What am I doing wrong?

[KayCordingly]

How do i get sales? What I’m doing isn’t working.

I’ve been on BlueSky for 2 weeks as a profile that represents my brand (Democratic Party merch). In that time I’ve managed to amass over a thousand followers.

My strategy is two-part: First, I go to other people’s profiles and interact with them. Relevant profiles, of course; people who are looking for other Democrats to befriend. This has had really good success. I get lots of likes, responses and a new batch of followers each time I do this.

The second part of my strategy is to keep that same energy on my own profile, posting similar content and every once in awhile posting one of my designs with a link to a product. This hardly gets a stir. 1 to 3 likes, often zero. Only 10 people have even clicked on a link. No sales. I have had these designs sell elsewhere, so I know the problem isn’t the designs themselves.

What am I doing wrong?

[MOM]

@KayCordingly   Very likely not that much. People may just be exhausted, tired and worried (I know that I am). The election is over and folks need to recover first.

Hang in there!!

PS: I followed you on BlueSky.

[KayCordingly]

Thank you for following me, I think I followed back (not sure your name, but i followed back everyone in the latest batch of followers). I'm wondering if political sales will pick up after January 20th.

[YipsNHowls]

I think only Democrats need to recover. lol

[Sara_H]

@KayCordingly 

agree with @MOM  the time for promoting election merch has probably passed and they may be saving their pennies to see what January holds.

You be better off promoting on another platform too as BlueSky is more for conversations/interactions than promoting products I've found and as you found - more interactions when you actually talk with them as opposed to 'selling' to them

Try pinterest which is a visual database where people can create boards and save things for later and your links last a lot longer (but again - it's a marathon and not a sprint) and by the time election/mid terms etc (am UK so don't really know much about US politics) they'll be there ready.

tldr: Try picking another niche in the meantime and creating new products and promoting those on pinterest

[KayCordingly]

In the past, I’ve tried other sites such as Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook ads, blogging, etc. with NO luck at all. And those were other niches such as birthdays, anniversaries, and mid century modern art. At one point I had a horror movie blog and affiliated other peoples’ designs on Twitter.

I got inspired to do a political shop because after the election anti-Trump designs I made in 2016 suddenly started selling over on another platform, and I only had maybe a dozen designs. So I thought “oh this is what the people want; I should make more”. And a few of the new designs have sold over there, but those are marketplace sales as I’ve never promoted those ones.

Also, I have a history of not being successful at all with self-promotion. So I wasn’t sure if I’m just not doing it right, or if I need to do it more, or if you and MOM have suggested, it’s just not the right time. Idk though, people seem really passionate about their politics right now. I thought that would translate to sales.

Anyway, thank you for your response and your advice.

[KeegansCreation]

I agree with MOM and Sarah H that this is not the optimal time for political designs. Your designs are likely to do better in Spring or Summer of 2025. Midterms in 2026 will also be a good time to make some new designs of the "we can change this" variety.

[Connie]

Probably everybody's sick of politics now, and they just want to concentrate on the holidays.

[KayCordingly]

Others here have said that, too, but a lot of my followers are self-proclaimed “political junkies”. And their profile feeds are filled with the latest political gossip.

[SimplyDesigned]

Honestly, i've been on Bsky for a few months now. Not for zazzle reasons, I also have a YT channel and thats where all my content creator friends are. People on bsky do not want to buy things, they are coming over from the bot/ad filled twitter for this exact reason.