GCU Community Newsletter #11 – July 14, 2011

Not much going on in the Netherlands… it’s been warm, rainy and very windy lately. We were afraid the party tent in the backyard would blown away, then as the wind picked up even more, we thought the kitties might be in danger of becoming airborne!

Hidden Gems: Sale-a-Brate Birthday - artist Jen Cosgrove

There’s been a change to the Critique Clinic rules: we now run the clinic over three days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday), we take an unlimited number of artists, but you may still only submit one card per week.

Earlier this week, Monday’s regular feature, A Dash of Inspiration – a Cup of Creativity by Doreen Erhardt brought us Christmas in July; a new CHALLENGE has been issued to our community of bloggers; and Inspiration Station gave you some cool sites to find card ideas as well as a photo archive of high resolution photographs that are free for commercial use.

Until next time, don’t forget to pass the love around!

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Applying a Little Leverage

Let’s talk about designing, shall we? Artists and photographers can spend hours working on one card design, getting it exactly right. The color, composition, design elements and text have to come together to make an appealing and attractive package.

You decide your design is perfect for a birthday card. You upload it, add some snazzy inner verse that’s quite clever, if you do say so yourself. And you sit back with a smile, waiting for the sales to roll in ‘cause that card’s clearly a winner.

But somehow, the sales don’t come. Or you sell one here and there. What’s the matter with shoppers, anyway? Don’t they see how brilliant your card is? Why aren’t they buying?

To get to the bottom of the conundrum, we’re going to have to touch on a delicate subject, one which has baffled, disgusted and riled artists since GCU’s beginnings. I’m talking about…repetitions.(cue dramatic crescendo)

Yes, those long, never ending, tedious lists of duplicate cards that pop up in the New Cards section. The same design, repeated over and over, the only difference being the age, relationship, or both. THOSE cards. You know what I mean.

A couple of the most asked questions from the GCU forum come to mind – “How can any artist possibly stand to do all that repetition?” and “How can customers stand to wade through all that repetition – it’s so boring!”

I’ll start with something which may not have occurred to some artists: Greeting Card Universe is a retail site meant to entice shoppers and fulfill their needs. I understand why artists might view 100+ cards of the same design with dismay, but shoppers don’t think that way, and they aren’t using the site the same as you are.

Hidden Gems: Funny 60th Birthday for Him - artist Tom Rent

Very often, when shoppers come to GCU, they do so through a search for a specific kind of card, such as “happy 50^th birthday to my uncle.”

When shoppers are browsing, they’ll often start with a specific category, then drill down as needed. For example, the other day I had a shopper buy a card after browsing Invitations >> Wedding Attendants/Bridal Party Invitations >> Be My Ring Bearer?

Your sales notifications can make interesting reading.

The beauty of GCU is that shoppers can have it any way they want it – they can do an off-site or on-site search for a specific card, or they can dig into categories and sub-categories until they find what they’re looking for, or a combination of both.

Another thing to note is that per the Big Kahunas at GCU, who presumably know best, shoppers hardly ever browse the New Cards section. It’s just us artists who can be a wee bit obsessive about it.

As to how artists can stand the mind-numbingly task of creating duplicate cards, the answer is simple: money. I make repetitious cards all the time. It’s boring. Believe me, I’d much rather be doing something else. But I keep myself going by thinking about sales and how much money I’ll make when shoppers buy my cards. It’s a powerful incentive, especially now that I have several years worth of data telling me that for me, specific cards outsell general cards by a significant margin.

Apparently, people like sending a “Happy Mother’s Day to my Birth Mom” card in lieu of a general Mother’s Day card, even when the designs are the same.

Don’t forget that when shoppers are either browsing by drilling down categories, or searching for a specific card, they rarely see duplicate content because all those repetitive cards are each in their own sub-categories. You see them in a big boring lump in New Cards, but in reality, they’re scattered across GCU’s categories list.

When I make a new design for a category like Father’s Day, I consider how best I can leverage that design to make it go as far as it can and work for me as much as possible. If appropriate, I make a general card + a series of relationship cards. I might also recycle that design for a totally different category, since by GCU’s rules, I can use the same design 3 times (relationship specific cards count as one use).

Do the work once, leverage it to work for you.

However, there is a pitfall to this way of thinking – the pitfall of inappropriate photograph or illustration. I addressed this issue in a Nuts & Bolts feature last month.

If I’m honest, I mostly see this with photos. An artist takes a beautiful shot of a puppy with soulful eyes staring into the camera. They want to make it into a “miss you” card. Okay, I’m on board with that. However, taking that same image and trying to turn it into a series of “happy birthday” cards doesn’t really work unless you come up with a clever inner verse that makes sense of a sad looking photo with a cheery sentiment.

Be relevant. Don’t go crazy. Put on your shopper’s hat. If you were in a store browsing through a card rack, would YOU buy THAT card for the purpose?

Hidden Gems: Happy Bird-Day Coworker - artist Christie Black

If you can’t bring yourself to do age and relationship specific and other repetitious cards, I understand. This isn’t for everyone. As I said, it’s a lot of work. However, if you feel like you can stand it, leveraging your designs could work for you.

P.S. – I’ve been told that UK card buyers prefer blank cards. There’s no reason you can’t include one blank card as one of your “three image use” designs. In fact, many artists already to that to cover all the bases.

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GCU recently hit the 500,000 card mark! Congratulations to all our artists for helping to achieve this half-million milestone!

Artist Judy Adamson is looking for fellow artists who paint by hand for an upcoming feature on her blog. See her Forum post for details.

Tips on scanning pencil sketches can be found in this Forum post.

Tanya (Moonie) at Moonlake Designs has made a small collection of high quality photographs available to any artist who wants to use them. See her Forum post for all the details.

Websprinter continues to maintain her very helpful list of Free Art Programs.

There is a GCU artists’ group on Facebook? We encourage you to join, post cards for your fellow artists to admire, share news, and have fun!

DID YOU KNOW you can “like” this newsletter or any post on the GCU Community blog, or include them in your social bookmarks? Or Google +1 them! Just click the title of the post, which takes you to the permanent link page. At the bottom of the page you’ll see buttons for social sites like Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc.

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The next Newsletter will be published on July 21, 2011