Before You Ask for Free.....

This is a post I found on another site, that is a re-posting from somewhere on Craigslist. The author is unknown, but I give her/him kudos.

This applies to all handmade, artists, designers, etc.



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Before you ask for free design services...

Every day, there are more and more posts seeking “artists” for everything from auto graphics to comic books to corporate logo designs. More people are finding themselves in need of some form of illustrative service.

But what they’re NOT doing, unfortunately, is realizing how rare someone with these particular talents can be.

To those who are “seeking artists”, let me ask you; How many people do you know, personally, with the talent and skill to perform the services you need? A dozen? Five? One? …none?

More than likely, you don’t know any. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be posting on craigslist to find them.

And this is not really a surprise.

In this country, there are almost twice as many neurosurgeons as there are professional illustrators. There are eleven times as many certified mechanics. There are SEVENTY times as many people in the IT field.

So, given that they are less rare, and therefore less in demand, would it make sense to ask your mechanic to work on your car for free? Would you look him in the eye, with a straight face, and tell him that his compensation would be the ability to have his work shown to others as you drive down the street?

Would you offer a neurosurgeon the “opportunity” to add your name to his resume as payment for removing that pesky tumor? (Maybe you could offer him “a few bucks” for “materials”. What a deal!)

Would you be able to seriously even CONSIDER offering your web hosting service the chance to have people see their work, by viewing your website, as their payment for hosting you?

If you answered “yes” to ANY of the above, you’re obviously insane. If you answered “no”, then kudos to you for living in the real world.

But then tell me… why would you think it is okay to live out the same, delusional, ridiculous fantasy when seeking someone whose abilities are even less in supply than these folks?

Graphic artists, illustrators, painters, etc., are skilled tradesmen. As such, to consider them as, or deal with them as, anything less than professionals fully deserving of your respect is both insulting and a bad reflection on you as a sane, reasonable person. In short, it makes you look like a twit.

A few things you need to know;

1. It is not a “great opportunity” for an artist to have his work seen on your car/’zine/website/bedroom wall, etc. It IS a “great opportunity” for YOU to have their work there.

2. It is not clever to seek a “student” or “beginner” in an attempt to get work for free. It’s ignorant and insulting. They may be “students”, but that does not mean they don’t deserve to be paid for their hard work. You were a “student” once, too. Would you have taken that job at McDonalds with no pay, because you were learning essential job skills for the real world? Yes, your proposition it JUST as stupid.

3. The chance to have their name on something that is going to be seen by other people, whether it’s one or one million, is NOT a valid enticement. Neither is the right to add that work to their “portfolio”. They get to do those things ANYWAY, after being paid as they should. It’s not compensation. It’s their right, and it’s a given.

4. Stop thinking that you’re giving them some great chance to work. Once they skip over your silly ad, as they should, the next ad is usually for someone who lives in the real world, and as such, will pay them. There are far more jobs needing these skills than there are people who possess these skills.

5. Students DO need “experience”. But they do NOT need to get it by giving their work away. In fact, this does not even offer them the experience they need. Anyone who will not/can not pay them is obviously the type of person or business they should be ashamed to have on their resume anyway. Do you think professional contractors list the “experience” they got while nailing down a loose step at their grandmother’s house when they were seventeen?

If you your company or gig was worth listing as desired experience, it would be able to pay for the services it received. The only experience they will get doing free work for you is a lesson learned in what kinds of scrubs they should not lower themselves to deal with.

6. (This one is FOR the artists out there, please pay attention.) Some will ask you to “submit work for consideration”. They may even be posing as some sort of “contest”. These are almost always scams. They will take the work submitted by many artists seeking to win the “contest”, or be “chosen” for the gig, and find what they like most. They will then usually have someone who works for them, or someone who works incredibly cheap because they have no originality or talent of their own, reproduce that same work, or even just make slight modifications to it, and claim it as their own. You will NOT be paid, you will NOT win the contest. The only people who win, here, are the underhanded folks who run these ads. This is speculative, or “spec”, work. It’s risky at best, and a complete scam at worst. I urge you to avoid it, completely. For more information on this subject, please visit no-spec.com.

