Kickstart My Art

As an entrepreneur, and I guess I use that term way too much but it works for me, I’ve spent countless hours entertaining tens of people with content.   (That wasn’t a misprint, literally tens of people have enjoyed my work.)   But, as much as I’m in it for the joy of creating and sharing my work with others, I’m in it to make money, too.  This blog, my shirts, and videos are aimed at having fun with media and design but also serve to make money for the purpose of proving that I can make money doing these things.  Now, I have my 9-5 job and that’s fine.   It affords me to be able to indulge in these other ventures to the point where I don’t have to work hard at producing content and that has probably been a detriment to my profit margin.  I guess it depends on what your definition of success is.

But, as a shirt designer, blogger, and YouTuber, I’ve found that I’ve had to reinvest a substantial amount of my profits back into the business to try and expand.    Granted, it’s all spent on games and gadgets, but that’s not that point.   I’ve made it this far without having to rely on the kindness of strangers to just hand over money.   Yes, strangers do hand over money, but there is an immediate transaction of money for goods.   I’ve never just asked blindly for funds and there’s a couple of reasons why.

The Risk

I’m not a huge risk taker when it comes to the business side of M.A.M.S.  I’ve operated under the guise that if I cannot make a profit from what I am doing, I won’t do it.  That was the model I’ve followed for paying $50-$60 a year for a premium CafePress Shop, pretty much a necessity if you want to make any real money without social media traction of your own.  If and when I stop making a profit above that overhead, I will quit it.  There are other non-paying sites that can do just as much if not more in terms of products, but CafePress holds the majority of the marketplace among Print On Demand sites.

Even YouTube isn’t that risky of a proposition, even though I’ve made all of $2.00 from videos I’ve produced since January.   The reason being is that I am doing basically what I would do anyway, I’m just filming and producing it.   I’d still play the games.  I’d still need the hard drive space.  So, I’m not too worried about that.     Still, I would probably get more views and more traction if I spent more on my work, but I don’t have the capacity to do it that way.   This is one of the things I can’t stand about businesses, especially ones I’ve worked for in the past.   They see this all encompassing need to spread themselves into so many categories that they can’t manage their base.  Soon, quality across all platforms suffer because they are more concerned with profits and market share that they don’t see that for every new customer they gain for one shiny piece of crap, they lose three loyal ones who bought their goods when it was quality stuff.

The Results

Here’s the meat and potatoes of my post, Kickstarter.   Now, don’t get me wrong, I have friends that have used Kickstarter to fund their projects and I give them all the credit in the world.  Me, I just don’t see me spending effort and making promises I may not be able to keep in the long run.   With Kickstarter or other crowd funding platforms you ask for the money on the promise that if you get funded you can then give some sort of return on their investment.   Usually, it’s in the form of a copy of whatever you’re trying to get funded but sometimes you promise more for higher amounts of pledges.   Because I would simply be funding the promise of producing more of the same content with better infrastructure, I can only offer what I already do, now.  So, why would I try to entice people to give me money to do what I already do, now.   I would just be creating the sales, proactively.   Hey, that’s actually not a bad idea.   A Kickstarter project that simply aims to sell what you already sell, a “PRE-SALE” if you will.

The Negative

Still, Kickstarter is a great way to use social media to get the word out on your venture.  What I don’t like is how it’s become a tool for people who shouldn’t need to use it.  Case in point,  Zach Braff recently held a Kickstarter project to fund a film he was trying to make, called Wish I Was Here.  It’s not that I don’t like Zach Braff, I just don’t see the need for someone who is worth $22 million dollars to hijack a platform that is primarily for those without the funds themselves to produce a movie.  Yes, the budget is set around $6 million dollars, nearly a quarter of Braff’s net worth, but it’s not like Braff is an unknown filmmaker or actor.   And the cast has some talent in it.  Why not secure producers in your own backyard.  

Also, don’t get me started on Spike Lee using Kickstarter.   The director is trying to raise $1.25 million, of which he’s $700k into for a film.   The dude is worth $40 million.    I also can’t stand that he’s remaking Old Boy, but that’s another story.   George Lucas built an Empire with his own money.  He was smart.  Granted, he went back to the well one too many times and ruined it, but that’s beside the point.   Kevin Smith maxed out credit cards to make Clerks and that worked out fine.   I guess that’s the “Risk” thing I’m talking about.   However, using Kickstarter, you’re not risking your own money.  If it doesn’t get funded, it doesn’t get funded and all that money goes back to the people who have pledged.   If you’re unlucky, you may have a diva or two that will be pissed that they put other projects on hold, with the promise that your project would get funded, and then proceed to sue you for lost wages.   I’m sure that kind of insurance gets baked into the contract.

I just don’t think that celebrities should be using Kickstarter to fund things that upstart filmmakers and artists rely on to produce their work.   It’s trendy and hip to be a project, I get that, but you are making millions of dollars a year.  You’re neither hip nor trendy.  You’re rich.   You’re also diluting the waters of what was considered a great place for people to collaborate.    

It’s like when you find a great little restaurant or bar that no one goes to.   You walk in and own the place.  After awhile, your drinks and appetizers are already ordered before you sit down.  We had a place like this in college.   It was quiet and laid back with no hint of jocks or drunken frat asshats.  Then word got out and the place got noticed.  Granted, due to various infractions by other establishments that forced them to close, our quiet little tavern became the only port in the storm on campus.  I went back about ten years after college and the place reeked of cheap beer and Axe cologne.   Christmas lights and lattice work destroyed the ornate mahogany walls and there were crappy bands and DJs spinning Jock Jams 13.   It was a mess.   It was ruined.  That’s what Kickstarter will become.     It will be the house in Beetlejuice that gets renovated after the Maitland’s have died and the Deetzes have moved into it.

So, while I applaud my friends that have used Kickstarter to their credit, I hate to think how it will look in three to five years when Justin Bieber starts a project to fund his new tour, Douchebag 2016. 

The AngryCast update - Mongo Smashes and Build It

Part 2 of the series, “Mongo Smashes: Minecraft” has been up on YouTube since last weekend and for the two of you who are actually wondering,  “How it’s going?” I’ll tell you.

Slow.

Mongo Smashes: Minecraft Part 2
Hole in the Wall

As a new YouTuber, I do what everyone does; watch the ticks slowly go up by one each day.

Some days I wonder:

“Did I add to that?” 

“Did the number change?”

“Should I make more?”

Well, the answer to number three is, of course you make more.  I have five more episodes ready to go.  This experiment is only a failure if we give up.  We’re still only at $37 in costs. The path to Internet infamy was not done simply by Harlem Shaking it.  We're looking for sustained interest, here, not overnight sensation.

So, expect Part 3 to be up this weekend, along with at least one more “Build It” video.  Here is the latest:

Build It: Modern Empire Logo

The Beacon Shrine Part 3

The last part of the Beacon Shrine build is now up on YouTube.

It took forever to edit and post.  Here’s the breakdown of how that worked.

I recorded all of the footage President’s Day weekend using FRAPS, which I purchased. 

Then, I edited each episode down to length using Windows Live Movie Maker.  The first was about five minutes and the next two clocked in at 14 minutes and change. 

Then, I added in narration using Windows Sound Recorder.  After that was done, I saved it all into WMV format and then opened a new Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM) project and dropped music in from MachinimaSound.

Total financial burden to produce YouTube videos to date:  $37.

Pros:

• Cheap
• Fun
• Creative

Cons:

• Cheap
• Time Consuming
• Frustrating
• Resource heavy

I used cheap twice because for some reason, my videos don’t have the same quality as others I’ve seen.   I haven’t figured out if it’s my FRAPS record settings or me continually making the project into a video file in order to add another layer of audio.   In any given project, WLMM only lets you add in one separate audio track.

I know a lot of other YouTubers use FRAPS to record Minecraft but not sure if they use WLMM to edit and post.  I just saw Sony Vegas 12 on Amazon for $60.  That would push my budget for an unproven venture to just about $100.  May have to mull that one over.

The other frustrating thing is that it takes forever to work in WLMM.  Sometimes it gets hung up and I have to wait for it to stop idling.   The conversion to a video file is also tedious and posting to YouTube could take a couple of hours at least.   I’ve been up late, set a video to publish and went to bed.  Then, finished off annotations and descriptions in the morning.

Now, my biggest problem is doing the actual content.  In my previous post, I stated I had a backlog of footage to edit and post.  I have three episodes done and won’t have to record new ones to work on until almost April.   I left off after recording for one day and now I have to look at the footage to see where the hell I was when I was playing.  I did some stuff on my own and recorded it for another video and I don’t remember the narrative I was working on at this point.

Also, it seems that the server I was playing on is possibly shutting down.   I can understand.  It takes money and time to run a server.   From what I gathered these were high school kids, so as the weather gets nicer, they probably have less time to devote to it.  Sucks that I donated $10 to the server and then they started experiencing issues and possibly shutting down a month later.   I’ll remember that next time I’m on one.

