$10,000 on an SEO agency didn’t bring the sales. Showing up in person did.

Who: Tiffany Dnaka (Art by Tiff)
What: Custom watercolor pet portraits and keepsakes
Format: Physical product · USA · English
Started: 2021
Audience: 150 monthly website visitors (around 30,000 impressions); 3,000+ Instagram followers
Payers: around 3 customers a month, new and returning
Promotion budget: $0 now – around $100 at a time on ads in the past, plus a one-off $10,000 six-month SEO contract
Income: side income
Status: active and growing
Channels: text social media, offline & word of mouth, search & AI traffic

What worked: Local vendor events where people see the work in person, storytelling on Instagram, and organic search after she rebuilt the site herself.
The result: Around 3 customers a month at premium prices; traffic now splits roughly 30% social, 30% Google, the rest direct and referral.
The catch: $10,000 to an SEO agency and self-run Facebook and Google ads brought no meaningful sales; the growth that came was slow and gradual.

My name is Tiffany, and I am the artist behind Art by Tiff, where I create custom watercolor pet portraits and keepsakes.

Before starting my business I worked in higher education, in an administrative role. Art began as a creative hobby, but it became something much more meaningful after I lost my soul dog, Moxey. Losing her was one of the most painful experiences of my life, and creating artwork became a way to process that grief and hold on to the memories that mattered most. Over time I realized other pet owners were looking for that same kind of connection. They did not simply want a picture of their pet. They wanted something that captured who their pet was and what that relationship meant to them.

When I lost my job during Covid, like so many other people, I decided to take a chance on the business and pursue it full time for about a year.

My first customers came from Facebook, where I was heavily marketing myself and posting to various local Facebook groups.

I originally opened my shop on Etsy because it was a familiar platform that customers already trusted. I quickly realized that simply having a listing on Etsy did not mean people would find it. The marketplace had become extremely crowded, and independent artists were often competing alongside mass-produced products and large overseas operations. I was putting in the work to bring customers to Etsy myself, primarily through Facebook, while also giving up a portion of each sale and having limited control over how my work and story were presented. Eventually I decided to build my own website. That gave me the freedom to shape the customer experience, communicate the meaning behind my artwork, and build a brand that reflected the care that goes into every order.

What has consistently worked best is showing my artwork in person at local vendor events. Being able to display the finished pieces and talk directly with pet owners helps people understand the quality of the work and the meaning behind it. Custom pet art is very personal, so seeing it in person often creates a connection that is harder to communicate through an online listing alone.

Social media has also been an important source of traffic. At this point, roughly 30% of my website traffic comes from social platforms, primarily through sharing my work, customer portraits, and the stories behind the pets. Another 30% comes from organic Google searches. The remaining traffic is generally direct, including word of mouth, returning visitors, referrals, and people who have met me at events.

The channels that have worked best are the ones built around trust and personal connection: meeting customers in person, sharing the stories behind my artwork on social media, appearing naturally in search results, and referrals from people who already know my work. My biggest takeaway has been that more traffic does not automatically mean more sales. For a personal product like custom pet art, the quality of the connection often matters more than the size of the audience.

One of my most expensive lessons came from hiring an SEO company. I paid approximately $10,000 for a six-month contract after being given strong expectations about the sales their work would produce. Those sales never materialized, and the results were not even close to what had been projected. That experience taught me that traffic promises are not the same as actual customers, and that business owners need to understand what an agency is doing rather than relying entirely on their projections. Looking back, the SEO company was a huge disappointment.

I also experimented with running Facebook and Google ads myself. Neither channel produced meaningful sales. I could generate views, clicks and occasional interest, but the advertising costs did not translate into enough purchases to make the campaigns worthwhile.

The real turning point came after my experience with the SEO company. Spending that much money without seeing the promised results pushed me to learn how SEO actually worked for myself.

I began doing a full audit of my website, cleaning up page titles, rewriting descriptions and copy, improving how my products were organized, and making sure each page clearly explained what I offer. I also started writing blog posts consistently, which has helped bring in additional organic traffic and given people more ways to discover my work through search.

Over the last year I have started to see that work pay off. The growth was not immediate, and there was not one viral moment where everything suddenly changed. It was gradual. Instagram has followed a similar pattern: I have been building it consistently since 2021 and now have more than 3,000 followers. That growth has been slower than I originally hoped, but it has given me an audience of people who understand the emotional connection behind my work.

The biggest shift was realizing that sustainable growth was not going to come from one agency, advertisement or quick fix. It has come from consistently improving my website, creating content, sharing my work, and letting those efforts build on one another over time.

My audience is primarily pet owners in the United States who are around 40 and older. Because my work is positioned as premium, custom artwork rather than a low-cost or mass-produced product, it tends to attract customers who have more disposable income and are willing to invest in something meaningful and personal.

Many of my customers are also experiencing pet loss, or preparing for the reality that their pet is getting older. They often connect with my own story of losing Moxey, and understand that the artwork is about much more than recreating a photograph.

This also explains why paid advertising has been less successful. My work is not usually an impulse purchase. Customers need time to understand the process, trust the artist, and feel confident that I will capture their pet correctly. A quick advertisement may introduce someone to my work, but personal stories, referrals, customer examples and repeated exposure are what ultimately lead to a sale.

The channels that look most promising are organic search, including visibility through Google and AI answer engines, Instagram, local events, referrals, and partnerships that introduce my work to established communities of pet owners. Instagram will remain my primary social platform – consistent growth there is worth more to me than constantly changing platforms in search of a viral moment. I am also on TikTok, but so far I have struggled to get it to show my content to the right audience, so I treat it as secondary rather than forcing a platform that has not shown results.

I plan to keep auditing my website and marketing regularly, so I can see what is actually bringing in qualified traffic and sales. My focus is not on becoming the largest pet art business. It is on building a recognizable, trusted brand that attracts the right customers.

Art by Tiff creates premium custom watercolor pet portraits and keepsakes for people who see their pets as family. Each piece is personally crafted to celebrate a beloved companion or preserve their memory after loss.

Website: tiffanydnaka

Instagram: tiffany_dnaka_

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