PLEASE GUIDE ME REGARDING FONT SELLING AND ITS MARKETING

ZeeshanHasnain

Hi there,
I know that making a typeface is not an easy job some times it may took up to a month to finalize it but still when some some makes it that does not guarantee a person that definitely it will sell. Because there's a much bigger game of "keywords" and "seo" nowadays to promote and specially to sell a font. Nowadays you guys might have seen that even an ugly or a worst fonts are sold on internet WHY???? because they did the seo right, they placed the keywords as required. One can make a font but I think its a much much difficult task to promote it make it seo optimized.

So Guys, I'm new at selling fonts. I make fonts very well but I really dont know that how to promote them or how to make my font be sold on market places like myfonts/monotype. Can anyone please guide me and teach me how you guys are promoting and making your fonts sold by a traffic or audience? what are the aspects to sell any font on internet? Can any one please help?? Is there any easy or particular way to do it?

My first font family is released on myfonts platform (link given):
https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/zeeshanfoundry/premium-sans/

BUT I DONT KNOW how to appear it on search engines and suggested layers. Font Gurus! please guide me like a brother that how you guys make your font sales. And also there's not any single video on yt at this topic so thats why I'm asking you gusy. PLEASE GUIDE!!!!

Craig Eliason

Your images on myfonts work well to show off your design in a variety of realistic contexts, but you should go through carefully and correct misspellings and typos in them. 

It will be a challenge to get attention online for such a familiar style of typeface; how to make that stand out from the crowd is a difficult question. 

Alex Visi

So basically you’re asking your competitors to guide you how to win them over. Long story short, you need to build a brand. SEO is fun, but you won’t magically appear on top of the search just because of right words.

ZeeshanHasnain said:

I make fonts very well

Looking at some basic mistakes in that myFonts font, it seems to me like there is still some room for growth

JoyceKetterer

I guess it's my turn to be the broken record that only plays one song.  In retail fonts you're not selling the font, you're licensing it.  There's a way in which what you're actually selling is the license and the font is just a pretty wrapper over the thing almost no one looks at.  The license determines what value the user can extract from the font without needing to buy more permission.  It also determines how the font creator is paid and if they will be able to collect in the event of a violation of the license (which is inevitable with a popular font). 

Licenses don't sell font, very few people look at them after all, so I'm not really answering your question about how to get eyeballs.  That said, the license does matter.

Oh, and the best fonts take YEARS to make.  It's fine if you're making quick fonts in a month but it's the worst kind of youthful hubris to imagine, when asking seasoned font people for advice, that's a long development cycle.  Even if what you intended to say is that the final phase of testing and mastering can take up to a month even that is at the low end for most font families.  

ZeeshanHasnain

Hi @JoyceKetterer I agree with u that a spectacular and a best font can take up to an year to be finalized and I appreciate you answered but I really didn't get an answer which I wanted that if I manage to make the font within a year but how do I manage to sell it specially in a widely webbed era of SEO. what I asked that if I leave seo that it is not very much necessity for selling the fonts but I wanted to know that what are exactly the ways or methods Or a procedure which you guys use to make yours fonts sell on widely populated marketplaces like my fonts or monotype? Id be glad if any one answers in this thread. I know there's a money game involved in it and the people who discovered those ways by such hardworking and consistency they might not share those things on an open platform as Alex Visi said:

So basically you’re asking your competitors to guide you how to win them over. Long story short, you need to build a brand. 

But I request font gurus here to please share some hints or something like that at least share some ways for font selling. Because yes one may have a hobby and passion for making lovely fonts but what if it turns into a business.

 PLEASE SHARE WHAT YOU GUYS DO TO SELL FONTS ONLINE.

JoyceKetterer

@ZeeshanHasnain I know you're trying to be respectful but you should know you're not coming off well.  I said "years", not "up to a year".  No Darden Studio font has ever taken less than two years, most many more.  The reason I bring this up is that your entire question started with an implied insult "making the font is easy but selling it is hard".  Then, you said "could you please give me the key to the hard part for free"?

We can't tell you how to get customers because a) every brand is a little different and b) some of us frankly are still amazed we have customers and don't really know how we managed it.  