Until then, I will keep going, tweaking the process and letting you know because I know you’re all just at the edge of your seats on this stuff.  ;)

The Beacon Shrine Part 2 and Mongo Smashes Episode 1

Anticipation is not something I’m good with, folks.   I’ve been sitting on at least two projects that are ready to go.  Well.  They are ready as they’ll ever be.

Last post, I talked about the jump to YouTube and with that I posted the first “Build It” video.  The second is now up on The Angry Cast channel.  I have one more left to edit and a surprise add on, as well.   Meanwhile, I’ve been recording footage for the “Mongo Smashes _____” series and one episode is in the can.  I don’t want to release it until I’ve finished the first Build It project.

Why?

Well, for one, I did the first video on President’s Day.  The second went up this past weekend.  That’s five days in between.   I want to have some level of consistency with releasing videos as to not build expectations… I know… Like there is any, right?  Still, when I first started the blog back in 2008, I posted five entries a week.  That lasted all of two months and then I backed down to three a week, sometimes less.   I don’t want to hit a deadline, just to hit a deadline.  My schedule isn’t set and I play when I can.  Editing sometimes takes hours, if not days.  I don’t want to post all I have, now and then go three weeks with nothing.  

The second issue is that the Build It series takes far longer to produce.     Me just playing a video game, badly, is fairly easy.    But to record a build, edit it, narrate it, add sound, and publish takes time and I’ve got footage for one more section of the Shrine I did, plus a walkthrough of the other buildings I did for the Modern Empire server.  I want to space those out along with regular videos. 

In essence, I’m creating a backlog of footage, so I can use a timed release method for publishing.   Slow and steady, folks.  It’s one of the rules I have set down for myself.

The others being:

Have fun or don’t do it. 

Fail early.  Fail often.

Put some time into it.   Add sound and titles.

Don’t be afraid to record lots and edit out the horrible parts where you ramble or derp.

With that, I give you Part 2 of the Beacon Shrine Build It Series.

That Whole Writing Thing I Was Going To Do

Last year, I made this grand proclamation that the state of Mongo, Angry. Mongo Smash! blog was one of in flux. I was losing the bandwidth to post with regular frequency in order to focus on other, more important obligations. However, I was going to concentrate that whole writing aspect into producing some original work in the form of an ebook, perhaps.

That’s still on the plate. I have not forgot about that. Still, I’ve run into several problems.

For one, time. I don’t have time to write out all that stuff. Truth is, I have the stories. I have PLENTY of stories. Whether they are good or not is up for debate. The material is there . Actually sitting down and writing it out is a bit harder. I’m already two chapters into a book that is most likely going to be the lead off title.

I was originally going to put up some nonfiction but my original plan was to see if I could actually sell something and make a profit without compromising my business model of being a lazy, cheap ass entrepreneur. Unfortunately, the material for that book is kind of dependent on others actually selling. Not to mention that the nonfiction business related book is a static view of an otherwise constantly changing and evolving state of mind. What methods I document for today’s market may change tomorrow, rendering the book passé and not worth reading. The point is to generate content that is readable and adaptable in any year.

That’s why fiction works. It’s not meant to be a treatise of what is actually going on at the moment. It’s left to be interpreted by the reader and good fiction is something that can be written a thousand years ago and still speak to the nature of humanity and the odds we face today.

You also have to take into account your audience. Because I’m a procrastinating slowpoke, I could write an epic novel about the supernatural, vampires, or swords and sorcery elements and it may eventually get finished after the whole craze surrounding those genres have worn out their appeal. Once again, passé.

That’s why I like the t-shirt business. It’s not hard for me to knock out a pretty decent design for a current event or meme while it’s still relevant. But those trends will die out and others will follow and I can keep coming up with stuff because the turnaround is minimal. Writing for a blog has that advantage, too, though the ability to generate a profit from it is limited.

With writing novels, there is more planning involved and I want to stay true to my ideas and my process without having to say, “Hmmm, zombie love stories are trending on Amazon. I better bang something out by the end of next week for people to gobble up.” I don’t work that fast or in that manner when it comes to storytelling.

I’m always reminded of the production triangle when it comes to things like these. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s a triangle with three sides, or areas, representing the choices available for a production or business project:

• I want it done Cheap
• I want it done Fast
• I want it done Well

The Production Triangle by mongo, angy. mongo smash.



You are only allowed to pick two. It makes sense, really. The same goes with writing. If you want it done cheap and fast, it will be crappy and riddled with errors. If you want it done fast and well, you going to have to pay more (as in time away from your job to work on it resulting in costing you more… or a publisher paying an ungodly amount for quality work, now.). If you want it done well and at a lower cost, you better be prepared to wait a while for it to be done.

The writing I hope to make money off of will probably fall into the category of “Done Cheap and Well”. Since I am lazy and a cheap ass.

A second problem is content. I have the ideas. I just haven’t got my arms around on the best way to present it. Do I write a short story and sell it for a buck, taking in around 30% of the profit? Do I plan out an epic series and hope that there is enough interest beyond the first book? How long should it be? Do I write a collection of short stories, perhaps with a common theme or interconnected to each other?

The work I’m currently two chapters in to writing is a basic haunted house story. I’m not trying to go and reinvent the genre. It’s simply a story that I had formulated based off of a weird dream I had a few years back. Consider it, Inception… lol.

What about marketing? Since I am planning on doing this on my own, I have my own marketing tools to rely on for some much needed buzz. Do I release the first chapter on my blog and then provide a link to download the rest of the book through Amazon or Barnes and Noble? What if it sucks? People may read that and not want to buy it. Then again, if I’m worried about that then I should feel really crappy if someone were to buy one of my books, sight unseen, and then write a scathing review. I may fool some people into spending their money but word of mouth will kill my chance at making a run at writing.

Lastly, it comes down to sustainability. DO I REALLY WANT THIS? Well, of course I do. If I can prove that even a hack like me can make a few dollars off of a book, then anyone can. But that doesn’t bode well for the industry I so often bash for having no originality or quality control. “Hey, look at me. I’m a complete and utter jackass and made money at writing.” If that works, I need to improve. I need to do more. I will be forced to stay on top of a little itty bitty experiment I tried to so if I could replicate the success of being a cheap ass, lazy shirt designer. If I can’t keep up with that and the time spent just to manufacturer a small amount of revenue is counterproductive to me being able to hold down a full time job, shirt design business, and family, then I run the risk of failing somewhere else, if I haven’t already.

I will suffer from what most businesses suffer from in the world, inability to manage what works. Companies that do one thing well, can generate a good profitability when that’s all they have to focus on in the course of their day. When they start trying to take on more than they can handle, the quality of their core business erodes. Think back to the triangle. Quality vs. Money vs. Time. But in this case, it’s Quality vs. Offering vs. Money.

Do you want to increase your offering while maintaining quality? You will have to increase the amount of money you spend to manage those ideas.


If you want to expand your offering but cut back on costs, you will lose quality.

And if you want to maintain low overhead while maintaining the quality of your work, you need to focus on a core business and not worry about the white space.

So, in closing, I guess that while I figure out how to achieve what I want, I will need to prioritize that list of three items and figure out where I need to focus my attention. Hopefully, I can manage to figure it all out before the ebook industry tanks like when I tried to push Mongo out onto MySpace and it all went pffft.

OK, I’ve babbled on long enough and I didn’t even earn a cent for all that. You’re welcome… I guess.

Homeless Man Behind Bar Finds Home Behind Bars

Don’t think about that title for more than ten seconds or blood will shoot out of your ears. Last month I spoke about the greatest case of life imitating art when a homeless guy broke into a closed down bar and reopened it, serving around 30 people a day before being busted by authorities. By all accounts, the tale of Travis Lloyd Kevie would have made a spectacular 80s movie in which I envisioned him being played by Michael Keaton. Down on his luck, Kevie gets hired to help clean out a local watering hole that suffers financial disaster. He breaks into the bar one night, turns on the “OPEN” sign and begins serving liquor to patrons. Starting off with a six pack, he reinvests his profits into the business by buying more alcohol. Two weeks later the authorities step in and shut him down.

Now, he’s been sentenced to 15 days in jail and a fine of $160 for selling liquor without a license. He’s also been ordered to steer clear of the bar unless he’s lawfully employed there. So, wait, he served around 30 people a day for 15 days and was made to pay a fine of $160. What about the large sum of money and alcohol that was seized by police? Does he get to keep that? That’s a little bit of profit for his trouble.

I say, he should sell his tale for enough money to buy a liquor license and lease the building from the original owner. Then he can lawfully operate the business with a liquor license and job title, bar manager. If I had the money, I’d buy the rights to his story and help him on his way. If anything, this latest development gives me the ending I was looking for when I first wrote about this story. Mark my words, this guy’s story isn’t over yet… as long as it doesn’t end up a made for TV movie, I’ll be happy.

