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I Removed Many Illustrations From My Website – Why?

Reflecting on the development of my service, I wondered how often new packs of illustrations should appear so that potential users will return to the site with the thought “What else is new and interesting here?” Or how many illustrations should there be to make users come back just to see the new pack that they have not yet checked? This is why I visit Icons8, haha. They have lots of interesting things!

I decided that one pack of illustrations a month is okay. But I would like to do 20+ illustrations in each pack. It turns out that this means I need to do one illustration a day, seven days a week. On my own, I cannot do this, since I work in an agency as a full-time designer and am developing my career as a freelancer on social media and on YouTube and do the same for my service. By the way, here’s my YouTube channel, where I show my skills in branding and illustration.

Hiring at least one full-time illustrator does not yet fit within my service budget. As the number of sales increases, I will be able to order illustrations from good illustrators. But to increase sales I need good illustrations. Ahahah, the circle is closed.

I need to find something that I can use to increase the loyalty of potential customers. I can't compete with the quantity; on some sites there are 5,000 illustrations, and it doesn't make sense. Clients come to fulfill their need for illustrations. They do not admire the quantity. So, if I make unique scenes, they will come to my service without looking for a solution from others.

Okay, making something unique is understandable, but you also need generic and very popular scenes that sell well, and I'm working on them now.

Go ahead. Quality? I am +/- okay with the quality of the illustrations that I’ve done. But the service also has those that I’ve ordered from freelancers. They seem to be okay, and are even sold on marketplaces, but now I'm not happy with them.

Okay, let's leave that for now. What else? And then it dawned on me. Updates! I want to make large packs so that users pay the lowest price if you count one illustration from a large pack, but it's even better if the illustrations receive 1-2 updates per year. From this, its value grows, but the price does not.

Imagine a situation where you bought 30 illustrations and are completely satisfied, and after half a year you receive 15 more, and a year later an update comes out for another 20. And it's free, wow!

The point here is that if the style has already been created and there is a list of scenes made, it is much easier to complete a few more illustrations than to create a new pack from scratch with a new style, come up with new scenes and make a presentation on the site. Naturally, many services already do this for some products, but it seems that if we focus on this, it can increase loyalty to my service.

But why am I deleting multiple packs from the site? Firstly, I remove those that I no longer like, and secondly, I definitely will not update them, I leave only those products that will receive updates, and those that I remove will remain only on marketplaces.

All illustrations on the site will be updated – yes, freebies too! You can check on this by looking at the "Latest Update" information on the cover and page of each product, as well as on the "Updates" page.

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