As a professional graphic artist and designer I've been out in the trenches doing battle with the completion for years. I've gotten my ass shot off plenty of times by the big guys and by a few little punks too, but I've managed to survive. In the process I've learned a few tricks which I'd like to share to help my fellow artists. For you see, it is not our brothers and sisters, fellows professionals and colleagues we must fear, but such real threats as the population explosion and how it is driving corporate giants to monopolize, dominate and pollution of the marketplace with products made paying slave labor wages or only pennies upon the dollar.
Here is what we as artists, photographers, designers and creative individuals with talent and imagination are up against. Take a room full of robots and sling paint on canvas, get thousands of maggots to wiggle about and color paper with paint, then mass produce the random designs on merchandise and call it art, create an on-line market place full of this crap and sell it on everything from T-shirts to camcorders, and flood the marketplace with so much of this graphic spam that no one every sees real ART! The result is that real artist end up not being able to market their work and become starving artists, artists without homes, artists hunting through dumpsters for their next meal, just to survive!
That's basically what is happening. With a depressed economy the big corporations are laying workers off right and left. If you or your spouse was earning some extra cash making designer gifts and apparel to market on such services as CafePress, you may soon find your work devalued and worth no more than what robots may be able to produce or worms dipped in paint could produce. Effective June 1, 2009, CafePress will only be paying 10% across the board commissions in the CP Marketplace, regardless of who your are or what real value you may put upon your work because of your education, experience, or other creative ability and talent. Your work will be worth no more than that produced by maggots eating garbage in a sweatshop somewhere in India or China!
This does not really come as a shock to me because as a professional artist/designer who has been in the business many years, I've seen how creative individuals are exploited in the workplace time and again. Management is very egotistical and since they control the making of policy and the payroll, they think of themselves as gods, superior to the little guy making art. If you know how to use a paint brush, do more than doodle with your pen, or have a spark of imagination, management views you with a high degree of jealousy and of little worth. Their goal is to ultimately replace you with a can of worms dipped in ink, paint or dye, wiggling around on paper to make random patters, or robotics programs that can create kaleidoscopic images or morphic patters, that the artist or creative genius may be replaced with what amounts to a senseless machine! After all, you don't have to may a machine a decent salary or even a reasonable commission!
This is exactly what CafePress is doing by negating its TOS agreement to allow everyone to set their own markup commission rate and now telling you that no matter what they promised in the past, effective June, 1, 2009, you can only make a 10% commission for everything sold in the CP Marketplace. It doesn't matter if you are a modern day Picasso, Raphael or Leonardo de Vince himself, all your work is worth is 10%!
I don't know about you, but I don't like it when someone comes along and basically tells me that my work isn't worth whatever price I want to set for it. I think that I should be able to do what every other business persons does, to set my own prices and to see what the marketplace will bare, such that I may maximize my profits. But you see, when you only get 10% that means the 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% or even 100% you may have been able to get for your work in the past will be gotten by management instead! In other words, you are being screwed out of your just profits by management because management has the power and control to set policy and to pay you whatever little they think you are worth, rather than to let you set the value of your work yourself.
Thus the question become, how can you preserve your dignity and respect and continue to earn what your work is worth when CafePress or any other big corporation kicks you in the butt and says your work isn't worth what they are willing to pay?
Fortunately given the explosion of the Internet you no longer have to depend upon any single corporate giant to market the products of your labor. Everyone can setup their own shop on the Internet and do their own marketing. But to be successful you need to know a few tricks. So I'm going to tell you what works, what I've learned from many years of on-line experience, that this may help other artists, photographers and/or creative and talented people. For you see I believe in karma, that if I help my fellow artists and colleagues, good will also come back to me, even if you might be able to make, say, a better bomb design than me.
First to succeed on the Internet you need to get a domain. I use WWW.BYTELAND.ORG as my domain. If you go to Byteland.org you will then be able to link to my various shops and on-line store sites as well as to discover MORE creative muse which gushes forth daily from my mind. I even dream art see every pile of dung as an inspiration, especially if it has attracted a swam of flies to photograph. I say this because as a creative person everything I do or think can be turned to art. For example, if I see a fly upon a pile of dung, leave it to me to take a photograph and turn it into art -- maybe not as valuable as a Jackson Pollock, but Art none-the-less.
You can increase the profits from your work by making or drawing association with celebrities, famous people, iconic figures or symbols, or with anything that strikes or arouses the emotions. This is why sex sells. A pretty hot girl who loves her guy draws attention from horny men and is going to sell; it is certainly going to sell better that a fly on dung.
The fact that a pile of dung may be inspirational brings us to another marketing trick. Name calling, association with celebrities, icons or famous people, and using shock and awe! For example, just mentioning Oprah will get people looking and listening.