Homeless Man Breaks Into Bar Starts Selling Booze Makes Great 80s Movie

What you call a crime, I call great entrepreneurial spirit. The story goes like this. A local bar closes and a homeless man gets hired to help clean out the place. One night he breaks into the bar and instead of doing any burgling, he throws an “OPEN” sign up in the window and starts selling alcohol. First, he runs across the street and buys a six pack of beer and immediately sells that. Then he starts using the profits to buy more alcohol and then sell it. He starts to gain more patrons, upwards of 30 a day, and it all comes crashing down when he gets busted. Why? Word got out that the bar reopened. He was even interviewed and everything. The kicker… he was a former bronco rider who was estranged from his family.

Think of this, recently, there was a story about a teen who turned an old cell phone into a Porsche and it wasn’t an alien being come to Earth to protect the All Spark. He traded up from the cell phone on Craigslist.

When I heard this story, I was immediately reminded about the One Red Paper Clip story where a guy turned a red paper clip into a home. I may have to try this but I wonder where I could go with it. I’m sure if I head over to Craigslist I’ll find thousands of items in the barter section. Each one probably posted by someone trying to duplicate the success of the "One Red Paper Clip" and "Cell Phone Turned Porsche".

What you call a weird story in the news, I call a great 80s movie plot.
The spirit of the entrepreneur is a staple of 80s movies, especially ones that were based on real events. Look at films like Night Shift and KidCo, a favorite in the rotation on HBO, growing up. Then you have the more familiar films like Secret Of My Succe$s and the more recent, Accepted, to play with the themes that are in line with this story. That got me to thinking. This entire news entry has the basis for a run of the mill 80s movie.

Look at all the elements it has in common. Down on his luck guy hired to do a menial task and then gets the idea to go into business for himself, albeit in an illegal manner. I can see it now. A local homeless man gets a temporary job cleaning up a closed down bar before the owner leaves town. Our hero is standing inside this empty bar, sweeping up. Realizing that the job is done and he will be back on the streets with no paycheck he decides to break into the bar and squat there as a resident. He invites two other friends to spend the night off the streets. One, is a “Hooker with a heart of gold” type who really wants to change her ways. The other is a Vietnam Vet who hasn’t been able to hold down a job because of his PTSD.

He turns on the lights as they all enter to make preparations for sleeping. Along with the interior lights coming on, the “OPEN” sign lights up attracting a patron. The unsuspecting or at least uninformed patron sits at the bar and our hero reaches into his own personal cooler to grab a beer and promptly sells it to the patron who pays him for the beer as well as tips him for the service. He leaves and our hero suddenly gets an idea. He then runs across the street to a six pack shop and uses his newly acquired profit to purchase more alcohol. Soon, he has his vet buddy working as a bar back and cook while the hooker works as a hostess and cocktail waitress. You can even include bits like the hooker counting her tips stating that this is the most money she’s made without taking off her clothes.

The second act picks up in the middle of their success as we see them make improvements to the décor, done in a inspirational musical montage, pantomimed with a host of clichéd sight gags involving power tools and paint. Our hero has also hired more homeless friends to work at his bar. He hires a cook who is used to working with road kill as a menu and promotes his vet buddy to Head Of Security. He hires another bartender in the form of an out of work juggler from a travelling circus. He even brings in the stereotypical, out of work and on the street blues guitarist to do play sets, revitalizing his career as a musician. He also starts to attract the suspicion of the local liquor control board. The fact that he’s made it this far is only helped if this actually happened in the 80s. As he continues to see success he starts to develop a relationship with the hooker. The last line of the news article states that the man was estranged from his family and this could be used as a subplot where the hooker finds out he has a wife and rebuffs his affection.

Then we get to the all too important and often seen conflict for the gang. A local orphanage, where our hero grew up, is in dire need of funds. Wanting to repay the sisters for their kindness, all those years ago, he enters the bar, and himself into a bartending competition which includes flair [juggler] and speed pouring events. Just before the competition is set to go, they get busted and he is promptly thrown in jail. Violating several laws, including breaking and entering, serving alcohol without a license and several others he appears before the judge on the morning of the competition. Without bar sponsorship, even the juggler cannot compete, so they are pretty much screwed. At his grand jury trial, his inept court ordered defense attorney fumbles his way through the entire proceedings which leaves a trial date set for the same day as the competition.

During the trial, everything looks bleak but the hooker ends up forgiving our hero and gathers all of the employees to act as character witnesses at his trial. The gag is that, at first, the flood of unseemly people into the court room, such as hookers, homeless people, and other members of the Untouchable-like crowd appear to be the proverbial nail in our hero’s coffin. However, each one gets on the stand and explains how their life was in ruins and our hero offered them a job, a place to stay, and a chance at a better life. Now, we could have the twist where the jury finds him guilty and the judge changes the ruling or some other breath holding moment, but in the end, somehow, he gets acquitted or is found guilty with time served, probation or some other form of commuted sentenced and he’s able to compete with some kind of bar sponsorship and they go on to win the contest allowing him to save the orphanage. Of course, success is short lived as he and all his employees are now homeless and jobless, again.

In the end, whether or not he is able to open the bar again is up in the air but, in my mind, I see him opening up another business, say a temporary employment agency that finds jobs for all his friends. He ends up with the hooker and even a home with a white picket fence.

Of course, being that I put this in the 80s, you’d have to have an 80s cast from the 80s.

Our Hero – Michael Keaton / Mark Harmon / Steve Guttenberg / John Ritter
Our Veteran – John Goodman / Gary Busey / Bruce McGill / Jim Belushi
Our Hooker – Karen Allen / Shelly Long / Fran Drescher / Carole Davis / Geena Davis
Our Cook – Vincent Schiavelli (only one choice there)
Our Bad Guy – Dabney Coleman / Charles Grodin
Our Juggler – Bill Irwin (Mr. Noodle from Sesame Street)
Our Blues Singer – Buddy Guy or John Lee Hooker
Your Honor – Harry Morgan / Wilford Brimley / Harold Gould

Ok, must get out my big old typewriter [clack clack clack], chomp on my big stinky cigar [puff puff wheeze], and write this masterpiece. Then I will have to get a DeLorean equipped with a Flux Capacitor in order to go back in time and make this film.  Yet, if I were to be in Hollywood and make this film, now.  I would not only set it in the 80s.  I would write it and film it like an 80s movie.  Think, Wet Hot American Summer style.

Oh, it could so work.  Where's that extra plutonium I had lying around?

Earth Day 2009

All you tree loving, granola crunching, left winging, and no bra swinging hippies, guess what? It's your big day! I come from the meat eating, light leaving on, capitalist, carbon Bigfoot brigade and I'm here to help you celebrate the one day of the year where we all do our part to save the world. Then for the other 364 1/4, days we muck all it up, worse.

Actually, I try to do my part to help out. I replace burnt out bulbs with the energy efficient ones among of things. Of course, all for personal gain. Being green not only can help the planet but keep more money out of the economy and into my dead cow hide wallet. With that being said, I give you my offering for Earth Day from my CafePress store. Have fun and happy Earth Day, Week, Month, Year, whatever.

The Design


Organic White T-Shirt Featuring the Design

Zombey Road

Since the first day I opened the M.A.M.S shop on CafePress, I’ve been trying to figure out how to capitalize on my region’s affinity for zombies and zombie culture. The most famous films shot in the area are of course, Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. While, Land of the Dead was set in Pittsburgh, the film was shot in Canada. Kevin Smith even filmed, Zack & Miri Make a Porno in Pittsburgh, complete with fictional hockey team, The Monroeville Zombies, in the movie. Me, I am a cinemaniac and have an affinity for human brains….kidding. So, of course, I have a section dedicated to Zombie Ware on my CaféPress store. As of right now, there are only four designs. The Zombie Food Pyramid, Moods of the Living Dead, Brains!, and my newest design, Zombey Road. This last design was a labor of love as it took five minutes to conceive and two months to actually design.

The basis for Zombey Road is simple. I mixed Abbey Road with walking zombies. Simple, right? Not on your life. I did everything I could to make it work. Suddenly, it all became clear. Silhouette it! Then the features would be easy to hide among the shadows. Not to mention, there’s a great contrast of the bright crosswalk strips from the famous Abbey Road intersection to the black shuffling shapes moving across the street in search of their prey, which in this case, would be John Lennon. Ironic, as he was the first Beatle to die and here the position in which he held on the album cover, first, is the only human left….or is it?

In any case, since I like to double up my efforts, I need a dark shirt design as well which also presented another problem. How do I break up the lines between the legs of the zombies and those famous crosswalk strips? Again, it was easy. I needed to retain the white lines, so I made them an outline. For the inverted design that would appear on the dark shirts, I decided that I had to, again, keep the white stripes and erased an outline around the legs and feet, giving the zombies, the familiar gait of the Beatles.