We each know what works for us and most of us have tried the things that work for others with little success.  You're going to have to find your own way. @Craig Eliason @Alex Visi did give you the best answer any of us can give when they said you're going to have create a brand and make it stand out.

ZeeshanHasnain

@JoyceKetterer I'd like to tell you that you might be much more experienced than me and I respect you for that but I'm not trying make myself respectful an I'm not pretending to be something. I know that @Craig Eliason @Alex Visi gave me good answers. I just took their saying on discussion what they said, as this this a discussion forum i just extended their thoughts and I know that it takes years and months and months to finalize it I'm satisfied by you at this. But I never mentioned that "making the font is easy but selling it is hard" in any part of my thread discussion which you shared it in your last reply. Instead I already mentioned on my starting sentence that "making a typeface is not an easy job some times it may took up to a month to finalize it" I also know that it takes months to make a font. Either I didn't asked for a key, I just requested the all respected topographers to share the ways which they do for selling their fonts, I didn't criticized on any one. Mam, you're taking me wrong I didn't mean those things which you mentioned for me. 

As I'm new to this forum so I thought that it would be a helping community gateway to the newbies and the field existing individuals who faces some problems, and that's the general Idea any one can guess of any forum, The forum members use to guide other people for sake of brotherhood and spirit of helping others. They never ever ask for money as JoyceKetterer said:

you said "could you please give me the key to the hard part for free"?

The truth is I never asked for a key, I just requested to expert typographers what do they do to sell their fonts online? I neither asked this help for free nor for paying them. I asked this help for the moto this platform typedrawers was created that is to help others by telling and guiding the solutions or answers to one's problems and questions. If any one helps others by any means it always returns when he is in some sort of problem.

If you are hurt by my any word, then I'm sorry, didn't mean any thing which you mentioned about me.

All I asked was a simple question and I already said that I'm new to it that's why I requested people to answer.

I you don't want to help that's OK I will never mention you again, I respect your skill set and you I appreciate you replied. You're like a true sister to me,

 thanks

JoyceKetterer

@ZeeshanHasnain. My apologies for using idiomatic English that obviously didn't translate well for you.  I wrote that post in response to a post by you in which I thought you seemed very frustrated that no one was answering your question.  

My "for free" I meant "without effort on your own" (not that you should pay us).  By "key" I meant the means by which to figure out a puzzle.  I didn't say you expressly stated that making fonts is easy but characterised "up to a month" as an "implied insult" because fonts take SOOOO much longer (because they are far to hard to be made that quickly).

You're asking for help we can't give and then coming off as defending and vaguely insulting.  I know that's not on purpose and I'm trying to be kind here.  I'm clearly not striking the right tone either so I'm going to stop posting in this thread.  I wish you the best of luck.

ZeeshanHasnain

@JoyceKetterer Thanks for all of your replies

Christian Thalmann

some times it may took up to a month to finalize

Perhaps the first step toward a successful typeface would be to spend more time on it. If you're already at a point where you no longer see anything to improve about the typeface, obtain feedback from the community on a critique thread.

At a quick glance, your Light looks quite attractive to me, the Bold less so. It could use significantly more optical compensation. The weight ratio between Regular and Bold is also unusually small; the Bold has trouble standing out from the page.

It also doesn't help that you seem to favor typesetting the fonts at tight tracking, which messes up the rhythm and makes them seem cruder than they are.

Craig wrote:

It will be a challenge to get attention online for such a familiar style of typeface; how to make that stand out from the crowd is a difficult question.

The «clean sans» also happens to be one of the most challenging styles to get right, since it's so sensitive to curve quality, rhythm, etc.

Stephen Coles

This is maybe not the answer you’re looking for, but SEO and marketing are not likely to make much of a difference for you with your current offering, simply because there are so many typefaces in the same category as yours on MyFonts.

Not only do fonts take a lot of time to make, but so does building a brand — especially if you want to sell large text families like your Premium Sans. And I am afraid you have your brand building steps in reverse: start by creating typefaces with a unique point of view, a style of your own; then focus on the marketing aspects.

The more original your product, the easier it will be to write a story that drives traffic.

Thomas Phinney

Sometimes Joyce is more clearly from Brooklyn than other times. This is one of those times. She is one of the most generous people with her time and energy, but can sometimes be more… blunt… than people are used to.