It doesn't matter what you think about Oprah, if you like her or not, just mentioning Oprah will arouse curiosity and get people to click on your Oprah related pic. And guess what ... some will buy whatever you are selling, as long as it has Oprah printed on it.
The same is true with Obama. Since Barack Obama was elected the first black President, everything with Obama on it is hot!
In the above cases I am just mentioning the names of celebrities or showing their images. You did know that you can use the image of the President of the United State on T-shirts, did you not? But you can't use the images of other celebrities like Oprah Winfrey unless you get her permission first. As for the name, "Oprah," she doesn't own that yet!
Using celebrities to endorse and market products is quite common and effective. Indeed, the usage of celebrities presented as false authorities figures constitutes a logical fallacy, but they work in marketing not because they make sense or are always qualified to pitch a product or service; but rather, because they appeal to our emotions. If you learn that one point, to make emotional appeal in your marketing campaigns, they your sales and profits should increase. I actually took Logic 101 in college and remember this bit of logic from my studies. It has made me a pretty penny over time. Appealing to people's emotions, to their senses, and saying that a product will give satisfaction works. It works because men often don't shop so much with their brains as with their penises! Women, they shop looking for phallic symbols, whether they are aware of it or not ... or for other forms of emotional satisfaction and fulfillment. That's why chocolate will always be popular, even if it is chocolate covered cockroaches one is marketing. Note: this design is, of course, more about shock and awe than just appealing to one's appetite. :-)
But I'm not sure chocolate will ever be more popular than I Love Wieners!, as just as a picture is worth a thousand words, making a sexual appeal and subliminally seducing shoppers will always result in more sales than appealing to one's appetite for food -- even when it is food one is marketing.
It is also why a pretty, well endowed girl, holding a pizza pie and saying, "Eat me," will be noticed more than just a pie alone. Everyone knows she isn't just talking about munching down the pizza; she want something more from you!
Even though the majority of people may not buy and wear provocative gifts and apparel, a design like this could sell a lot of pizzas. Also such designs drive traffic to a store site, and hence one's shop may benefit by including provocative advertising designs, even if one's bread and butter consists of marketing more conservative designer merchandise.
Thus if you want to boost your sales, use emotional appeal in your marketing campaigns. You don't have to be creating art or design material that relates to sex or sexuality, but if you use sex appeal in your marketing campaigns, the products you create will get more attention and hence have the potential to sell better than if you do not use emotional appeal. This why you see burgers being sold using sexy super models licking their fingers, spraying themselves with water or biting into a juicy hunk of meat while a commentator says, "More than just a piece of meat!" The sex appeal gets your attention even though it has nothing to do with burgers. That exactly why I use a sexy naked lady along with the slogan "Don't Forget Your Shirt," as a banner to drive traffic to my shop. You would be amazes at how many people can't resist clicking upon a naked woman!
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Now get your mind out of the gutter and pay attention. Stop looking at the pretty girl. Listen! This is very important. If you want to market your work, whatever the nature of your work, and to sale more products and make bigger profits, you need to not only appeal to people's emotions, but you need to have a "Unique Selling Proposition." That is to say that whatever you are marketing, you need to identify and point out its unique qualities to the consumer. Plus, you need to target your marketing toward the people who will be most interested in whatever it is that you are selling. If you do these two things, your sales will increase.
Let me give you an example. If you make art or designs related to dogs, you need to market these to people who love dogs. That means that you need to target pet owners, dog breeders, and other canine fanciers. One way to do this is to create a web site related to dog fanciers. That is exactly what Project K-9 and Petporium does. Make a website which provides educational or other information of interest to a specific audience and market your designer creations on that website. Repeat the process for any other specific designer merchandise you may create.
 I Love Fireflies |
 I Love Butterflies |
 I Love Spiders |
 Save The Slug! |
For example, in addition to being an artist/designer, I am a naturalist and have a passion for the study and photography of fireflies, butterflies, spiders, slugs and other insects and arthropods. Hence I publish my work on-line and at the same time market my related creative expressions on the various websites I produce. This is a great way to target market the exact people who share my interests. You can do the same by making websites that relate to whatever special interests or hobbies about which you are most passionate.
This concludes On-line Marketing 101 -- Blowing The Competition Away: How to destroy your websters and win the on-line marketing war! I hope you will be able to benefit and to profit from this advice. There are about 24 more chapters to this course. What, did you think I was going to give you the whole GD text book for free? :-) No way! But you an make a donation and support my work by clicking on the link below. If enough people support my work I may post the completed course on-line -- or at least make it available via POD on CD.
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