After fiddling around with different design styles for two months, I finally nailed it this weekend. I think it came out rather well. In all, it took me two hours of zoomed in erasing to finish up the images. They went up on Easter Sunday and no the irony is not lost on me. After all, Jesus is patient zero in zombie popular culture, right? Of course, my customers, as few as they are, will be the judge, jury, and executioner on this. I’ll either be praised or crucified.

ILVTOFU

Vanity plates are the ultimate sign of driver individuality. Yes, bumper stickers can capture an idea and display it for the world to see on a 10x3 piece of paper but vanity plates are registered with the proper authorities. Sometimes, even the most innocent of letter combinations are deemed offensive by the DMV.

Apparently, the Colorado DMV has a thing against vegans. A 38 year old mother wanted to show off her love of TOFU by registering the vanity plate, ILVTOFU. Unfortunately, the DMV considers the letters F and U together to be bad form. In other words, the plate looks like it reads I love to F&$# U or FU as an abbreviation for sex. In her defense, she says her whole family LVTOFO. So, we're either dealing with sick bastards or people who people who like sex. Yes, go ahead and read that sentence again, I'll wait. I'm of course being sarcastic. I understand the idea that people may be against eating meat.

That is, if they aren't being vegan to be trendy. If you don't like meat for the taste, that's fine. If you don't like meat because of the treatment of animals, that's fine, too. But if you don't eat meat because meat is murder or because you won't eat anything with a face, then I say, get over yourself. I don't know how many times I've had someone say to me, "Meat is murder," and then they stomp their leather shoed foot to emphasize their disgust at me with a Whopper hanging out of my mouth. Does not a potato have eyes? Does not a corn have ears? Just because vegetables don't have a mouth doesn't mean a carrot doesn't scream when you yank it by the hair from the ground and peel its skin from its body. Then you drown it in dip and eat it piece by piece. Oh, the horror.

Look, I am a meat eater. My father grew up on a farm and he raises cattle, still. Every so often, he goes out and says...."Mmmmmm that one!" Now, while I love beef, I will not do that, myself. I don't go to the Red Lobster and say, "Take off the rubber bands, I'm going in." I go to the store, where the beef is already processed, or to a fast food restaurant, where the food is possibly devoid of meat, all together. In any case, I don't do the killing, I just do the grilling. I don't get caught up on the politics of chicken rights, I just love me some wings in sauce. Could that chicken have been kept with five other chickens in one cage under horrible conditions? It's possible. But I didn't kill it and I didn't ask anyone to. I just went to the store and picked up the package. If I didn't, someone else will.

Now, I love animals, especially on bread.....kidding. I have four cats and every time I have Chinese food they look at me a little weird. Seriously, though, I could never personally harm an animal. I have rescued countless dogs and cats and got them new homes or returned them to their owners. To know that in some places, animals being raised for food are kept in horrible conditions and suffer greatly for the almighty dollar is despicable. But once it's at the store, the story is over. Just because I boycott a place of business like KFC or wherever, doesn't mean they'll go out of business. It just means I won't eat their chicken. You can't stop evil corporations at the end of the product life cycle. If you want to nail them for bad behavior, nail them at the top before the chicken does the one legged shuffle off to Buffalo.

And me, I will continue my fight against the all oppressive Department of Motor Vehicles by selling out and capitalizing on someone's 15 minutes, by making a shirt and selling it. That's right. This isn't a rant, it's a marketing opportunity. Now you can get the banned plate on a shirt or a bumper sticker. Here's the Colorado version.

And soon, they'll be more, like my home state of Pa.

So, I guess I'm a meat eater, and a blood sucker. Well, that's just fine by me.

Habitat For Two Manatees

A quick Friday post touting one of many designs you will find on M.A.M.S., the store!

I love me a pun or some wordplay and this one has an interwoven complexity to it. I did some reading up on the Manatee. This lovable marine creature isn’t so much threatened by predators but more by its curiosity and love of shallow waters off the coast. Unfortunately it’s not unheard of to see a manatee with some parts missing. They are hit by boats or caught by propellers on a usual basis tearing their fins and tails. Sometimes the poor things get sliced open causing their organs to spill out. Ok, I have to stop with the gruesome imagery here….that’s just sad.

Anyway, to switch gears, grinding all the way, here is the latest design to hit the Pop Cult Couture section of M.A.M.S. I’ve had a couple people really get a chuckle over this one and my wife, who is the biggest supporter of “My husband is a dork” movement, didn’t roll her eyes at this one.

CafePress Shopkeeping Now It Is For Real.

I have officially ended my free trial period and am now a full time Premium Shopkeeper, that is according to my email that states I’ve just been charged $59.95. What does that mean? I have money in my account….thankfully. It also means I am on the hook for $5.00 every month. As a basic shopkeeper I was getting free use of my shop to create and promote one design per article (shirt, mug, button). Now, for my monthly fee, I am able to create and produce several designs for the same article, customize my storefront, and create sections and sub sections for better organization of my designs. To top it all off, I am able to create a product line and import it into another section so that I can change the image, description, name, and price in bulk. Not bad for the price of a Caramel Macchiato at Starbucks.

Since opening my basic shops back in 2006, I have managed to sell four items in the span of two years. Since opening my premium shop at the beginning of March, I’ve sold just as many items in the span of two weeks. It doesn’t take a Fortune 500 CEO to see that membership has its privileges. Then again, I did more work in two weeks than I did in those first two years. Paying for something tends to motivate you versus getting it for free. Granted, with what I’ve made, I do not have to dip into my own pocket for four months. Hopefully, my stream of sales will be steady enough to show a bit of profit by the end of the year so that I don’t have to spend my own money. I’ve already made a deal with myself that if I don’t make enough to at least cover operating expenses in the first year, I’ll close up shop.

Now, if I close up shop what happens to all my stuff? I already planned for that event. If I close up shop, I will move all of my designs into basic shops. That means I will have one basic shop for every design. You see why premium is better? I would have to manage multiple sites and multiple marketing streams. It also becomes problematic because in some cases I would have to double up on a site in order to have the same image with a different background. Confused?

Let’s take this design for example, iPoot. Ok, so I am not above doing fart jokes. Who is? It’s a funny subject. I’m sure you recognize the context of the picture. It has a dark green background which shows up nice on white shirts. However, on the dark shirts it becomes a problem. To deal with this issue, I created three more images with the same theme but different color schemes. There’s the transparent with just the picture in black and lettering in white. This allows you to utilize the different colored shirts as the background colors in the various ads you’ve probably seen. In essence the entire shirt becomes a colored background like the small box around the original image. Then there is the inverted transparent image with no background color and all black letters and picture. This works great for buttons and magnets that aren’t exactly square as well as apparel that have colored sleeves or use the image on the pocket like golf shirts, light colored shirts, and zipper apparel. To maximize the possibilities I used two different images on the same shirts that offered multiple colors, including black. On one shirt, I removed black as an option for one of the designs and on the other included all of them. If I revert back to a basic shop format, I would need to have two different shops for one style of shirt. Believe me, it is a lot of work to maintain separate sections on one site.

So, what has been the biggest problem I’ve had as a shopkeeper? I’ve had two which are kind of number one and two in my book. I think the biggest problem is the amount of time that goes into organization, not to mention how those changes affect searching. When I started out, I had about 10 designs which all kind of sat in my main storefront. That became rather unorganized and just kind of sitting there. I wanted to be able to have people use the store with certain ideas in mind. “I’m at Mongo’s store, not what? Oh, I see a bunch of different designs with nothing to tie them together. Bye bye.”

I went back and created sections. Designs that were inspired by Video Game Themes, Television Themes, Movie Themes, Pop Culture Themes, Zombie Themes, and Mongo Themed items to promote the blog. Within each of those sections are designs based off of the theme. Within each design section is all of the products with that design. Now, when people come to my store, they can decide what type of design they want based off of the theme and then they can see all the products that contain that design. It also serves to allow them to see a bigger picture of the design and then they can see what it looks like shrunk down to the size of the image on the product.

Searching from the main CafePress site has nothing to do with the organization of my items in my store and just allows anyone to search for a design and then see mine in the list of results. That’s where my second issue arises. I usually do a quick search for the idea I have to see if it has already been created. This keeps me from copying other people or gives me the opportunity to see how my design can be an improvement on someone else’s. It’s not copying because my thought process never used their design as a basis just as a comparison. If I feel mine is better suited, I will create it. If I don’t, I’m not going to waste the time designing the artwork and then competing with an established design.

However, if I see a lot of themes playing out, I will consider mine to be listed among them. Different designs, different logos, similar concepts. For instance, I am an animal lover. I have four cats, how can I not be one? Anyway, I saw a button a few years ago that parodied the “I Heart Something” shirts. Instead of the letter “I” and the graphical depiction of the Valentine Heart it was the letter “I” and the graphical representation of a playing card Club Suit and then a picture of a baby seal. In essence, “I Club Seals.” Crude and possibly offensive, but a clever take on the whole “I heart” genre of designs.