So to artists/designers/illustrators looking for work, do everyone a favor, ESPECIALLY yourselves, and avoid people who do not intend to pay you. Whether they are “spec” gigs, or just some guy who wants a free mural on his living room walls. They need you. You do NOT need them.

And for those who are looking for someone to do work for free… please wake up and join the real world. The only thing you’re accomplishing is to insult those with the skills you need. Get a clue.

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As I said above, this is a re-posting and the author is unknown. 

Helpful Tools To Price Handmade

 Handmade is by it's very nature, difficult to price.There are so many factor in deciding what the retail price of an item is going to be, and it doesn't help that we artisans tend to be more creative in thinking rather than business oriented.

Sometimes, pricing gets set based on emotions, because of what other people are pricing, or based on what the person setting the prices would pay for it.

None of those are good business (although it can pay to be aware what others are charging and selling similar items for).

Here are a couple tools that may help anyone set pricing.

http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/

 This calculator takes in your yearly expenses, how many hours you'll work, how many of them are actually billable (IE, you work 1 hour making a product, and one hour getting it out there, you have a 50% billable rate), etc, and tells you how much you'll need to charge per billable hour to make ends meet, and how much you'll need to charge per hour to get what you want.


 http://www.rolbe.com/etsy.htm

This calculator takes a potential price, what you charge for shipping, what you are charged for shipping, your materials cost, and tells you what etsy and paypal fees are going to be

To get true business profit, add your hourly wage to the materials section.

The calculator was originally built to calculate for etsy and paypal fees, but you can exclude either one and even change them to fit a merchant account or another selling site.

Between the 2 above, you can get a pretty decent view of what you need to charge to have a healthy business.

Copyright and Trademark differences and similarities

There seems to be a lot of confusion about copyright and trademark

While the protections are similar, they are 2 very different things

So we'll get started with definitions. From Webster's dictionary

Copyright: the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something (as a literary, musical, or artistic work)

Trademark: a device (as a word or image) pointing distinctly to the origin or ownership of merchandise to which it is applied and legally reserved to the exclusive use of the owner as maker or seller

So copyright protects words, images, and sounds (books and other printed matter, music, movies, photos, etc.).

While trademark protects brands (McDonalds, Hello Kitty, Disney, John Deer, etc.)

Another difference between the 2 is that when you take a photo, write words, etc. you are automatically copyrighted in the US and the other countries that recognize the same set of laws. You can pay to have your item copyrighted, but this fee is mostly for extra protection in case you ever have to go to court over it.

But a trademark only goes into effect when you pay the money to have your trademark registered with the USPTO (US patent and trademark office).

Both sets of laws allow you to license some rights.

With both sets of laws, the copyright and/or trademark holder must enforce them. If the holder doesn't enforce the laws themselves, they can lose their protection, even if they paid a fee.

Not everything can be copyrighted or trademarked. Clothing, for example, a finished item does not have copyright and/or trademark protection unless said finished item has a decorative element (artwork, logos, etc)

I always assume that words, images, etc are copyrighted unless it says specifically that it is in public domain,to be extra safe.

As for trademarks, if you are wondering if a particular term is trademarked, check here: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=searchss&state=4004:l6edhl.1.1

How to Get Started on Google+

We’ve all been hearing about how Google+ is going to help our SEO and give us a boost to our google rankings so this post will tell you how to get started with it.  

