I work in Marketing in Denver, CO - a very high COL area (below for some example cost). I love marketing D: I have been in marketing for over 10 years. My first outside of college job was doing 5k, 10k, and mud courses for a company in Tulsa, OK. It was so much fun and I have a ton of cool things I got to make - medals, bibs, etc. I also worked retail through college and this first job for quite awhile - at Kmart (RIP). After that we moved to Denver, CO - our apartment literally was getting knocked down on Riverside for a park, and our jobs were closing out. So we moved before they did and worked with our boss at the time to ensure we could get an apartment and get settled. Worked out great.

After that I worked for a roofing company, was also great and a lot of fun, then worked in real estate for like 5 years. After the pandemic I got hired on at an amazing app company where I plan to stay. I think working for small companies or start-ups has been amazingly fun. I love marketing and they type I’ve always kinda done is the everything stuff. I am down from print, digital to planning if office events. I am not afraid to clean up the joint kitchen. I have a blast at my current spot and I hope to continue to grow in marketing. It’s been amazing.

I am happy with my 9 to 5 jobs and I don’t plan to work for myself. I had to during the pandemic and it was awful for me. Now, it might be easier as I discovered I had ADHD during this time and am now medicated, wasn’t then, but I struggle with the social aspect. I got repeating clients, and recommended ones, which is amazing! Such a compliment, but it was hard for me to keep up with those conversations and manage it. I want to keep getting better, getting uncomfortable, learn new things, etc but ideally under a job that doesn’t require a ton of ‘sales’ for me. I’ve done it, I can do it if I have to too, but it’s my least favorite activity.

Then for what I am about, is creating. My why is creating. I am on this earth to make things, anything that I whim. I like to read, do diamond paintings, learn new things, LIVE for watching documentaries(!) and make things. I am married, without children - as planned, and have a bunny. Check out the about page for more on more.

I am located in Denver, CO - a particularly high cost of living area. Rent around here is like average of $1700 >>;; our food bills are about $400 a month for two people. We could probably do better but if we buy more stuff and options for home, we tend to eat out less. Insurance is pretty high, drivers here are crazy and I am sure everything says that, but it’s pretty damn high insurance. I pay around $180 a month for a older car, I own. I have full coverage within a limit, just in case. I have been in a few accidents, all minor fortunately.

Great things about living here are the city is amazing. We never run out of food to try and favorites. The mountains are literally an hour away and if we want, we can drive 30 minutes to just about any nature place and be alone. We have both the state park pass and the national, so we are covered. The weather is great, snow is melted by noon - to the point when we moved here I was like ‘are the streets heated?’ - it’s very convenient. It’s super expensive, but lovely.

I found planning in 2016 and have been in a disc planner since. I bought way to much Happy Planner stuff and I will absolutely die with stickers D: one of my 2024 goals is to incorporate them into journalling more. I love everything about planning. I always have. I was one of those kids who had a student planner that came from Scholastic every year, if you were a teacher kid you might have also gotten these from a parent. They sent freebies to teachers and I was obsessed! Best part of the year. They had various ones, age groups, etc - but that is a key memory for me.

I keep making planners and sharing them cause I keep making them for myself D: I make many things and as long as my inserts are helping someone plan I am happy to post them up.

I use Beaver Builder to build this site. I also used them to build any friend’s and when I freelanced. I 10/10 recommend them. They do cost, so it is an investment. The single option is $99/ a year, and you can go up from there. The way it works is you install it, and it turns WordPress into a drag and drop builder. It has some advance headers, modules, etc. I love it. Worth every penny for me and their customer service is great. The link is an affiliate link if you use decide to buy it via my link.

The rest is just written by me, products are done using Woocommerece - which is a free shop. I have it directly paid into PayPal so I don’t have to keep any information on this site >>; I am not a skilled enough to build a full shop so I recommend this method if you are doing it yourself. Woo is free, but better if you pay. If you plan to sell physical items or take money, I recommend you pay. For digital, it was a pretty easy setup, it emails the products to you - and I don’t collect any secure information as it goes straight to PayPal to pay. I would also recommend them.

I can also suggest for art some good freebie place holders on Pexels.com and you can get free things on creativemarket.com or creativefabrica.com - also great resources for journalling or your own stickers.

Everything is pretty much Beaver Builder though.

I previously used Lucidpress for creating my inserts - however I switched to Canva over the summer of 2023 after they added tables D: I needed tables so it makes things straighter >>; I assure things are better aligned in tables. I now use Canva and provide template URLs with my PDFs and JPEGs - I love Canva. I pay for the full year at a time. I was worried about switching but after I got everything built out in a ADHD hyper focused two weeks, it felt amazing, I decided I loved it. I didn’t hate Canva before that, but I 100% use tables to make things for my inserts. Lining things up in Photoshop or with images is just not easy enough. I can whip out a new insert idea in like 10 minutes in Canva.

TLDR; Canva.com

I have very few sales overall. This is not my job. My job is marketing with a company I love. I make more than enough, this is for fun. I just want to stress that. I work 8 hours+ a day (salaried so varies during busy times) and then do this for funsies during my free time - when I get a chance. Thus it’s updated a lot slower than you would want to if you wanted to make money with selling stickers and your art products full time.

For digital I lost money in 2022 >>; between fees it just didn’t happen. I actually considered closing in it 2023 but instead I cut back the items that didn’t sell, removed any sale 0 items, and added the 2024 stuff. This helped, it made some money in 2024, but profit wise under $100. Part of the reason in 2022 I didn’t make money is I let things auto renew. I stopped that in 2023 and did better as a result of actually paying attention. It looked like this:

For print, I 100% don’t profit if I count the cost of making things I bet, I don’t have the full calculations as I just haven’t put them together. I can tell you I expensed about $1,901.39 of items last year, 2023 - and I didn’t make enough to cover that for sure.

I price my items so I make a profit, so that is how I keep up with it I am making money back. I do math on that. For example I buy keychains from Vograce, singles, with a low quantity count are about 2$ each and I tend to sell them for 6$ so it earns enough for the packaging, shipping to me and from me(boxes, etc), my work, etc. I am pretty content with that. Depends on the size of the product, as some do not make money. For example, paper never makes money for custom designs. At least currently. I haven’t found a vendor that does a good enough job for colored prints to make a profit yet. So if you buy the star paper, leaves, etc those are pretty much at cost for me. Just how it works out, I still am okay with it as I wanted the paper too. Blank paper is an easy one for me, as I have a paper store so I can just go pick some up. It’s also fun to experiment with.

For Redbubble, I haven’t updated that in years, since like 2016 and I sell about $30 of items a year. Insane to me. I really need to update it and its on my list this year >>; I want to do more print on demand items in general I think.

I have a few products that just didn’t sell, such as my notepads, that I am still trying to find a solution for. It’s just how it goes sometime. I wish I had more time to work on marketing items and sharing things on Instagram but its the number one thing I dump when I am busy - I rather relax in my free time then work on the side stuff I am super busy with work or home. It’s not to say i’m not having fun, I have a blast but the hard stuff - listing items, admin, social media, etc tend to fall to the way side if I am busy. It’s easy to make things >>; its harder to tell people about it successfully.

I also make a small amount with ad-sense, like $100 a year small but hey, side money counts.