Oh, come on, how can you be that offended by that? I’m not advocating poaching and whaling and all that horrible behavior. I’m just making light of situation. Geez. Where was I?

Right, what I don’t like about being a Shopkeeper. Designing is tough. Anybody can just slap a bunch of words on a shirt, or even a picture that represents words. but to truly think up clever or unique designs takes talent and time. Again, that’s why I do a preliminary search on any idea I come up with before I take the time to go and design it. The other problem with that is that sometimes when we attempt to parody or lampoon certain themes we tend to forget the policies put in place by the administrators of the site. For instance, I did two other silhouette iSomething type of designs. One lampooned Bernie Madoff with his facial likeness a silhouette and his white hair and white lapels from his shirt take the place of the headphones in most of those ads. I simply adorned the image with the word “ iStole.” If you do a search on Bernie Madoff there are currently 92 different designs based on him being a crook or part of Wall Street’s crookedness. Mine never names him in person nor shows his picture. The Content Usage Police nailed me for it. The reason was the “Right of Publicity clause makes it unlawful to use another's identity for commercial advantage without permission. A person's "identity" includes, for example, his look, voice, name, nickname, professional name, and other distinctive characteristics. For example, the "Right of Publicity prohibits you using the picture of a celebrity without authorization on your merchandise.” Now, I can totally be fine with that if I hadn’t seen so many instances of designs based off his likeliness. I opted to get rid of any physical resemblance to Madoff and go with the more obvious of referential parodies.

Another case of supposed infringement was another silhouette design with a drawing of the girl from Night of the Living Dead. Part of her face and the collar from her shirt is in white and the only words on the image is iHurt, which is the only line the character has in the movie. Ok, first off, I should probably stop doing silhouette designs. I get it. It’s a little dated. Secondly, the movie Night of the Living Dead is in the public domain. You can legally download it from some website. What happened was that Romero didn’t properly secure the rights back in the 1960’s and the film slipped into the public domain. When he and John Russo parted ways, later, it opened the door for countless non-canonical sequels, such as the Return of the Living Dead series and other bad “Dead” movies. So, the original is up for grabs. So, I did a search and found several designs based on her character from the movie. However, my design was once again nailed by the Content Police. Why? Their reasoning “Although the copyright might have expired you are still using the likeness of the actor which you cannot do unless they have provided you with an authorization for commercial resale.”

Again, I am willing to abide by that but since there are designs which utilize media stills from the movie, including the likeness of actors without their permission such as Judith O’Dea and Russell Streiner, I volleyed back showing examples and they still didn’t budge. The only saving grace to this is that the likeness in question belongs to Kyra Schon who sells stuff on CafePress from her website using her image as Karen Cooper. That’s why I didn’t fight it when they shut me down the second time. Still, there are a few out there with her likeness and the other cast members which infuriates me. I am not willing to jeopardize my store account because of this. That’s why I kind of classify this as the second ranked annoyance with CafePress.

Ok, so, that’s it for this long winded update. Stay tuned for more tales from the Shopkeeper.

CafePress Premium Store Updates

It has been an exhausting week. First off, today is the day of Mongo’s birth…..which I’ve been trying to fly under the radar with but still people find out and wish me a Happy Birthday. Not that I mind, but I try not to be too outgoing on this day because I may not be in a good mood and why dash someone’s well wishes with my wishy washy well being?

That being said, my wife thinks that I am obsessed with the new store. Well, it’s hard to get up and running, especially during a trial period, so that you can maximize any selling opportunities before they start charging you for your premium store.

On a positive note, I sold another shirt. This little number was inspired by those Spencer Gifts tees with 13 different pictures depicting an act or emotion of the character like Anger, Hunger, Happy, etc. Mix that with the Zombie theme and you basically get the same picture for each mood.

I had to include ennui as it is just too funny to think of a zombie that way.

Now, I added that design on March 3rd and within 2 days, I sold one. Again, I don’t make that much off of each shirt, but it helps boost the visibility of the design early on and will maybe generate more sales. It came from the “Marketplace” which means someone searched a keyword that led them to my shirt, rather than they stumbled into my store and bought something off the rack, as it were.

In that regard, I’ve done some rework on the store, finally. I used the basic template and structure to get things up and running, but as I add designs and products for those designs, I find myself having a hard time managing all these products in one place. Now, being in the job I currently am, I am very conscious towards scrolling and clicks to the center of a tootsie pop. If someone searches CafePress for keywords that lead to my items, so be it, but that is only half the battle. You might also get people wandering into your store and the further they are from a selection means the further you are from a sale. If you have some good marketing skills you can drive customers into your store from outside CafePress’ website. In that case, the better your organization is, the better you can fight a two front battle.

When I first opened the store, I wasn’t thinking ahead. Oh, I’ll throw up a couple of designs and add some shirts and that’s it. But what I found was that you need to constantly be thinking and working ideas to see which produces results. If you have a niche store, selling unique designs, you probably don’t have to do as much work. Simply add a new design every so often, throw it on some products and wait. But, if your brain is constantly going, like mine, you want to try and capture everything. Hey, I just thought of a funny design, I need to go work on that. Soon, you have 15 designs. Oooh, I want that to be in different colors for the dark shirts. Take those 15 designs and multiply by that by how many colors you want to display.

Here’s a prime example. I have a store section called, “Insert Coin.” This is basically where I’ve put all my designs that are based on or inspired by video games. Being a child of the Atari Age, I thought it would be cool to capture some of those pop culture kernels of cheesy goodness and “make some shirt.” I had three ideas which I thought were clever. So far, I’ve only gotten to one. The other two are going to be awhile, because my first design spawned three more related designs and three colors for each.

Based off the old Adventure game, I put the dragons on individual shirts. Clean and simple recreations drawn on a transparent background should be easy. Let’s face it, the Atari was not that advanced, recreating a blocky dragon that looks like a duck is easy. However, there are three distinct dragons in the game, Yellow – Yorgle, Green – Grindle, and Red- Rhindle. Now, I have three colored designs on 15 or so shirts. Then, the other two designs I had for the dragons had to be produced the same way. Now, my section was very crowded with all these dragon shirts and my poor Keytar Hero shirts were lost in the shuffle. Rearranging the store to stagger the designs on each style shirt style caused any customer to have to scroll through a lot of dragons to find a Keytar Hero shirt that they may want.

Rhindle, the meanest of all three dragons.

This is where my work experience comes in to play. If I break up the section into designs. I can then have the front of the Insert Coin section showcase the individual design. If they click on that design, they can go to a section of those products and instead of scrolling through multiple designs, now they are scrolling through multiple products with the same design. In essence, I’ve created a basic shop all over again and imported it into a premium hierarchy. Remember, in your basic shops, you are allowed one design per product but multiple products per one design. I can’t believe I didn’t see this concept sooner. If I were to create different basic shops, like I used to, I would follow the same pattern. So, if I follow that model, managing my products will be a lot easier.

Now, whenever I come up with an idea for a shirt, I build the section, first. Add a design to the section and then import all of the shirt styles from another section. This keeps me from having to go through and choose each one the list. Then, I can now check all and change the name, description, and image on the shirts in bulk. With each section devoted to a design instead of a theme, this frees me from having to scroll down through 30 or so shirts checking which ones I want to change. It also makes it easier to manage the markups and color choices. Some designs don't work well on dark shirts, so I have to go back and choose those to change the image to an inverted color scheme so that they'll show up. This came into play with my Wii-knee shirts. Apparently, there is a report that Wii related injuries have been cropping up involving gamers' knees. How could I resist?

The drawn outline shows up OK on a white t-shirt.


But it would have been lost on a dark shirt, so an inverted image is used.


Just in case, I also included a design with just the phrase.

That's all for now. I still have many designs to try and get into the store, but I am just about out of trial time, so the quicker the better. Now, I'm paying $5.00 a month and as of today, I have about three months paid up with sales. Hopefully, soon, a profit will be made. More later.

CafePress Premium Shop Owner Wees and Woes

I’ve been selling or have been trying to sell shirts and other novelty items on CafePress since 2006. In the beginning I had a couple of ideas for some shirts based on the Mongo image I use on my blog. They were a parody of the “got milk?” ads and asked people to embrace their inner “Mongo.” You know, the one who gets angry when the copier jams or knocks over three bottles reaching for one on the table. That guy, the bull in the china shop.... have you read my blog? Ever seen the graphic at the top of the page? Go ahead, I'll wait. OK.

I opened up a basic shop, uploaded my images, and sat back and waited for the money to roll in to my account. Yeah, it didn’t happen. Still, I was hopeful. I thought I tagged my images correctly but when I did a search my items were buried three or four pages deep into the results. So, I did some tweaking and some research on how to effectively tag images. Then other ideas started flooding my brain. I expanded and opened up another basic shop that dealt with Pop Culture parody items. Because the basic shop allows you to have one type of item per design, it became necessary to open up multiple shops to have a basic t-shirt with different graphics on them. It became a little tedious, but I wasn’t selling anything yet, so I couldn’t justify opening up a premium shop which would allow me different sections and multiple designs for the same style of shirt at a price. In all, I opened up three stores and in all, I sold zero product.

