Alright, I have gotten some really interesting results so thank you everyone here (and elsewhere) who’s taken the time to respond! I haven’t asked on twitter or instagram yet but here’s the results from here and a few other sites where I asked (so far). I’m counting the 0.5 votes as a ‘yes but with strong exceptions’:
DeviantArt: 1, 0.5, 1, 1, 0.5, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 7 total: 7
etsy 0.5
facebook 1 1 1 1 total 4
pinterest - zero
artstation 1 1 -total 2
tumblr 1
Elliquiy 1
writer boards – 1, 1, 1, 0.5 total 3.5
general word of mouth total 3
So DeviantArt and Facebook and various writer boards in that order with a few votes for other places. Interesting. I’ll ask this on twitter&instagram and I’ll be very curious to see what people say there and if it’s very different (I’ll post an update later if something changes)
What I take from these results so far is that I probably should try DeviantArt out and let’s see what happens. Several people said that they were put of from DA by unprofessional behavior so I’ll try and make my page there be extra polished and professional. Details pending. If anyone would like to share what sorts of things would make them feel more secure with hiring a DA artist it would be very helpful. Perhaps if I advertise the covers through there but then direct you to the sales page of my website? I accept both paypal and credit cards through a major provider and would that be enough for you to feel confidant in the transaction?
Next runner up is various writer boards. I’m advertising here, on dirty discourse, and kboards. So far I’ve only had one customer this way through boards, and that was through kboards. I’m a little surprised about DD since it’s primarily a romance&erotica board and I would have thought my covers would be more in demand.
Pinterest having zero kind of doesn’t surprise me. It’s a good site for inspiration but I just don’t see the angle where it can actually lead to a commercial benefit for my works. In a way I’m relieved that I can kind of let myself off the hook with this one.
For the sites that HAVE worked out, I like Instagram though it feels like maybe I’m not doing it right. Like I see people there who have 30 posts and 1k followers (what the heck ARE these people following???) and I’m around 90 posts and 120ish followers. I have had the most luck through there though. Low followers doesn’t necessarily translate as low sales as I’ve discovered.
Twitter… yikes. Okay, on the surface it’s a dark den of auto-bots spamming ads at other auto-bots and it really seems like less than 10% of Twitter is engaging with an actual human. So much noise. But, on the other hand, I did have my highest value sale through there so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh and I do have my own website avdaldesigns.com. I’m just now in the process of giving it a makeover and polishing it up. I’ll post a notice here when the new shiney site is up and I hope you all will check it out