Graphic Designer Sketches Old Homes for New Money

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

Today's story is love at first sketch. When setting aside money purged to be challenging, this Australian graphic designer discovers a way to save for a house of her own by drawing the homes of others. She's sketching old homes for new money, you could say. Welcome to Recital School. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

We here are all about teaching through storytelling, shining a spotlight on all the different kinds of projects people all over the world are doing in an attempt to create more freedom for themselves. And I know that is the motivation for the person we're going to feature today. Now, I also did some deconstruction of her website and I have several tips. So I'm going to pass these tips on because she wants to increase business going forward. So let's see if we can't make that happen.

I will share those tips and those comments at the end of the episode. Also, even though I do have some feedback, I also think that the current version of her site is a shining example of what I mean when I often use the phrase a simple website or a two-page website, like so-and-so made a simple website. Well, what am I talking about? So I'll break it down a bit in the episode and of course you can go and take a look for yourself like see the actual visuals on the show notes page. So without further ado, here is a message for our sponsor.

Really appreciate them. Thank you guys for keeping the lights on, allowing the show to be completely free to our listeners, and then I'll tell you this story. Australian graphic designer Georgia Norton Lodge loves to draw. As a child, her mother encouraged her and her sister to find interesting ways to express themselves. So when Georgia's sister Zoe came to her years later with a request to help her illustrate her book, it seemed only natural to pick up a pencil and get to work.

Her sister's book was called Almost Sincerely. It was a comedic memoir that drew from their personal experiences growing up and was set in their hometown right outside Sydney. Georgia enjoyed having an opportunity to sketch all the details of the neighborhood she was raised in, including rows and rows of little houses. The design was simple, done in black and white, and about halfway through her third chimney bedecked rooftop, it occurred to her, "Hey, these are actually pretty cute." She loved the nostalgia and found it to be a great way to explore her creative side when the client work at her day job got to be too much. As time went by, Georgia began to look for ways to draw more homes.

She put together sketches as birthday and Christmas presents, and eventually found herself inundated with requests from distant cousins and acquaintances. Georgia felt that if people were actively requesting them, perhaps there could be a larger market out there for her work. So to test it out, she made a two-page website using Squarespace, which she called Georgia Draws a House. The first page of her site explains what she does, how the process works, and includes a few past sketches to show that she knows her way around a white picket fence. The second page is in order form, where visitors can submit their address and other info.

She used a stripe to help her take payments from all over the world. Georgia offers three options for her sketches based on the size of the paper. You can purchase A5, A4, or A3 sizes for $59, $79, and $99, respectively. Now, as a side note for our American listeners that are like, "Hey, what in the world is A4, A5, A3? Never heard of that?" Well, stay tuned.

I'll talk about that at the end as well. With the website ready and prices set, Georgia began to market her drawings. She used two channels to do this, word of mouth, which was already well underway thanks to her family and friends, and Instagram. She felt the visual nature of Instagram would give her the most bang for her buck with the limited time she had to spend on marketing outside her job. She used graphic design focused hashtags in hopes of reaching a new audience.

These two channels quickly led to Georgia's first sale. She admits that when she received that first order from a stranger, someone all the way on the other side of the country, she may have stalked them online, you know, just for an hour or so, to confirm that they truly did not have any connections at all. But eventually, when she realized it really was her first proper order, she opened a bottle of Prosecco. The more she posted, the more interest seemed to come her way. She'd get orders from people all over Australia, as well as America and Europe.

Eventually, Georgia draws a house began getting featured in the Australian press, which brought about even more sales. The process she uses to create her sketches is simple. Customers place their order and share the address of the house. Georgia then looks it up using Google Earth to see how the house looks in real life. She then sketches the house on paper using her own style and method, and the final sketch is shipped to the customer through the mail, or the post as they call it over there.

In the first two years of her side hustle, Georgia earned around $6,000 in total. She decided to take the third year off from side hustling to focus on her career. She found it hard to work at a desk drawing all day and then come home and do exactly the same all over again. Thankfully, though, Georgia has recently felt the desire to draw houses again. She's partially driven by the creativity and enjoyment of the work, but she'd also love to use the income to help her save for a house of her own.