I kind of left the shops up and running and used my account to make calendars for my family at the base price. Everything else just sat and waited for someone to stop by and pay for a shirt $3.00 over base price. The markup is where shop keepers make their money. CafePress charges a flat rate to the customer, not the shopkeeper, and then you decide how much of a markup your design is worth. You keep the markup, CafePress keeps the base price. That, coupled with a huge amount of premium customers adds up to money in their pocket.

Lately, I decided to see if it would be worth taking the risk and paying $5.00 a month to aggregate all of my ideas into one shop. CafePress is offering a 15 day trial and if you don't like it, you can cancel it. However, be warned, if you've operated a few basic shops up until now, you may not want to upgrade. Once you go Premium, you can't revert back to basic. You would have to start all over again, so it might be more beneficial to keep your basic shops separate and open a brand new Premium shop and import your items over from your basic ones.

I kept the theme of my own personal logo, “Mongo Angry! Mongo Smash!” and added sections to cover various themes. Some of the features make owning a premium shop more beneficial. I have the ability to add various designs to the same style of shirt, which is nice. I also have the ability to modify and personalize my site with my HTML knowledge. This is going to require some time but I’ll eventually get it done.

So, after four days, how is it going? I’ve made three dollars off of a pin I created.

It was an oddball thing I thought of when I heard that people actually recognize Pi Day as March 14th, which is three days before St. Patrick’s day, and people own pins that say "Kiss me, I'm Irish." Well, you get the idea.

With that sale and a few other sales I didn’t know I had, I have managed to make about $15.00 total. This will keep the light on in my shop for three months after my initial trial ends. Now, I will have to sell about nine more items to pay for the rest of the year, and anything on top of that is profit. But is it worth it? If I can afford to spend $5.00 a month, then yeah, it’s worth it. But you have to think in certain terms.

First, while CafePress is a very nice and affordable site for a shopkeeper, it’s not exactly the same for a consumer. You are paying a lot of money for a shirt designed by an amateur. Granted, there are some talented artists out there among the sea of mediocre shirts. I do not claim to be an artist or designer, I just have a broad and insane sense of humor. My ideas are based on absurd situations or parodies of pop culture ideas. I also have to be vigilant enough to stay ahead of the current trends or someone will have beaten me to the punch. I made a little parody design for a Helicopter Tour outfit based on a popular television show. If you search “LOST” on the main site, you’ll get 11,200 results for designs on a quarter of a million products. Everything from the numbers to symbols from the stations to even character specific tees. Just for the sake of argument, my design is on page...well, I gave up after the first 500 results. Now, if I search the word “Lapidus”, you get one result and it’s my design. That’s not that great. I may have to go back and retag my image. That’s the trick. You have to think like a consumer. What kind of shirt are they looking for? Will they get it? Are your designs or store properly tagged to rank high enough in the search results? Will people be willing to go to page two or three to find your little idea on a tee?

Secondly, and more importantly, can you accept a couple of dollars off of a sale? I tried to be really fair on my prices. I have a flat rate which just makes it easier to manage. However, the base price of a blank shirt is comparable to one in the store, if not more expensive and it has an actual graphic on it. Blogs and forums will tell you to not sell yourself short, but you have to be cognizant of a struggling economy and your competition. Even the most die hard t-shirt, clothes horse is hard up for cash these days. People may not be willing to pay $20.00 for a goofy shirt that looks like a knock off of a real one. If you are trying to capture the mood of the customer for any given topic in entertainment or news, you will compete with tons of other shopkeepers for customers. Now, If you can really design well and have good marketing sense, you may be able to create a niche for yourself in unique shirts and other products. If you’re a pop culture schmo like me, you’re fighting an uphill battle with two strikes against you. You’re only going to make serious money in volume sales. Forget about trying to make it all on one shirt. Create a product that you can move repeatedly, and you’ll see the benefits.

Now, onto my biggest pet peeve. Every so often, you can get nailed by the Content Usage police. Imagine you are in the shower or some other place where you do your best mental work and an idea hits you that is so clever and funny…to you…that you spend an entire weekend tweaking a design to make it look just right. You upload you design, choose your shirt styles and then sit back and wait for the sales to roll on into your pocket. You go to bed after a long day of squinting at your pain program of choice, only to wake up to an email stating that your wonderful and fantastic image has been put into pending status. It pisses you right off it does.

I mentioned in a previous post how I had a design which was tagged...in violation of content usage policy… That’s lawyer speak for, “You are not allowed that design.” I ended up redoing it, which made it look less professional but it’s still live on the site. It sucks, but I guess I really didn’t make my first design unique enough to pass the censors. However, the second design that came into question deserved a reprieve. I spent a hell of a lot of time trying to design this little parody shirt. I found a font called Nightmare Hero which gave me that Heavy Metal Feel. I felt really proud of my Keytar Hero shirt and they nailed me for it!

Further review of Cafepress’ site revealed a few shirts called Cowbell Hero which was a clever take on the whole idea. If I hadn’t seen it on Chuck, recently, I would have hoped my brain would have been able to come up with it. Alas, I did not and I won’t touch it since there is another shirt with the same logo. I just don’t have another weekend in which I can blow on a design. The ones on CafePress are a bit sloppy but similar font style, which prompted me to cry “Shenanigans” to the Content Usage Police. I informed them that I did download a free font and that there were other shirts with similar designs. They backed off and reinstated my image. Now, whether the Cowbell Hero shirts were spawned after the episode of Chuck, where the shirt was visible in a closet, or solely inspired by the hilarious Christopher Walken sketch seen on Saturday Night Live, years ago, is one of the chicken and egg people. My only concern was that if I was going down, so was everyone else. I might still do a redesign and offer it as an alternative on the chance that they may come back and say that I am infringing somewhere. This one is going to be a more 80’s style design with bright neon colors and rounded font style instead of the black and white Heavy Metal font. Who knows, it might be a bigger seller.

These are the things you deal with when you opt for a premium shop. It takes a lot of time to do the work. I spent a good hour rearranging my store so that I could group my shirts by style and then design. You can choose one or multiple items and then move them up or down by clicking on arrows on the side of the page. I added products in bulk and then had to go back and change them by grouping. You have to check each item and then choose from a drop down like “Add/Change Image”, “Change Name”, “Change Description”, "Change Markup", etc. You can only change one attribute at a time and then you have to go back and recheck each product and choose another attribute to change. Shoot me now. However, I did find a shortcut. If I created one product, say a white t-shirt, with a design I want and then realized that I could probably use a bunch of other shirts like a baseball jersey or golf shirt for the same design, I can cheat a bit when it comes to changing attributes. When you go through and check off each product to change, also check off the original item you created. This automatically populates the attribute from the original in the text field leaving you to just click “Apply Changes.” Nine out of ten times this worked successfully. If you have a lot of products in a store or section of store, it can be a tedious task to rearrange. I think they should do some work to update this feature letting you choose your items and then click and drag rather than click an up or down arrow repeatedly. Or they should change the interface all together to allow you a more dynamic feature utilizing AJAX widgets like iGoogle. I’m sure if those features become available I could get my work done more quickly. Still, I managed to get the store rearranged the way I want. Each row was a style of shirt and each column was a different graphic.

So, there you have it. I’m going to try and sprinkle in some more tips and stories from the world of a CafePress newbie from time to time. Hopefully, this will either give you inspiration to either venture out on your own or at least caution you against even starting. In any case, it will maybe drive some traffic to my store. I need to keep selling or it’s going to cut into my own t-shirt fund. Unfortunately, I may be my best customer.

Want To Make Money on Cafepress? Ask Mongo.

It happened again. Some kind soul out there bought a couple shirts from the Mongo Store I keep on Cafepress. That's three shirts in less than three months. I guess I shouldn't be too excited but I don't put a lot of thought or time into managing that store. Perhaps I should, though.

The latest items I've sold on Get Mongo!

You see, Mongo was an idea for a website long before it became the wonderful blog you love to read every day. In 2006, a friend and I were kicking around business ideas and it is only clear to me now that he was probably using my input to do his MBA class homework. He's like that. You never see it but usually, you're helping him do something for his own gain. Anyway, we thought with all the niche websites out there that exist and become virally popular, why can't we operate one. Set up shop, run it for a couple years and sell it for a profit. Neither one of us are an expert at any of this, mind you.

That's how Ask Mongo was perceived. I say perceived because it never made it past the idea stage. I took on this persona of Mongo, based on another coworker who was a bit of a brute. Not so much in the sense that he was mean, but he just made these statements that were just too funny. I would mimic them in a monosyllabic style of speaking and Mongo became a full fledged character. Often, I would often just burst out into angry speak. I'd knock something over or drop something and the results were rather hilarious. Then it only became a matter of time. We'd joke around and my friend would ask me a serious question and Mongo would answer. "Mongo no care about HD. Mongo smash!"

