As you may have noticed, the Save Modern Evil meter has recently reached its goal. Modern Evil has been saved! This is primarily due to the sale of original paintings, as shown in the simple list below:
Income from direct donations: $11 (less ~$1 in Paypal fees)
Comissions from Cafepress sales: $23.23
Revenue from the sale of paintings: $270
Total revenue generated from 2/1 to 7/1: ~$303
I made a huge post about this last night right before my browser inexplicably locked up trying to find me a definition at dictionary.com and I lost the whole thing. The gist of it was that clearly I should work more on marketing my paintings and worry less about Cafepress.
Last night I updated all the paintings in the ‘Art‘ section of Modern Evil to reflect their serial numbers, as well as their new pricing structure. Now every painting’s price is based on the price you’d pay if you walked into my antiques shop/gallery here in Pine (The Old Settlers Shops, 3972 N Highway 87, Pine, AZ), although all internet sales are 50% off regular prices. Every painting has a ‘Buy Now’ button that will allow you to instantly purchase the painting via Paypal, though if you are an Arizona resident we can cunduct the transaction in person and not have to worry about shipping costs and bank processing fees. If you come to the shop/gallery to buy paintings and mention the website, I’ll give you the 50% discount in person.
A certain amount of merchandise will remain available through Cafepress. Their response to my closing over two dozen stores was positive, and they offered to make one of my shops a ‘premium’ shop for a complimentary period – I have not heard back about this, but if they do, you may see some improvements in the ease-of-use of the shop. Also, I am working on re-writing my novel and … probably even if their prices seem a little high, I’ll offer them for sale directly via Cafepress when that service becomes available. I am also researching some other options for generating revenue for Modern Evil.
We’ve tackled one goal, but remember; hosting is an ongoing cost. We need to raise another $300 by this same time next year. I’m going to be updating the banner ads soon to reflect this change; instead of ‘SaveME’ it will be ‘Support Modern Evil’, and instead of a meter that goes to $300 for hosting, $300 for hosting will be the halfway mark. If we can earn more than that in the next year, we can look into adding some exciting new things into production. I’m also looking into offering anyone who gives $20 or more in direct donations an original character sketch of any character from any medium, and anyone who gives $35 or more an original 8″x10″ painting, and anyone who gives $50 or more an original 9″x12″ painting.
Oh, and Modern Evil contributors: I’d like to put together a compilation of work by Modern Evil creators, not just of work that has been on the site necessarily, but just different work by the people who write at Modern Evil. Short stories, poetry, poignant personal prose, interesting memoir-like segments of your blogs or diaries, maybe some black and white drawings and … well, if you think of something else, let me know. Then I’ll put the stuff together as a book and we can sell it through Cafepress’s POD service. I don’t know what the pricing structure they’re planning on for their final book service will be, but depending on what sort of commission can be reasonably made on such a thing we may want the proceeds to go directly towards paying hosting costs, and only look into dividing up proceeds after hosting costs have been met. Or something else. I don’t know, maybe 50% to hosting directly and the rest divided up… It could come out to pennies a copy for each author, but your work would be out there. Just an idea I had.
I’ll stop blathering now.
Oh, wait. One more little thing. I’ve just rounded up all the prices on Modern Evil’s Cafepress merchandise to the nearest $10. Which means most of it is $20 an item. Remember, these prices as well as these items will stop being available after July 16th, so act now!
