Passion

Hello everybody,

Just a quick update on what's been happening with this project. I actually took about 3 months off from all the coding I do and kind of lost my passion in a sense. Sometimes that's what it really takes to make anything happen, that is passion.

You know that everyone goes through ups and downs in their personal lives. There's moments and periods when you feel so full of energy and vision. Then there's times of despair and hopelessness. Well, I'm just human and I go through the same thing, and I have been through several of those periods during the last 7 years in which I've been working on this project.

The thing is that I'm not quitting on this project and I am now getting back into it. You see I'm a developer by profession and at heart. I actually love programming, whenever I get the chance. However, lately most of my work at my normal job is being outsourced overseas and I'm left to maintain and bug fix someone else's code. That kind of is demoralizing.

But just in the last few weeks I've rediscovered my love of programming and am enthusiastic about this project again. I am now seeing a very clear picture of how I intend to automate this project. You see, I was actually very close to releasing this project to the public not to long ago. That's about the time you joined this website. That's why I was getting the very first artists on board to move it along.

However, many aspects of the project depended on my time and effort, my manual input to connect all the dots, so to speak. I myself was part of the process of getting the project of the ground, but I realized I could not be the bottle-neck in this whole process. I needed to automate the last remaining pieces.

Because I feared the whole project could go down if the site became popular, I started to research and find the right tools and partners to get these last pieces automated. Otherwise, if the site went down due to popularity, then someone else with more money would run with the idea.

Now, I'm looking at implementing all my code in one of those clouds that are mentioned, like the Amazon cloud, and there are many others. I am narrowing my choices and am about to be able to grow the site and auto-scale the site automatically should it become popular overnight.

So the thing is, I took a step back and re-thought about how to accomplish the last pieces so that I would no longer be part of the equation. In other words, the site is going to be driven by the artists themselves and by the buyers.

Take care and I'll talk to you soon again.

To Pay Or Not To Pay, Is NOT The Question

I just want to talk to you about what it is we, as a group, are trying to do here, and that I do not think has ever been done before. Basically, we are trying to create an iTunes or an AppStore, but for artists, photographers, or any digital graphic artists. So what do I mean by that?

Well, here are my thoughts on what I see. When I think about iTunes, of course I think about music, but I also think about all those musicians who are not necessarily famous but are doing well by selling their music through iTunes. It's a rather complicated process to submit your songs/albums, and in the end the musicians will keep about 50% of the retail price. Keep in mind music is stored and delivered as a digital file.

I also think about the developers/programmers who are submitting their apps to the AppStore and some have already made millions. I have heard Apple splits the revenue 30/70 with the developers, so if an app sells for $0.99, the developer keeps about 70 cents from that. It doesn't cost Apple much to host the digital files for the apps. Plus, Apple does not go out and recruit developers and pay them for making apps.

Most recently, I've heard book writers are making money through some online bookstores, whether its Amazon or iBooks. I haven't looked much into this, but the fact of the matter is that profits are maximized whenever the goods remain digital throughout, meaning the goods are stored and sold as digital goods.

In our case the goods are stored digitally at an online gallery, but the goods are delivered as a physical product. When you consider the cost of physically manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution, the profit margins for a 99 cent product are extremely slim to be worth anything to a business venture (unless the goods come from cheap labor in China, but that's a different story!).

So here we are trying to introduce a $0.99 product that is highly customizable and has a reasonably high margin to be shared with the individual artists. What do you think of that? I mean, as an artist, where else could you sell your art, possibly even by the millions of orders, and be able to keep a decent percentage of that?

And so I ask for your trust and patience as well go through this endeavor together. For those of you who absolutely need to see a real physical product and are highly skeptical, well if you live in San Antonio, I may be able to meet with you. Otherwise, you will soon be able to order the product and handle it yourself. You will be amazed at the quality of the product.

In conclusion, the question is not whether you will get paid for participating. The question I have right now is how much do you want to make per sale? Again, this is a real product and  there are real production costs so you won't be able to split the revenue 70/30, but there are some real possibilities you will be able to split it 50/50 from each $0.99.

As with any new venture, there will be unexpected costs to be prepared to pay, so in the beginning I am leaning more towards being conservative on what everyone makes, but believe me, if this thing really takes off and we all help to keep costs down, I don't see why the split cannot be 50/50. I will have much more to say about all this so stay tuned.

Thanks! (-:

Layaway Angels

This Christmas season 2011, we all witnessed the extraordinary love of people towards total strangers. For no other reason but pure, unconditional love, loving angels paid off the layaway balances of total strangers at Walmart. The faces of the recipients we saw on TV were so moving it made me appreciate the awesome potential of people to help others in these stressful times of need. These days we also see the awesomeness of people helping others in the Extreme Makeover Home Edition shows, when entire communities come together to help a family of their own.

So why do I bring this up? It's not that I'm hitching a ride on the coattails of this movement, that is taking advantage of the situation. Rather, as you progress with me through this project, you will witness how serious I am about this project, more so for the awesome potential of being able to help others. If you still have hope that humans can and will love others, then we share that in common.

You will also witness, not only myself, but other participants as well, how much they care about others. You see, by participating in this project, you will have the chance to help other participants prosper as well. It's really quite simple and this is how it works. As a consumer, you will be purchasing designs from other artists and thereby helping them. As a designer you will be marketing your gallery of designs and indirectly also marketing the designs of other artists. 

In a nutshell, we are in this project together and together we stand or together we fall. I promise if we can make this work, there will be even more opportunities to help even more people. This project is just the beginning of some visions I have. I hope you trust me, not because I'm an expert in these things, but because I'm passionate about being able to take others along the ride I am taking myself. 

Trust me. This thing can become so big, so fun, and so beneficial to all. Just as those customers put some items on layaway, your job at this time is to contribute some of your designs. Later we will all see the millions of angels who will come to pay for your designs. So trust me a little, but trust even more all those millions of future customers. They are the ones we will all be thanking very soon.

Thank you for your time and effort. I truly appreciate it.