That's when it happened. What if we created a simple website that used a search engine style approach. Kind of like a twisted magic eight ball. If we could figure out a way to assign certain keywords to relevant phrases, you could Ask Mongo a question and get a hilarious response. Nothing very high brow and if you asked a question that didn't match up to any key words, you would get some pre-generated random response like, "Why Mongo care? Go away before Mongo smash!"

Unfortunately, neither of us had the extra free time or expertise in designing the site. I also didn't want to guy buy a domain and just pay for a blank site until I figured it all out. Alas, Ask Mongo never came to fruition. In fact, the only way it ever existed was a test site built in Excel. I was taking some classes in Excel and figured out a way to get a set number of responses that would match up to a key word in a question field. Still, I had the graphical designs for Mongo in my computer and began tooling around with the idea of putting the image and slogan on a shirt. I went over to Cafepress and opened up a basic store, which is free. I added my images to a couple of products, did all the tagging on my images, and other things you can do with a basic store and that was about it. I waited and I waited. I did some specific keyword searching and my products were there but unless you were looking for something specifically named Mongo the stuff was buried three or four pages deep in the results.

I kind of forgot all about Mongo. I left the site up but didn’t do any additional work on it. I did use Cafepress to make some pretty sweet calendars for my wife and other members of my family. You can make your own products and pay base price for them. Anything you wish to sell, you add a markup and that’s how you make money. I marked up most of my products by about $3.00 and hoped for the best. This was almost three years ago. I tried to make another run at selling products using MySpace but that was worthless. Again, I didn’t have time to do any extensive work or marketing and pretty much left the site go. That was until February of 2008. I’m all about free stuff and found that I could start this blog on blogger for free. I figured, I have a lot to say. Whether or not people care is another story, but regardless, it could be fun. It also provided me a reason to have and promote the store. If I could gain enough of an audience, perhaps I could drive people towards the store. Thus, Mongo Angry! Mongo Smash! Was born. I parked a link and a couple of products on the side of my blog and figured that maybe I could get a few wayward people into my Cafepress store.

I made my first sale in December of 2008. It happened without me even knowing about it. I just took five minutes one day and did a quick rundown of my stores and saw that I had a few dollars in my account. Someone had bought a shirt. I felt validate and vindicated and I only made $3.00. But it was 300% profit. I didn’t spend any money on advertising or marketing. I simply created a store and did the bare minimum. How cool is that? Now, I know I am not going to be able to quit my day job making t-shirts. But a few extra dollars can’t hurt, right? Then, it happened again in February of this year. Another person bought matching men and women’s shirts! That’s another $6.00. Hey, this is awesome.

By now, I had already thought up two more stores, Pop Culture Couture and Retro Rags. Each site had only one design for sale. That is the major drawback for Basic shops. You can have all the images you want but you can only assign any particular product to one design. If you are disciplined enough you could constantly rotate images but who wants to devote that much work to a few extra dollars. You could also theoretically own hundreds of stores but again, too much work for the reward. That was before I made those sales. I am seriously considering a premium shop. For $5.00 a month I figure it’s worth it. It might actually pay off some more. Here are some of the benefits.

• Personal shop on CafePress.com with your own shop URL (Also part of Basic Shops)
• Set up multiple pages and sections to display your products and designs
• Choose from over 70 high-quality products for your shop (Also part of Basic Shops)
• Unlimited use of the same product within your shop
• Customize your shop by uploading your logo and shop description (Also part of Basic Shops)
• Create a shop design of your own. This also enables you to create a seamless retail extension of your own web site
• Customization tools to personalize colors and fonts used within your shop
• Choose from custom templates to instantly design your shop – No coding skills needed
• Organize your designs and products into categories and sub-categories
• Create custom layouts to showcase your newest designs and popular products
• Promote your shop in the CafePress.com Marketplace (Also part of Basic Shops)
• Promotional tools to help drive more traffic to your shop (Also part of Basic Shops)
• Newsletter system to help you keep your customers up-to-date on your latest products and designs (Also part of Basic Shops)
• Option to create your own shopkeeper profile to tell your customers about your organization, mission, or yourself. (Also part of Basic Shops)

For $60, that ain’t bad. But does it work? I don’t know it. Cafepress offers a 15 day free trial but in order for me to see the full benefits I would have to do a lot of prep work so that I could launch everything on Day 1. Otherwise, I could still be tweaking controls and have not seen a sale by Day 15 which would kind of defeat the purpose. Still, I might take them up on the 15 days for free because it’s an extra 15 days for free, duh! Regardless of my choice, there is a lot of work ahead and I think I might spend what little free time I have doing some research and getting together some models. Now, I thought I was bloody brilliant with my McScrewed idea. However, Cafepress thought my original design was too close to an actual logo and flagged it.

Old and new design side by side.

Had I opened up a Premium Shop under the 15 day trial with my original design, I would have been hosed.

So, there you have it. I probably will open up a premium shop and consolidate all of my products into different categories. I could definitely have the Mongo store and then have my Pop Culture themed products split up into different categories. I might even be able to slice and dice it by design and by product. The more ways I can present the ideas the more people will find something based on the own style of searching. I may tag this post so that I can revisit it after some time to give you a heads up on how things are going. Who knows? You might take what advice I’ve given and be the next t-shirt mogul. At least you might be able to spring for gas each month. If you Ask Mongo, every little bit helps.

The Power of the Grilled Jesus Compels You!

Part Three in the, If I Were a Rich Man series

As I close out this series, I have no other real words of wisdom or great anectdotal tales of what I would do with vast riches. I merely wish to relate one of my more recent brainstorms on how to make it big.

I have come to realize that there are two reasons why American is one of the greatest places on Earth. The first is that this is the land of opportunity and we all have the ability to create and sell whatever we want in our quest for the all mighty dollar. The other is that there will always be someone out there stupid or crazy enough to buy your product. With that, I give you one of my evil little plans. The kind of sick and twisted idea that only the genius possess and insane lament. In the past few years there has been an influx of religious artifacts appearing in the most domestic of settings. While I'm sure the Vatican has dispatched their forces to the four corners of the Earth as well as Iowa to debunk such finds, the fact remains, we are in the midst of a revolution. One that threatens to shake the very core of our lunches. I'm talking about the appearance of holy and religious images on everyday items. Most recently, the case of the Virgin Mary burned into a grilled cheese sandwhich caught national attention not because of its impact on our dogmatic beliefs, but because someone was dumb enough to pay $28,000 on eBay. GoldenPalace.com, ever the finder of rare antiquities, purchased the snack on eBay back in 2004.

It is my belief that this sandwhich should not be taken lightly. I suggest that it is a sign sent to us crazy bastards to take advantage of this epiphany. However, my attempts to capitalize on this event were met with guffaws and rolling of eyes. It doesn't take me walking around the streets of my town with a sandwhich board to spell it out. The answers are there, bubbling up through the nooks and cranies of our grilled cheese.

I give you the Grilled Jesus.

Unfortunately, someone beat me to it. I suffer from having great ideas but no ability to maket and pitch to investors. This idea was so simple, though, I figured it a slam dunk in the old baptismal font. Just make a mold like you would for pizzelles, but make it in the form of Jesus. What, you feel I'm insensitive? That I should be struck down for my blasphemous ways? I'm not saying create a sandwhich and sell it on the internet as genuine religious phenomena, that would be wrong. I meant create the mold and market it as a novelty item in Spencers. The Church has been selling salvation to us for years at a price. I merely wish to capitalize on the fact that for the most part, people have a sense of humor and aren't taking things too serious.

Damn it, I tell you I had it all mapped out. For only $19.95 plus shipping and handling you can savor the saviour. Put them in the kids lunches gauranteeing them early entry into college. Send one to work with your husband when it comes time for a raise. Why shouldn't we all find a little hallelujah in a hot lunch? Call now and we'll double your order and throw in the book of Psalm Soduku puzzles.

Ok, that last part was pushing it a little, even for me. Frankly, I give little creedence to these Mary on a sliding glass door or Jesus in the ice cube tray stories. But as long as someone out there is willing to pay insane amounts of money for these items, then I should be allowed to exploit their stupidty and say they can remit a check or money order to me at Poophill Products c/o Mongo.

Can I interest you in our Bris-O-Matic It slices, it dices..........yeah, ok, that was way beyond wrong......but admit it, you laughed.

Money can't buy you happiness, but you can Buy it Now on eBay

Part One of a series entitled, If I Were a Rich Man.