When I looked at the typeface, I thought some of the same things Christian mentioned:
- needs more optical compensation in the heavier weights, notably where a curve meets a straight stem (e.g. “n”)
- Bold is not heavy enough to be a bold. Not even heavy enough to be a semibold. More of a medium weight at most.
- Italics seem like they are purely mathematically obliqued without any optical corrections. At the very least you could fix the weight issues that result, and the damage to the shape/weight of the S/s.

Thomas Phinney

On the actual marketing side, there is font-specific advice.

But rather than only worry about the one font, I would also ask you to consider… what else do you have in the works? What threads are going to tie your different typefaces together? Which all leads to… how are you going to brand your foundry?

ZeeshanHasnain

@Thomas Phinney thankyou so much sir for your critique and advises. Indeed I have left out many mistakes in my font and this really is a worst one. Inshallah I will learn with help of you and others. Indeed I'm very much junior than you guys. I'm sorry for anything which got screwed up in this thread, definitely I didn't mean wrong in any regard. Thanks

JoyceKetterer

@Thomas Phinney You're right.  But I'd not say it's because I'm Brooklyn (though, of course I am).  It's because I've spend 15 years in fonts and learned that there are a lot of people on the spectrum who can't pick up on hints.  I try to be direct but kind, which is two notches away from blunt (I think).  I failed in this instance and for that I apologise. Thank you for chiming in.  

Thomas Phinney

Well, that is ALSO true—about a disproportionate number of people in type design being on the autism spectrum. I am a tad that way myself. I for one generally find your clarity of expression refreshing.   

Miles Newlyn

@ZeeshanHasnain Start an SEO optimised blog.

I think that writing something about the typeface is useful for marketing, and more successful when it's written in an interesting way. That's what I try to do with my blog posts for new releases:

New Kansas
New Windsor

Start with answering these questions:
Why did you decide to design this typeface in particular?
Why do you think the style has been so popular over the years?
What do your letterforms bring to an already-established style of typeface?
Why’s it called Xxxxx?
What are its distinguishing characteristics?
What should I use it for?

Within answering these questions tell the reader something revealing about yourself.

Simon Cozens

And while I wish this weren't the case, it sadly is: native English speakers will probably be put off by sales copy which contains spelling or grammatical errors, or which just isn't expressed the way that native speakers would express it. So when I read your foundry intro, I understand what you mean - but it was very obvious that it was not written by a native speaker. It may be a good idea to get a native speaker to re-word your copy.

Cory Maylett

I might also suggest that $40 per font is a little steep considering that each weight only includes the Western Europe character set but not Central Europe.

Rudy VanderLans

It’s always difficult to advice others, because everybody's situation is unique. But I can tell you what worked for Emigre.

Over the years, printing type specimens has been the single most effective way for Emigre to promote its type library. We send them out for free to a mailing list of roughly 40,000. The mailing list needs to be constantly managed to keep it up to date. Publishing a design magazine alongside helps too. And we regularly bought full page ads in design magazines like HOW, Print and Eye. For a short while, email announcements generated a fairly good response, although that’s no longer the case. And while we post on Instagram and Facebook, social media never made much of a dent in our type sales. Traveling around the country doing lectures and workshops was a great way to get our work in front of lots of designers and design students during the early years of our business.

All of these separate efforts are very difficult to gauge in terms of their direct effect. But one thing is clear; to built a brand, it takes all of the above, plus a consistent and sustained output of promotional efforts of all kinds over a prolonged period of time. And it’s very costly, and it’s never enough. You can not let up. You have to continue to feed the beast, especially these days when there is so much competition. It helps when you love doing it.

ZeeshanHasnain

I'm sorry Joyce

Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)

Rudy VanderLans said:

We send them out for free to a mailing list of roughly 40,000. 

That is indeed an excellent way to get the word out, but sadly, it's beyond the means of many small foundries. I employ email marketing, sparingly, i.e. only for new product announcements, a few times a year.  

Thomas Phinney

It’s a good idea to NOT overdue your email marketing. Keep in mind whether people will be interested. Segment your email lists as much as possible and let people self-select their interests.

If too many users mark your email as spam… that can get you swept up by spam filters in general, and this can be VERY hard to fully recover from! It can affect your entire domain, so… ouch.

Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)

That's why I use Constant Contact