crowdfunding | Some thoughts; input would be appreciated!

So, friends, I'm going to do a little brainstorming on here, and would love some input.

Last week saw some small success with my $5 Character Portrait Days, and it's definitely something I want to continue. I also, though, want to offer digitally inked and colorized portraits and digitally painted portraits for half off-- which would be $20 for the former and $50 for the latter. I know that may be a bit higher than some people can pay, but color portraits will also take longer to do, and I'll still be offering the grayscale portraits for $5 (normal price on detailed grayscale drawings is $20, so that's a significant price slash), so hopefully that'll prevent my workload from tipping the scales too much so I can get to everything, while still bringing in a small income from it all. Believe me, with my family in the situation we're in right now, where we HAVE to work from home, every little bit helps.

My question to you guys is this: Do you think it would be better to make $5/Discounted Character Portrait Days an everyday thing? Or perhaps "open" for business on Monday and "close" for business on Friday? Or just keep it as a two-day weekly sales event? Which do you think would bring more traffic and commissions? Advertising is my concern-- most communities on here that provide platforms for advertising would probably get fed up with too many announcements per week (I try to limit to one announcement per week for each event so I don't monopolize the communities I post to), but if it's open all the time or only on a weekly basis, the announcements will be buried under other posts, and people won't see them until the following week. (In other words, the traffic may be about the same as if I only held a two-day event) Are there any other thoughts for bringing more traffic to a blog? I see people on my feed who practice crowdfunding and have friends lists of hundreds of people. How did you do that?

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I would think periodic events would bring more people than being open for business every workday, because it would feel like a special opportunity rather than something people could get anytime.

Thank you! Yes, that was another thing I was thinking of. Sales events do tend to draw more attention.

Agreed.

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Very true. Commissions backing up hasn't been a problem so far for me, but I could easily see it happening. I like to get to requests as quickly as possible.

>>Which do you think would bring more traffic and commissions? <<

In my observation, periodic events tend to do better, because people think of them when the announcement goes up and they know it's not open all the time.

The only really successful all-the-time project I can think of is Story Sketches by

meeksp and she does that by doing free illustrations of ongoing projects -- which means other creators quickly build a 'stack' of things we'd like her to draw, and submit something new after each piece is posted. That's less likely to work with a project where every item is a sale item rather than a freebie.

>>Advertising is my concern-- most communities on here that provide platforms for advertising would probably get fed up with too many announcements per week<<

The rule here is that intermittent projects can post whenever they update. Ongoing or daily projects can post about once a week, or when they do something extra special. So you could be right about getting buried if the project is ongoing -- the intermittent ones seem to attract more attention.

>>In other words, the traffic may be about the same as if I only held a two-day event.<<

That's likely. Consider your work style too -- do you deal better with stuff all at once, or spread out? I like to keep the Poetry Fishbowl concise, because then I can just devote a whole day to writing poems.

meeksp spreads out her requests in Story Sketches.

djinni takes requests during Icon Day but then spreads out the painting of the icons over several weeks.

>>I see people on my feed who practice crowdfunding and have friends lists of hundreds of people. How did you do that?<<

I built for it, and I've been doing the Poetry Fishbowl for 4 years now. My LJ is a little older; it started in summer of 2007. I looked for people who were creative, or loved reading, or had some interesting expertise. I browsed friends' journals and friended people who made insightful comments. When I saw important issues come up, I wrote anchor posts about them to attract more eyeballs. I posted polls and things to encourage audience interaction. Later on I was able to generate a lot of cross-traffic by boosting the signal for crowdfunding activities, which encourages the creators to do the same for my projects.

In crowdfunding, I made a point of creating a range of prices -- one poem gets posted free, there are different sizes of poetry to buy, and then sponsored poems go up so everyone can see them for free. Scrapbooked poetry pages have a range also.

I recommend the article "How to Boost Your Audience (http://penultimateproductions.weebly.com/how-to-boost-your-audience.html)."

Thank you for this very detailed response! It's very helpful.

In my observation, periodic events tend to do better, because people think of them when the announcement goes up and they know it's not open all the time.

Yes, that was my thinking, and limited experience, as well.

The rule here is that intermittent projects can post whenever they update. Ongoing or daily projects can post about once a week, or when they do something extra special. So you could be right about getting buried if the project is ongoing -- the intermittent ones seem to attract more attention.

Yes, that sounds quite reasonable.

That's likely. Consider your work style too -- do you deal better with stuff all at once, or spread out? I like to keep the Poetry Fishbowl concise, because then I can just devote a whole day to writing poems. meeksp spreads out her requests in Story Sketches. djinni takes requests during Icon Day but then spreads out the painting of the icons over several weeks.

I'm in a place right now where devoting an entire day or two to multiple projects just isn't feasible, but taking requests on certain days and completing them within a week or so seems to work quite well for me.

I built for it, and I've been doing the Poetry Fishbowl for 4 years now. My LJ is a little older; it started in summer of 2007. I looked for people who were creative, or loved reading, or had some interesting expertise. I browsed friends' journals and friended people who made insightful comments. When I saw important issues come up, I wrote anchor posts about them to attract more eyeballs. I posted polls and things to encourage audience interaction. Later on I was able to generate a lot of cross-traffic by boosting the signal for crowdfunding activities, which encourages the creators to do the same for my projects.

All very good suggestions, some of which I've been dabbling with and finding some success from. Thank you :)

In crowdfunding, I made a point of creating a range of prices -- one poem gets posted free, there are different sizes of poetry to buy, and then sponsored poems go up so everyone can see them for free. Scrapbooked poetry pages have a range also.

Sounds about like what I'm considering for my Portrait Days. Various options, different prices for each option, and posting final pieces to my blog with permission of those who commissioned me.

Thank you also for the article link; will take a look. :)

Scarcity adds value! The rarer something is, the more people will jump on it. So I vote for once a week or even less.

I see people on my feed who practice crowdfunding and have friends lists of hundreds of people. How did you do that?

I've been blogging regularly on LJ since 2001, selling artwork online since 1999 and selling it via snail mail since 1993. These things build... and sometimes not fast!

Things that help are being active and regular, something you seem to be doing aptly already.

Scarcity adds value! The rarer something is, the more people will jump on it. So I vote for once a week or even less.

Yep, that does seem to be the consensus. I think I'll go with the one or two days a week option; it seems to do well.

Yes, I've been making a concerted effort to keep this blog active; it's getting quite a few outside hits actually. And several return visits.

Thanks!

Some thoughts; input would be appreciated!

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