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! (-: