custom Requests: having a little blurb on your Etsy shop that says "WE DO CUSTOM REQUESTS!" can really help your shop. One of the best ways to get sales is to do a "one off" design for a client. I do this a lot. The majority of my digital crafting is by request and typically people will request a specific name, slogan, phrase or age. So instead of "Happy Birthday" on a t-shirt, they want a shirt design that says "Happy 60th Birthday Jerry, you old buzzard". Yes you will only sell one design, but you make a sale and (hopefully) get a positive review, and that is what you need more than anything when you are first starting out.
Check out the video for lots more tips and tricks including a walkthrough of how to create a basic SVG file in Inkscape, which is a free vector software tool.