So far this year, she's brought in $6,100, more than her first two years in total. We're just getting started with the year. She wants to increase the monthly income, perhaps one day focusing on Georgia draws a house full time, and of course she's got that house to save for her. Her favorite part of the project is seeing the reasons people order her sketches. To remember a mother they've lost, to celebrate the home where they had their first child, the pub where they met, or the family home they just sold.

There was always an emotional reason behind it. And Georgia loves that she can play a part in bringing that memory to life. Alright, I promised some detailed website comments here. So first of all, it's totally okay. It's actually good to start with a really simple site, and what she has right now in its current form is a stellar example of that.

It really just has the essentials, but it doesn't look bad in any way. It actually looks nice. It's laid out on this minimalistic white background. She also used Squarespace to make it, which helps keep it simple. And there's other services, WordPress.com, Wix, Weebly, they all offer similar setups to where if you're not a designer, you can still make something that looks good.

So I always encourage people to start with something like that. Just one good page, basically your sales page, and then an order page, how people can click through to give you their money. But now that we have a simple site, and just as important, now that we know her idea works, it's a proven concept. She's got people who are ordering the drawings. I think it could be good to add a little bit more.

So you know, going from that one page, two page site, if you want to sell a product based on nostalgia, or pride of homeownership, or connection to family, you know, all the things mentioned briefly in the episode, that emotional piece, which is so important, I think some more visuals and story could help. So she does have a few examples of the drawings, but I would like to see more. I might like to see them larger, I might want to like click and see them in large, I might want to know the story behind some of the houses. Obviously you need the customer's permission to share that, but I bet a lot of people would be happy to. Maybe some testimonials of the people who have purchased the drawings, and perhaps a bit more about her process, maybe like a video of her drawing.

So all that stuff is non-essential, like you don't need it to have that simple website. But again, once you have a concept that's working, I do think it helps. So maybe that could be a goal. Now, pricing, so she's got three different prices, which is good, the $59, the $79, the $99, always good in a case like this to have a price option. But the pricing is first of all, in Australian dollars, AUT, and the sizing is based on international standards like A5, A4, A3.

So lots of our listeners totally understand what that means. But in the States, a lot of people don't. And people in the States are also not accustomed to purchasing in Australian dollars. So it's not like they can't figure it out. And obviously, she has had orders from America, but I think if she wants to have more orders from the largest English speaking market in the world, it might be helpful to just put in parentheses.

Okay, what is A5? What is A4? What does it correspond to in US measurement? And then also, consider pricing in US dollars, as opposed to Aussie dollars. Because actually, among other things, with the exchange rate, she's actually going to be making more.

If somebody in the States sees her current pricing, and they think, oh, $59, $79, $99, they're actually going to be spending less, because for some time now, the US dollar has been advantageous. So there's a couple different ways to do it. There is a way to just show people in Australia, the AUD option and show people everywhere else, the USD option, you could just kind of keep it simple and say, okay, we're going to actually make a switch. And then one final thought, I see this big pop up message that appears and says, due to popular demand, orders may be delayed. So I'm like, okay, that's what she's got demand, I understand.

But it says expect to lead time of three weeks. I don't know about you, but I think custom artwork, I'm not expecting to get it sooner than three weeks, I'm expecting custom artwork to take a little while, you know, if it said 12 weeks, I might say, okay, that's something but three weeks seems kind of normal to me. So if she is able, in some cases to do it sooner, which she also says here, there's a note that says if it's really important to get it by a specific date, email me and I'll do my best. If she can work faster, why not charge for that? Why not do you know, one base price shipping, or maybe it's free shipping for normal orders.

But then if you pay $10, $15, $20 more, even, that's not unreasonable to get your custom artwork in, you know, 10 days or whatever it is. So it's a wonderful project. And I just wonder if she considered one of these three or four ideas, or maybe all of them. I'd be really surprised if she doesn't see an increase in her bottom line, especially since she wants to grow this, she wants to ramp up, potentially, you know, eventually do it full time, or if nothing else, you know, really boost that savings fund for her own house. So good luck, Georgia.

The work is beautiful. Let us know what happens. And listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/789. We're going to link up Georgia Draws a House as well as some of the resources I mentioned.

I think it was Stripe, Squarespace, et cetera, whatever I talked about in the episode, that will be on the show notes page. And I'll be back here with you again tomorrow, or at least I'll be back tomorrow and I hope you'll join me. Thank you so much. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Sidusleschool.

From the Onward Project.