The first step is to create a personal profile.  This is similar to your personal page on Facebook and if you use it at all it should be for social reasons and not for marketing your products.  Just like on Facebook you have to have a personal profile before you can add a business page.  This link will show you how to get started by creating your personal profile. 

http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/how-to-set-up-google-plus

The next step is to set up your business page and profile.  This is similar in concept to your Facebook fan page.  This link will show you how to do that:

http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/how-to-set-up-google-plus-business-page

It’s a good idea to use a different avatar for your business page than you did for your personal page because that will make it much easier to know which page you’re on.  You can change your avatar by going to your profile using the profile icon on the left sidebar, hover over your picture and it will give you a chance to edit it.  You’ll see “Options” at the bottom left and under that drop-down there will be a choice to delete it.  Once you delete it you can add another one.

When you sign into google+ you’ll be on your home personal page which shows all of the posts from the people in your circles or that you’re following.  The way to get from one page to the other is to click on the Pages icon on the left navigation sidebar and it will give you a choice between your personal profile and your business page(s).  Make sure to enter links to everywhere that you have an online presence like your shop, blog and Facebook page on both of your profiles.  This link will show you how to do that:

http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1713826

Circles are the main way to share posts on google+ and you can find your circles by clicking on the Circles icon on the left sidebar.  When you’re using google+ under your personal profile circles are like Facebook friends. You have completely different sets of circles for your personal profile and your business page and there is no connection between the two.  The best way to think of it is that you have 2 completely different entities and you are the only one that knows that there is a connection between your personal page and your business page. The people that you put in your circles using your personal page won't see the things that you post under your business page and the people in your business circles won't see your personal posts.  You can choose which of your circles that you want to share your posts with and you can also share them publicly so that they get found in searches.  The most viewed and shared posts end up in the “Explore” area.

When you're using your personal profile you can follow or add any person or business to your circles and they get a notice and have the option to circle you back. You can +1, share or comment on anything using your personal profile name.

When you're using your business page you can follow or add other businesses to your circles, +1, share and comment on their posts using your business name. They get a notice and can follow you back if they want to. You can't circle or follow a person or comment on their posts using your business name unless they circle you first but you can +1 their posts and share them. When you try to add a person that hasn’t added you first to your business circles it doesn't give you an error but it doesn't add them either and their little card just floats back to the top when you try to drag it into a circle. You can tell that it didn't work because the number of people in your circle doesn't increase.  You can always remove people from your circles if you decide that you don’t want to see their posts after all.

You can find things to add to your circles in several ways.  The first is to search for subjects and businesses that you’re interested in or think that your target demographic will be interested in and follow them or add them to a circle.  You can also search by twitter hashtags.  The second way is to click on the Explore icon on the left sidebar and you’ll see a selection of popular posts and subjects and you can follow the ones that are businesses.  People also share circles so when you see one that you like you can add it to yours. (This can be time consuming because you have to edit the people out of the circle because you can't circle people as a business unless they do it first.)     One of the easiest ways to get noticed is to +1 and share posts that don’t already have hundreds of +1s because people are more likely to see you if there are only a few +1s there.  Before you post think carefully about which circles you want to share it with.  For example I’m following and in a few science and geeky circles that are almost all men under my business page to keep my feed interesting to me and they probably don’t care very much about my products and those posts might annoy them.  Start out by organizing your circles as you add people so that you can target your posts. 

Adding people to your circles and getting added back doesn’t do much to increase your google rankings but having your posts get +1s and shared does.  I can’t reiterate enough that the way to help each other and get noticed by others on g+ is to +1 and share their posts with any of your circles that seem appropriate and publicly as well.  I recommend creating an SEOteam circle with only people from here in it so that we can share our posts back and forth and only be spamming each other.  Just like on Facebook the way to encourage people to share your posts is to be interesting, funny and post more than just product commercials.   Bring in some new content and don’t just share what you see in the Explore area because everyone shares those and you’ll see dozens of them in your feed when you have a lot of circles.  Just like on Facebook, pictures and videos are more eye-catching than posts with just text are.  

