#tt talks drawing

[taylor-titmouse]

hey i want to talk about how you should be promoting your work as an erotic author/illustrator

i'm writing this up because the marketing aspect of my work as an erotic author/illustrator is a science to me, and also because i'm the guy who gets unreasonably annoyed when i see other creators not properly advertising their work. you presumably want to make money off your work. this post will be written under the assumption you want to make money off your work but are doing a bad job at it. it will be very confrontational. if you read this and feel attacked you're right and i am attacking you.

this is geared toward selling erotic comics/writing/books/art as products. i will probably write more than one post about this subject so if i didn't touch on something you want to know more about, comment/send me an ask and i'll keep it in mind for the next one.

i will start with my first and least specific but most important point:

DON'T GET FUCKING CUTE

hi are you paying attention. i'm gripping you by the sides of your face. do not get fucking cute with what you are trying to sell. you are not a big enough property to get cute, nobody LIKES it when big properties get cute, and you are selling porn. you have to own this. you have to be up front about this. don't be tongue in cheek, don't be all teehee i wonder what this could be~, don't be secretive. you are selling a product. you have to fucking act like it. you are an adult selling pornography to other adults. i am GRIPPING your HEAD you NEED to understand this.

and to be clear when i say 'cute' i mean coy. i don't mean cutesy, as in the aesthetic. you can be as hello kitty pastel ten emojis a post uwu as you like when you're building your audience and generating hype. but when you start trying to sell, don't be vague, don't be sarcastic, don't mislabel your work as a joke and assume everyone is on it. because they're not.

you must always assume 75% of the people seeing the thing you are advertising have no fucking idea who you are. and that includes a huge chunk of the people who already follow you. they do not know who you are or what you've been working on for two months or why they should care about it. they just got here. somebody just reposted it. they are seeing it for the first time. most people are only looking at social media for a tiny chunk of their day. they are not keeping up with you. you cannot get cute about what you are trying to sell because nobody knows what it is until you tell them.

okay are you still with me. we are going to talk about clarity now.

YOU GOTTA TELL ME WHAT IT IS

good lord the amount of times i have gone to buy somebody's comic or book and had no idea what's actually in it or what it's about. who are the characters? why should i care about them? what do they do in it? what is the premise of this thing you want me to spend $5 on? why would you not tell me? i'm shaking you again. please i have to know what i'm buying i only have so much money to spend on porn.

porn, arguably more than any other genre, relies on knowing exactly what is in it. you do not want to surprise your readers with a kink they were unaware of! and on the flip side, you do not want to miss out on your target audience! if your book contains a hot spider babe laying eggs in an elf, you have to say so. not just so people who don't want to read about eggs know it isn't for them, but so the people who are egg crazy can see that and go "oh fuck YES i love EGGS here is my $5 and an extra $2 tip for catering to me specifically". a contents/features list is as much an advertisement as it is a warning!

as for re: who the characters are and why should i care, i'm sorry but you need to learn how to write sales copy. you have to write blurbs. you have to get good at the shit that goes on the back of a book. we all hate it but we have to do it. i want to know who the characters are and what the context is. i, personally, am not interested in contemporary stories as much as fantasy and historical. please tell me what genre this porn exists in so i know if it aesthetically appeals to me. pull some books off your shelves and see how they do it. hell man go look at mine.

while you're there, note that every single book of mine has a sample of what's in it. this feels like such a no-brainer to me but again! the amount of times i have gone to buy somebody's work and they don't show me what their work looks like! you gotta give me the first page or two! just enough that i know if i like the way your writing sounds, or the way you draw your comics! i don't know you! i am not going to trust that you're good at what you do just based on a cover. the cover is to get me to this step, it is not the only step. you have to show me that you're worth spending my money on!

to put it less cynically, you want to catch my interest. you want me to go 'oh i want to see more of this', you want me to go 'ahh i want to know where this goes!' you need to get me invested and craving more. earn my $5!!!

YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT EASY TO GIVE YOU MONEY

hey go look at your bio right now. go look at your pinned post. do you have a link to your patreon there? do you have a link to your itchio/gumroad/whatever? do i have to click more than once to get to the places you want me to go to give you money? why? why are you making me click twice? have we learned nothing from every website making you click an extra time when they make some stupid UI update and how much it pisses us off? i have already given up, i have forgotten you, i am not giving you my $5 today. put your links in the easiest places to get to them.

god literally as i was writing this post i went to go find somebody's itchio to see how they described their work and it was not anywhere on their profile. grabbing you and shaking you PUT THE LINK WHERE I CAN FIND IT. don't make it hard! make it easy! i am a dickhead sitting on the toilet scrolling, saw your post, and was interested enough to read further. but you made me go to your bio to find your linktree and oops i have already gone back to my timeline to look at the boobies in the next post. stop wasting precious bio space on DNIs and put your fuckin links there!!!

this is more for the twitter people, but: just put the link in the damn post. just say the word commission. just say it's for patreon. "wuh wuh the algorithm" it is not the damn algorithm it's that everybody hates advertising and nobody wants to retweet ads. putting slashes in the words doesn't do anything and you look like a fool. i have posted so much art that says it's 'a commission for ___" and it did exactly as good as any other art despite having the word commission in it. and by doing the slashes you just made it impossible for anybody to search your account for your commission information (which should be at the VERY LEAST in a post under your pinned tweet if you're not actively posting about them being open).

okay that went on a tangent i'm going to back to the point of putting the link in the tweet. put it in the first post. not in the first reply. don't tell them to go to your bio. put it in the post people are actually going to share. it's fine to put more information in the thread but people are only ever going to share the first post. so put the link there. you have to make it easy. putting links in tweets can hurt you algorithmically, even in the replies. so you're better off having it in the post that actually gets seen and shared. i don't want to open the tweet and scroll to get to your sales page where i ASSUME you will have put all the information anyway. put it in the tweet that just got retweeted by itself onto my dash!

also you have to share it a ton of times. i repost my shit every few hours when i'm trying to push a new product. as i said before people are not 24/7 looking at their timelines. they missed it the first time. they missed it the second time. they didn't get paid yet that week but they were after the eighth time and you reminded them again so they finally bought it. that i will still get sales every time i repost a book ad weeks after release says there are always people who missed it, or who only just showed up.

abandon your pride and shill. shills pay their bills. anyone who gets annoyed about it isn't giving you money in the first place. don't worry about looking like a sell out. don't apologize for plugging your own work. post about it often, post about it in different ways. post about it. post about it. you are not going to make money if people don't know you have something to sell them. if you want to make a career out of it, you need to act like it.

I DON'T HAVE A FOURTH POINT

kisses your forehead. i'm sorry for yelling at you. i've been making and publishing and selling adult art for the past two-three years and have got myself to the point where it pays my rent, and i got there by paying attention to what does and does not work.

please do your best to make money. i want you to make money.

as i said above i plan to write more posts on this subject, such as cover design, how to actually write sales copy, and best practices with running a patreon, but if there's things you would want to hear more about leave a comment or send an ask! i will probably be less aggressive on future topics. these are just things that have grinded my gears for a grip.

[puppyeared]

my attempt at making a fursona

[moeblob]

Lookin' at Askr's injured art and realizing it's basically just him with holes in his spandex........ thank you FEH for this one thing...

(also I normally draw Hrid and his attempts at adopting siblings so happy holidays to Hrid, he gets to be thirsty as a treat.)

[dottybot]

One more Gee, from another moment I love.

I'm honestly so weak for a clown look, cutely disheveled girl/nb hair, and just how cute they are aaaa

[madneurologist]

You've seen that one Atla episode in which the gaang get into The Earth King's Party in book 2? WELL, since my brain makes everything about vat7k I came up with this

Team radical has to get through a royal party in order to get one of the totems, Nuru and Hugo take the role of Toph and Katara and you guys can say it would make more sense if Nuru entered with Varian through the main gate because he is the royal engenieer of Corona, therefore he could get in more easily, but I like to complicate things, Nuru enters with Hugo instead, makes him pass as a noble and he gets to wear a dress with his hair down !!!!! >:) some makeup too why not

Meanwhile Varian and Yong make their way as waiters like Sokka and Aang did, and yes Varian would have Ruddiger under his hat too just for the funsies

When they find each other at the party Varian gets flustered at seeing Hugo with his hair down in a dress and makeup on (HE'S GOT EYELINER!!!!!!!) because shit he's even prettier this way

[mayhemlovesenvy]

Ann!!!!!!¡!¡! She's so pretty honestly

Based on this drawing of eddo:

[the-oldest-dream]

WAIT BTW I FINISHED IT YJH IS HEREEEE

i drew you and your blorbo. does this count as self insert fanart. self insert x canon. the things i do for you. enjoy. don’t curse anyone for the next week at least. (<- or do. i can support my bestie’s rights and wrongs.)

