This article is directed to designers contributing to Iconfinder who are willing to take action to improve their sales. 

A decline in sales can be due to normal market forces. Graphic products, like any other product, have a natural life cycle. Sales will always peak towards the beginning of the product life cycle and decline over time. 

We gathered a list of tips below of what designers can do to boost their sales. The list comes in no particular order - all tips are equally important.

The stock image industry, of which icons and illustrations are a subset, is very competitive and, at the moment, very saturated. There is a surplus of supply for the amount of demand. Sales are naturally connected to the number of items you have on sale. You can boost your sales by adding more content, but you need to add the right content. Just adding more of the icons or illustrations that already exist on the site might not have as big of an impact as you expect.

Recommendation: Read the Designer reports we publish quarterly. The reports are packed with very detailed information that should help you identify some unmet demand. In particular, look at the "Searches with no results". These are very clear indicators of what customers have searched for, but could not find.

There is a direct correlation between the number of items a designer has on the site and total sales. Quality is also very important, but the ideal scenario is to have a lot of high quality, unique content.

Design trends can change rapidly (every time Google or Apple changes styles). It is important to keep up with the trends which translate into customer demand.

Keeping a good pace at uploading new packs will give you more visibility. You can be featured on our front page and also on your Iconfinder followers’ front pages. 

The Designer reports also show when different categories are most popular. Christmas is a perfect example of a category that should be "timed". Obviously, Christmas icons are going to sell best in December. So, you should have new Christmas icons on the site 2-3 months before December, so you can start promoting them. This is just one example. There are dozens of seasonal categories. 

Think about it this way: the main people buying graphics are going to be web designers and marketing professionals. They are most likely buying them on behalf of clients for whom they are doing promotional materials. Their buying habits are going to follow the trends in major retail, holidays, seasons, etc. You want to think like your consumers and create products they are likely to need when they need them.

Icon and illustration design seems to be self-influencing in that when a particular style or color scheme becomes popular, everyone copies it . Try branching out into some completely new styles to make your work stand out. This is risky, of course, so start small and create an SEO pack that is completely different to see how it goes. 

Garish, overly contrasting, loud colors can hurt sales. When in doubt, use a color combination chart such as Google’s Material Design color chart or any of the tools listed on http://www.creativebloq.com/colour/tools-colour-schemes-12121430
Read more about Colors.

We have observed that sales are trending towards more complex items that tell stories or depict actions. Whereas "noun" icons used to be popular, "verb" icons (showing actions) seem to be selling more.

It is important to recognize that you will not be able to just put up a few thousand items and relax. Consumption, even of graphics, follows a predictable pattern. When you release a new pack, it will take a few weeks to get traction. Maybe even 2-3 months. But once the customers on the site become aware of your work - and this is especially true of Pro subscribers - there will be a feeding frenzy of sorts. Your sales will start going up and they will peak shortly thereafter. 

But once the majority of Pro subscribers and regular customers have purchased your work, they don't need to buy them again. So, naturally, demand will start to decline. We are always striving to bring in new customers, but most customers don't buy right away. Most purchasing happens from users who have come to rely on Iconfinder as a trusted source. 

Recommendation: In order to keep sales at the level you want, you will need to regularly create new supply and really work hard to stimulate demand by finding your own customers, in addition to relying on the existing customers on Iconfinder. It is a never-ending cycle and it's a lot of work.

Extra recommendation: You can also use our Referral program to earn extra money when you bring in your own customers. Your referral code is just your Iconfinder username. You earn 25% of prepayments made by customers you refer (the first prepayment only) and 50% of the first subscription fee. This way, you can earn extra revenue. Read more about How the referral program works.

You can't rely on Iconfinder alone to promote your work. It is important to have a marketing and social media strategy for building your own customer base and following on social media. You can never do too much self-promotion.

Incorporate as many channels as possible in promoting your work from Dribbble to Pinterest, FB, Twitter, etc. The more people who know you sell graphics, the more customers you will have. It takes a while but building your following up on social media, specifically with potential customers (designers, app developers, etc) will have a positive impact.

The number of tags an item has directly affects how the item ranks in the search results and, therefore, it affects sales. It is recommended to have 3-4 tags per item, as an optimal number.
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Recommendation: Review the tags on your items and make sure all items have "about 4" tags. More than 4 tags can have a negative impact on your search rank, as can less than 4. Read more about Tags and Optimal number of tags per item.

A word of caution: you must, however, always balance whether higher rank is better than ranking on more searches. For instance, if you limit your items to just 3 tags, then you're only going to show up in searches for those tags. If your items sell well you can rank very highly for those searches. If you have 10 tags, you'll show up in more searches but lower down, possibly much lower down. It is better to decide on a case-by-case basis depending on what the item is. 

Unfortunately, most designers on the site just fill in the tags because it is a requirement, but there is no single thing you can do to your items that is more important (except have better items). We strongly encourage putting effort into the tagging. Do not consider your tags "done" simply because you have filled them in. Regularly review your tags to see if tweaking them will help the rank. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but it's worth the effort.

Creating cohesive packs around themes that will appeal to Pro subscribers. A Pro user is probably looking for items for a project so theme-focused items for common types of projects will be appealing to Pro users. They are usually looking for large families of items of the same style from where they can choose all different items without worrying about the consistency of the final result. Having the same items in several styles helps too as it also increases the number of items you have for sale (remember, more is more).

Also, make sure that the packs that you put together have business value to customers. Learn what we mean by Business value. 

Also check out the demand trends in our Designer reports.

Offering a consistent icon pack with a complete pack of icons that users need will distinguish you from the rest of the packs in that category. Also, your customers can contact you for specific projects they need your design skills for. It is a good source of opportunities, so keep your ears open. Check out what users are looking for in our designer reports.

Families are a grouping of packs from the same designer that share the same appearance and design style. This way, they do not need to worry about visual consistency when adding these items to their project. Families allow customers to find all the matching items in the same place. The larger the family, the better.

Having large item families offers a broad supply of items that are consistent between each other. This way, even the pickiest customers will be able to find a bunch of items that they can use on the same website without worrying about them not matching.
Read more about Consistency.

Example of a good practice of organising matching packs in families. 

The same applies to illustrations. Large illustration families are very attractive to customers, as the illustrations will have varied topics and can be used for a consistent design.

Having the same packs in different styles can be helpful. This has to do with the #1 above. Having a variation of the same icon in several style also increases the total number of icons you offer and the chances a user will like any of the different styles you offer. However, it is important to be mindful about this one, as too many variations can clutter the marketplace with too similar content and may be a reason for rejection of the pack. Read more about Variations.

16. Sell custom graphics through the Custom Service

Recommendation: Another way to boost your earnings is by getting hired for designing custom jobs through Iconfinder. If a customer likes your design style but cannot find the perfect icons or illustrations for their project, they can contact you through the Messaging service and ask you to design it for them. You can easily send invoices and receive payments directly through the Messaging feature on Iconfinder. Read about How the Custom Service works. 

If you have an idea for an article for our blog that you think will be interesting to potential customers, write up a summary and email it to [email protected]. This is a great way to get exposure.