Digital Tools for the novice Artist as Entepreneur

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SELL YOUR CRAFTS
Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/how_selling_works.php
An online marketplace for buying and selling all things handmade.
We connect buyers with independent creators and shop owners to find the
very best in handmade, vintage and supplies. Examples: Lightexture,
Liane Tyrell aka Enhabiten.
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PUBLISH A BOOK, CD or DVD
CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/
“Our free online publishing tools and community can help you complete
and sell your DVD or CD. Distribute on Amazon.com, your own website,
and other retailers without setup fees or inventory.”
Blurb: blurb.com
“All the tools you need to make your own photo book, whether you’re
making a personalized wedding album, cookbook, baby book, travel photo
book, or fundraising book.”
Lulu: http://www.lulu.com/publish/
“Tools and services to make publishing simple and the most options to sell
your books.”
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PRINT/FABRICATE YOUR CUSTOM DESIGNS, then SELL THEM
The key advantage of the following companies is that they provide print-
on-demand (or fabricate-on-demand) services. You don’t have to maintain
an inventory of unordered products, and your products can be customized
for your customers.
Spreadshirt: http://www.spreadshirt.com/
Create, buy and sell your own apparel with designs, photos or text.
Zazzle: http://www.zazzle.com/
Create a wide variety of custom objects such as apparel, mugs, and
posters.
CafePress: http://www.cafepress.com/
Create custom apparel, stickers, and mugs
Qoop: http://www.qoop.com/
Publish & sell photos & photo products. 
Shapeways: http://www.shapeways.com/
“Your personal fabrication service, using 3D printing.”
Tenbills: http://www.tenbills.com/
Design & buy T-shirts.
Ceramic glaze decals:
 http://www.decalcraft.com/
  http://www.beldecal.com/custom.cfm
Custom Printed Fabric:
 SpoonFlower: http://www.spoonflower.com
 FabriconDemand: http://www.fabricondemand.com/
 Karmakraft: http://www.karmakraft.com/
Postcards to promote your work:
 1800postcards: http://www.1800postcards.com/
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FREELANCE ELECTRONICALLY
Mechanical Turk: https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome
“Artificial Artificial Intelligence”
Complete simple tasks like transcriptions, categorizations, and spell-
checks to earn small amounts of money.  It doesn’t give you much but it’s
something!
Freelancer: http://www.freelancer.com/
“The world’s largest outsourcing marketplace”
Guru: http://www.guru.com/pro/index.aspx
“Find freelance jobs at the world’s largest online marketplace”
Elance: http://www.elance.com/
“A platform for flexible employment, Elance helps businesses hire and
manage online instead of onsite.”
Clickworker: http://www.clickworker.com/en/
“Work independently, whenever and wherever. All you need is a computer,
Internet access, and interest in writing, translating, researching, or data
processing.”
SwapASkill: http://www.swapaskill.com/
“Swap what you can give or can do for what you need. Get what you want
– do something you’re good at, or give something you don’t need.”
oDesk: http://www.odesk.com/jobs/
Freelancing site for small tasks.
99Designs: http://99designs.com/
Competitive graphic design freelancing.
Fiverr: http://www.fiverr.com/
“The place for people to share things they’re willing to do for $5”
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CROWDFUND YOUR PROJECTS
Crowd funding (sometimes called crowd financing, or crowd sourced
capital) describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people
who network and pool their money together, usually via the Internet, to
support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Crowdfunding
occurs for any variety of purposes, from disaster relief to citizen journalism
to artists seeking support from fans, to political campaigns.[1]
Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com)
“A new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors.”  Upload text
and a video introducing a project you need help funding and see if your
readers like your project enough to donate. Here are some examples of
successful Kickstarter campaigns:
 Punk Mathematics (a book about math)
 Cursed Pirate Girl (a comic book)
 Design for the First World (a design competition)
 Conflict Kitchen (a restaurant)
 Lasersaur (a design for an open-source lasercutter)
 Glif (a tripod stand for the iPhone4)
Indiegogo (http://www.indiegogo.com)
“A collaborative way to fund ideas.” Oriented towards indie films.
The Point (http://www.thepoint.com/)
“Easy and effective group action.” Oriented towards social causes.
Givemeaning (http://www.givemeaning.com/)
Give-or-take fundraising community. Oriented towards social causes.
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ENHANCE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY
Tools for Sharing and Storing…
You can make your workflow much more efficient with better tools to
manage your data. You’ll also never lose your data again.
 Links: http://www.Delicious.com/
 Images: http://www.Flickr.com/
 Videos: http://www.Youtube.com/, http://Vimeo.com/
 Audio: http://Soundcloud.com/
 PDF Documents: http://www.Scribd.com/
 Slideshows: http://www.Slideshare.net
 Files: http://www.Dropbox.com/
 Casual Text: http://piratepad.net/
 Secure Text: Google Documents
Tools for Other Activities:
 Making surveys: http://www.SurveyMonkey.com/
 Arranging meetings: http://www.Doodle.com/
 URL Shorteners: http://goo.gl/, http://j.mp/, http://is.gd/, http://bit.ly/
 More tools: a List of web 2.0 Services.
Staying informed informed with Twitter: http://Twitter.com/
Most of you have Facebook accounts, which embeds the “social graph” —
the network of people you know (or used to know) in real life. Twitter, on
the other hand, embeds the “interest graph” — the network of people
interested in what you’re making, and the network of people and
organizations that are doing things you find interesting. So here’s another
argument for why you might find Twitter to be a good tool for keeping
informed about the latest arts opportunities — and developing a (global)
audience of people interested in your work, even though they may not
know you personally. In the words of Naval Ravikant and Adam Rifkin,
Twitter is:
 Built on one-way following rather than two-way friending
 Organized around shared interests, not personal relationships
 Public by default, not private by default
 Aspirational: not who you were in the past or even who you are, but
who you want to be
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ACCESS A SHOP, MAKE THINGS, LEARN NEW SKILLS
Places to make things:
 http://www.techshop.ws/
 http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces
Real-world places to take workshops in new skills:
 Machine Project (Los Angeles): http://machineproject.com/
 The Public School (Los Angeles): http://all.thepublicschool.org/
 Harvestworks (New York City): http://www.harvestworks.org/
Sites where people share instructions for doing and making things;
 Instructables: http://www.instructables.com/
 Make Projects: http://makeprojects.com/