YJH IS HEREE HAHAHAHA YESSS i mean uh cough cough yes

this counts as both i would say

[starclast]

It has pass a few seasons since the new version of Trigun aired and I have to say that...at first I didn't like it so much...but the final episodes made me literally gasp in surprise of how things turned out. Well, now all that's left is wait for the second season and see the rest of the story which I didn't know because I only watched the first anime...Since it is a re-interpretation and such, I'm still unsure on how everyone's outfits will look like...but hopefully, Meryl will stay as cute as ever!! 🥰🥰🥰

[poltergeist-coffee]

i’m about to become a full time pactoiles artist because they’re all i can think about lately

[nefelibata-cloud]

a thought came to my head the other day and it hasn’t left…

so basically, diluc has been stuck in his office working since before the break of dawn. you decide to poke your head in at around lunch and give him a little shoulder and back massage. you had done this before, and even though he never said anything but a simple “thank you,” you could tell it sorta rejuvenated him. so you tried to do it everyday. your man is working non stop and constantly on the grind, he deserves a nice massage!

later that night, you visit him at Angel Share, and when you walk in he calls you over to the bar. taking a seat, he takes a hold of your hands and starts massaging them as he asks about your day, listening attentively. it’s subtle, and so very sweet.

diluc cherishes you, and loves your hands for how attentive they are to his sore and tight muscles. you try and give him a massage every chance you get. he loves your massages, but he knows with the amount of kinks and tight muscles in his neck alone that your hands must get tired quickly. so he always tries to repay you and show you how grateful he is by taking care of your hands, and massaging the area between your thumb and pointer as well as he can.

[taylor-titmouse]

hi!! do you have any advice on drawing body hair? I've been working on a character who's supposed to have hairy legs and I am Suffering trying to get it to look right

i couldn't be bothered to draw a body for this so you get a ken doll. this is just how i do it and think about it, definitely not a one-size fits all guide since thickness and distribution of hair is different for everybody.

naturally what you Should do is just observe it on real humans. look at your own legs my brother. what's the hair doing down there.

[jesse-cosay]

I just realized I'm gonna have to start posting art here again. Devastating.

[pryitaway]

finished standardized testing early today and thought about how the ‘same’ boy can enter rome and come out an emperor or a saint and how @ashilrak 's percy symbols a return to the past of rome which eventually consumes him, willingly and how @mrthology’s percy is the beginning of change and the new god unlike there was ever before in rome who forcefully steers the gods in a better direction, unwillingly, and how completely separate stories created with the same immense love for the original work can parallel each other in the prettiest way and

[leieryx]

Okay 2 questions (!)

A) is it okay if I print your art out? Just to put on my wall, not to sell or smth

ii) if so, do you have an art tag I can use?

Thanks lei, your evilness ✨

A) It is ok for you i know you ! plus thats really sweet :D

if someone's reading this who isn't blackholethatislife, please ask thank you :] answer will probably be the same. Although if it's stuff ive drawn as a response to you u can print it out (non commercial) without asking, assuming it has a signature/watermark

ii) lei art! it's under my pinned post. some may also be under leiart (no space) if i donked up lol

probably going to make a pinned post that includes that, but i wanted to have commissions set up first ;;

if you mean something else by that woops TT

Theres more on the portfolio page but i haven't updated it in for ever and carrd wont let me back in so. i don't want to share it kksgsdg

[kate-m-art]

.

[frostbite-the-bat]

im so glad i dont know a lot of the toontown blogger's toons bc itd be rlly awkward to come across someone in game and be like FUCK I GOT THEIR ASS BLOCKED ON TUMBLR DOT COM NUH UHHHHHH