Hocus Pocus

Today, I'm proud and excited to officially announce and launch Artist Alley, the artist-first fandom marketplace! Over the last year and a half, I've traveled across the world and sat down with hundreds of artists to ask what they'd want in a marketplace platform that doesn't treat them like corporate products. One of the most vocal and consistent complaints was that ALL of these existing platforms take an unreasonable cut of their sales ("Why does Etsy charge me for making a listing before I've even sold anything?") for doing next to nothing for them, while artists had to constantly worry about getting randomly banned for no reason and having no way to appeal. Not to mention the rampant fraud and scams on those websites, the amount of low-effort dropshipping, and miserable chargeback experiences that discourage creators from pursuing what they love doing. What I've learned from these artists is that the bar to creating a marketplace that doesn't actively screw over its creators is unambitiously low. But why settle for the bare minimum? I spent the last six months developing, testing, and scrutinizing every aspect of an ideal marketplace that truly represents how real artists and vendors today manage and organize their everyday workflow; if artists give their all when they make content for others to enjoy, why shouldn't I? Ultimately, Artist Alley is a statement that creators deserve to benefit from their creations first, and that the platform should fit around the art, not the other way around. One of the core tenets of Artist Alley is that a marketplace platform taking a 0% fee is sustainable in the long-term, despite what these corporations would like you to believe. After all, how are we to know for sure it's NOT sustainable without someone actually trying it? (Sadly I can't do anything about the payment processor fee, but Artist Alley doesn't take anything on top of it.) There are too many features to mention all of them in this tweet, but the idea is that you can sell and buy digital or physical merch, take or request digital or physical commissions, host auctions and raffles, have your orders automatically organized in a trello board, set up multiple stores, and discover talented artists around the world. Check them out for yourself below! I'll probably be posting short videos of all the features in the coming week. And join our community Discord for updates on new features, submit ideas, and report any bugs!