Like most grown ups, who came of age during the Alex P. Keaton, Gordon Gecko, and Reaganomics fueled capitalism era known as the 80's, I had a desire to be rich. Of course, I had no ambition to do anything to get rich other than scratch a ticket or make nice with a well-to-do old person and then just wait it out. Unfortunately, life is not like an 80's movie, which I feel is such a bummer. Can you imagine? One day, you’re a minor league pitcher in Jersey, playing for the Hackensack Bulls, and the next one you inherit $30 million dollars in which you have to spend every dime in 30 days to inherit $300 million. The things you could do in 30 days only to realize you have 10 times that amount waiting at the end of the month.

We've all played that "what if" game when we were younger. Hell, I do it on a regular basis when I walk around my home looking at what needs to be done, what I can afford to get done, and what I'd love to really do if money was no object. In grade school we would gather around a sheet of paper and play MASH to decide our financial and marital fates. Those of us with Rain Man like mentality could figure out how to render the most desirable outcome hoping to change our fates and not wind up living in a shack, married to the smelly kid, towing around 5 kids in a Brown Ford, and working as a garbage collector.

See, I misspent my youth, not on sports or honing my studies, but on scheming to make it rich. First I decided I was going to become a stock broker, buying and selling my well to financial freedom. During my college years I had various entrepreneurial endeavors going at once. Several times throughout the year, poster vendors would set up shop in the lobby of the dorms our outside of the Student Union hawking their wares. For $12 or $20 you could have a classic black and white poster of Jim Belushi wearing a college sweater or the ever popular brightly colored poster of your favorite alcoholic drinks and their ingredients. Of course if you were the more pretentious of college student you had the Van Gogh Starry Night poster or The Mosaic Poster of Bob Marley smoking a fat one. I, too, dropped about $25 on both the "Briefcase Full of Blues" and the famous Reservoir Dogs "walk" scene posters to adorn my walls all the while they developed blue adhesive putty stains that would decrease their resale value when I needed cash. I personally felt the posters were a little overpriced and saw the opportunity to sell movie posters at a cheaper price while netting me %100 profits. I combed the local video stores getting free movie posters and stockpiled them in my dorm room. With a third grade art degree and a computer account, I created a snazzy little ad to post all over campus. I made probably somewhere in the realm of $40 which pretty much covered beer and pizza for a couple of weeks.

Top 10 Most Cliché College Dorm Posters of All Time

Next, I answered some ad in the school newspaper that promised huge amounts of cash by just passing out fliers. I paid $20 for the packet that gave piss poor photocopies of scams and pyramid scheme fliers. All I had to do was pass them out affixed with my phone number and when someone called me; I sent them out the scam program and kept a percentage of the cost. Again, because of my student computer account, the only investment I had to make was the initial buy in of $20. I could use the computer labs to reproduce the fliers and just wait for the phone to ring. Unfortunately, I developed a sense of conscience and began reading the crap that was contained on the fliers. I knew the programs were worthless and targeted towards people who had an overwhelming desire to get rich quick, people like me. I ate the $20 and tossed the packet.

During the summer months while I toiled away in an amusement park for minimum wage, I orchestrated a tee shirt sale for my department that consisted of over 100 people. I paid one of the park caricature artists to draw an amusing scene that depicted the trials and tribulations of our jobs. I took it to a local print shop that handled silk screen printings for local sport teams and finagled a heck of a volume discount based on pre sale numbers. Then I figured out a cheap price for the shirts with just enough mark up to cover my expenses and netted my a few dollars for my trouble. I figured out that the first year I ended up selling about $600 worth of shirts and the second year sales jumped to an even grand. Still, I didn't see a large profit because I didn't want to cheat my friends and coworkers out of their money.

Finally, I gave up the schemes and settled on my collegiate career in Theater Arts, because quite frankly, I really did not have any marketable skills besides acting. I tend to think I was pretty good, too. I had it all planned out. I would finish up college, work the summer stockpiling money, and then make my way across this great nation of ours to Los Angeles where I would instantly be discovered and given my own sitcom and blockbuster movie deal with sequels to keep me busy into my 40's. What I realized was that I really didn't like the politics and backdoor dealings of Hollywood and I didn't want to starve for my art becoming a waiter to pay the bills on my less than one bedroom apartment over a biker bar, tucked ever so snuggly between a pawn shop and a tattoo parlor. So, I never left for L.A. Instead, I opted for staying here in good old Southwestern Pennsyltuckey and just became part of the working force...as of all things a waiter. Actually, I started out as a bartender.

After college graduation I worked on an assembly line assembling rear projection screen televisions. You could say I worked in television, putting the mirrors on the casings. Then I had a slick idea, I would start flipping bottles of spirits like Tom Cruise in Cocktail. So, I left the assembly line and began working my way through bartending school while I tended to paint balls and golf balls at a nearby recreational park. During the day, I would learn about parfaits and high balls while at night I worked for minimum wage (a slight downgrade from the television assembly line) getting run over by brats in go karts. After completing my grueling two week course at bartending school, I flipped through the job leads, and set out to make my fortune schlepping drinks. I foolishly put in my two weeks notice at the golf course and concentrated on looking for that job that promised Cocktails and Dreams. I ended learning a very valuable lesson that summer. No one was willing to hire a bartender right off the street with no experience, no matter how much they were trained. I didn't even get to flip any bottles. That was a separate course that cost a few hundred dollars and I already dropped $500 on the bartending school.

Luckily, I had the kind of parents that let me live with them post college and pre life long career. I finally got a job working as a bartender in the banquet department of a hotel. We made more than minimum wage and tips were under the table. Soon, I moved out of my parents' place and into one of my own. While, I didn't live high on the hog, I always had money for food and rent. Eventually, I went from being a bartender to being a banquet captain, which allowed me the opportunity to work morning shifts and gave me more money. Through the good fortune of knowing....er dating the right people, I was able to leave the hotel for greener pastures. In three years I had gone from having no income to making almost $25k a year. In all those years of scheming to get rich, I turned up nothing but nickels and dimes. Yet, by having patience and doing a little work, I went from having no job, to $7.50 an hour as a banquet captain to $12.00 an hour as a customer service representative. It didn't stop there, either. In another 5 years I managed to get promoted three times. I now have a house, two cars, and some of the basic luxuries of home. I got them all just by working. Of course, I now have a daughter and it throws a huge wrench into the works.

Oh yes, expenses will mount up and I've been back to my wily ways of not so much getting rich, but making extra cash to cover expenditures. I've done it all from trying to sell pithy t-shirts and buttons adorned with this blog's logo. I tried to get in on the Tickle Me Elmo craze ywo years ago by buying a couple of them, hoping to turn around and throw them on eBay when supplies ran low around Christmas. I ended up getting stuck with two Elmos for over a year. Everyone had the same idea and instead of there being no supply and a huge demand in retail outlets, there was a huge supply and little demand on eBay. I ended up selling them with some creative auctions that told the story from my wife's point of view. She was extremely agitated by the fact that I spent money on these things and couldn't sell them. The anecdotal listings struck a chord with some folks who were willing to bail out a disgruntled housewife, but not a stupid husband the year before. I had got the idea from another eBay ad about worthless Pokemon cards that netted a few hundred dollars based on the listing being written from the point of view of a frazzled mom in the grocery store with her kids.

Let's see, there was also the idea about selling "Get Rich Quick" and "Money Making Home Business" eBooks on eBay for a dollar a piece with the ability to reproduce at no cost. No, of course, I didn't buy them. A simple search on Google revealed a treasure trove of inexperienced webmasters that left their index directories wide open for me to pilfer the .pdfs from and post up for auction. Hell, I've even resorted to selling nothing on eBay. That's right, nothing. I did some research on Mystery Auctions and found that people were willing to spend a dollar or two on "digital envelopes." The digital envelopes "happen" to contain a word describing a dollar amount and that gets paid to the buyer through their PayPal account. Different monetary amounts are scattered throughout hundreds of these "envelopes" ranging from fifty cents to five dollars.
Everyone who bought an "envelope" stood to make at least 30% of their investment back while some actually made 500%. Now, this was all designed so that the amount in the envelopes was always less than the total cost for all available envelopes and the concept of the "mystery envelope auction" was more about giving and receiving positive feedback while offering the chance to make back five times what you spent. While somewhat scam worthy, I never stole money from anyone. I always clearly worded the auctions so that everyone understood the concept while not violating eBay policies. Over the last few months eBay has cracked down on these auctions and I reaaly don't want to risk losing my account over the $20 I would make per auction. During my heyday with it, I ran quite a few auctions and was able to raise $100 to buy my PS3. Again, I didn't buy it for full price, I used a mehtod from what's called an "Incentived Freebie Website" to get it for 1/4 the cost. I detailed all this in my first entry and as you can see I have listed a few along the side of my blog.

So, there it is. I've spent my life looking for an easy route to fame and fortune when the only real wealth has been derived from having a family and doing honest work. Who knows, in another 5 years I could be the CEO of a fortune 500 company.....or I'd be willing to sell you information on how to become one for little to no money on eBay. Check my feedback!