 We’ve already talked about adding your links to both of your google+ profiles and if you have your own stand-alone shop or blog it’s very good to link them back to your google+ account.   You can add a g+ button to your site by following these directions:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1634172&topic=1634169&ctx=topic

You can link your site back to google+ by following these directions:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1708844

Please come see my handmade designer plus size sweaters, sweater coats, capes and shrugs at MirabilisFashions.com Mirabilis Fashions Plus Size Blog and tell me about the things that you'd like to read about.

The Facepalm Moment

We all have them, the moments where you ask yourself what the heck you were thinking, how you forgot that, or why did you think it in the first place?

Well, I just had one.

I've been advertising One Stitch Designs for a while now on various fashion and fiber artists blogs. My ad has a coupon code in it, same one I've used in my Etsy shops when I have advertised before.

Well here's my facepalm moment.

I made the code in my website and went on with my life. And today when I went to add a customer specific code (for joining my mailing list), I realized it wasn't active. I forgot to triple check everything and make sure it was active!

That was smart. I wonder now if anyone had gotten to my cart and when the code didn't work, they left. I know I've done it in the past.

Moral of the story: always check everything.

Now, in recognition of my stupidity.

*FacePalm*

Plus Size Blog

One of the things that I learned from my marketing review was that I really should have my own blog in addition to this one that sticks to the subjects that are closely related to what I do such as designing clothing for plus size women, selecting and shopping for luxury yarn, sweater design and other plus size issues including my mixed feelings about my own weight loss. (Yikes!) I've got a new one set up now and I hope that some of you will come visit me at Mirabilis Fashions Plus Size Blog and tell me about the things that you'd like to read about.

In Support Of Handmade

(all items shown on this blog post are 100% handmade items)

Today is the day where many shops are closing their shop for the day in protest of etsy's decision to allow a seller who claimed to have a handmade shop that could not have been handmade in any one but etsy's definition to stay open.

I will not mention names, or put a link here, miss perfectly manicured pretty hands carpenter has had more than enough exposure.

I understand why these people are closing shop for the day, the silent protest, hoping that their approximately 0.5% of shops closing for the day will put a large enough blip on etsy's radar to tell them something.

But Etsy knows what we want, and closing our shops for the day isn't going to hurt anyone but ourselves. I know I cannot afford to lose out on even one tiny sale, literally every penny counts!

handpainted yarn from EweAndMeYarns, who is my go-to chick for all handpainted yarn

Some of the shops closing today have been bashing those of us who have decided to stay open, it's sad.

Many of us have devised a way to show support of handmade in our own ways (after all, isn't this why we are in business for ourselves, so no one can tell us what to do?). These other alternatives are positive.

*There's the Stop, Then Shop movement, which will refrain from buying today (May 10, 2012), and buy everything they wanted to buy tomorrow.

*Some of us cannot afford to buy anything, those of us in that boat are doing a whole lot of promotion for people we know to be handmade sellers.  This is done on pinterest, twitter, facebook, in treasuries, on blogs, and wherever else a person may promote

*Some of us are going to go ahead and take the plunge on some items we've had sitting in our carts and were on the fence about.

1930s replica dress from P1xie

There are so many ways you can support handmade any day, not just this week.

Buy and promote handmade by the seller in anyway you can. On etsy, on any other site, even on the sellers own websites.  If they have one.

Q: How do you know it's handmade by the seller?

 A: Sometimes it's hard to tell. I usually do a search for that item. if it's a reseller item, or "charm on a chain" (which in my opinion is not handmade unless you made the charm or the chain), you'll usually see several other sellers selling the same piece. Many people add a few beads or dangles to the necklace, this is OK, as it shows a little bit of creativity.  On higher priced stuff, it's not always so easy to tell, though usually a Google search can bring up the original maker

 Wrist warmers by Shiv from Faded Lace (this is the chick who did a few of my pics)

Both Karen and myself are 100% handmade (although I do have a supply shop where I sell some knitting needles and yarns that I didn't make)