- I’ll be posting two new stock media packs [3d asset packs] on my Itch.IO page sometime soon, probably within the next 5-10 days. These are the ‘Forests & Flowers’ and ‘Snow & Sand’ packs that I’ve been working on. They’ll be $1.10 each except during sales or in bundle pricing situations.
- I’m trying to update some websites a bit more, I’ve already overhauled MiniatureMultiverse.com somewhat, and TriumphantArtists.com should see a few small fixes & updates soon as well, along with minor improvements across some of my other websites.
- I’m actively ordering a bunch of additional art supplies, shipping supplies, and DVDs/DVD cases. Why? I intend to launch all the Itch.IO content together as a singular $14.99 DVD product on eBay and here as well. I also intend to make a new batch of artworks and sell those too. As in, giant 24″x36″ size artworks, big, beautiful pieces with prices starting around $23.99.
- All this stuff going on will coincide with a staggering mix of ad campaigns that should draw in thousands of people and generate crazy levels of traffic from March 15 – April 15. The total cost is estimated at $45, or $1.50 spent on the campaign per day.
- I have some fan art stuff going on, behind schedule, but it is happening nonetheless. I also have some updates on RedeemerDocumentary.com heading in soon; you’ll see more content relating to the virtual church building tour which is nearing completion. I am also digitally reconstructing my old house in Houston, TX, and between all the various examples piling up, of my ability to realistically reconstruct architectural spaces, well… I’ll be posting a sale item here which essentially allows for people to hire me to make a made-to-order 3d level/tour for them in Unity.
- All the [still unposted] House Trek videos are going to be posted on HornbostelVideos.com shortly, except for the making-of stuff, and the animated DVD menus. And that’s just part of what’ll be posted. Watch for a PDF ebook, and also a printed paper equivalent, that showcases essentially all my work, with an emphasis on the creative process and what I’ve learned by doing all the stuff I’ve done [relating to game development, video production, handmade art, etc] it’s an insightful history summing up the last two decades of my life and it has hundreds of pics – giving you an inside look at a lot of things only friends and family know about so far, massive piles of interesting stuff the internet in general, currently has no idea exists. And no, not a puff piece, I very clearly and bluntly describe my mistakes and errors in judgement, and offer useful advice on solving common issues, that’ll make creative efforts hopefully easier for you than things have been for me.
- All of this sale stuff being launched, the artworks and other items, the book, stock media packs/DVDs, and the month-long ad campaign… it’s all a gambit to secure funding to do all the stuff I’m hoping to do by year’s end. I have three videos to shoot, about a dozen to actually finish, plus game content, including Vivid Minigolf v2, and Miniature Multiverse, those two in particular are challenging insofar as they each still have unresolved costs of over $250, in miniature materials alone. And then tack on the $450+ goals in funding between the three videos I’d like to record, plus all the other stuff involved… yeah, basically I hope this plays out well. If I don’t have close to $1k earned by end of Spring 2019, it means a lot of the goals for summer and fall of this year will fall through. And, quite bluntly, if you’re as tired of the slow rate of progress around here as I am, I’m pretty much begging you to buy something of mine, because if sales volume across my web network climbs high enough, and the percentage of visitors who transition to buyers climbs from a current level of 0.0135% to 5%, that’d change almost everything around here! (I seriously have thousands of visitors – around 2500 – every week, across my various websites and shops, and yet the majority of weeks nothing is actually sold anywhere on my network.)
Tag: products
Launching new items on Etsy & ArtFire this week
If you’re at all interested, over the next week I am about to start posting a batch of new listings on Etsy and ArtFire. Just FYI, there have been a number of people with bad experiences selling & buying on these platforms, so if something goes wrong and, for example, one of these shops runs into a glitch or the shop suddenly shuts down for no good reason, just know it’s the platform’s decision and their screw-up, not mine. I’ll do my best to handle my shops here with integrity but realistically there are some things I cannot control, like the other sellers [who may cheat you in some cases, or sell shoddy knock-off items that are mass produced in China and not really artful or ‘handmade’] and the decisions of the venue owners. So be careful to buy carefully from vendors within these markets who you know have some sort of good track record – either positive ratings right there or elsewhere. In my case? I do not yet have a clear track record on these shops but I DO HAVE A SOLID 170+ RATINGS ON eBay. And they’re all positive, 100% of them.
You should expect similar outcomes on my other shops, great items, inexpensively priced, with good customer service. And if I do somehow screw up, and overlook something, I’ll do what I can to rectify the mistake. This – delays in shipping or other screw-ups – can happen once in a while due not to malicious intent but simply because I am busy with many customers and things occasionally fall through the cracks.
I have actually been rated negatively on eBay a handful of times but in each case I managed to resolve the complaints involved. I ended up refunding the sale amount, apologizing profusely for the late/damaged item which had trouble in the shipping process… or in one case an item was not quite what the customer was looking for visually. All of these were issues I did try my best to resolve and on these rare occasions, the customers ended up retracting their negative ratings of my shop, usually replacing them with positive ones. The same willingness to exceed customer expectations, and resolve problems even if it means I lose money on the sale, will apply on every shop I run, whether it’s Etsy or ArtFire or eBay or my own shop here on this website.
HornbostelProductions.com Shop
Triumphant Artists ArtFire Shop
I am also aiming to post new stuff on my own shop the week after that. This should include some really cool things that I’ve put a ton of work into. Watch for that. Oh – and by the way – there are a couple of amazing eBay auction this week too and they end in a couple of days.
They’re for custom made to order art and the opening bids are under $3 on both listings. You might want to jump in on that!
UPDATE: eBay auctions relisted and the first of the new art items has been posted on Etsy.
FEBRUARY 2017 RECAP
Recapping the recent events of February 2017, just the last month, to remind everyone that despite appearances, a lot of updates do actually happen on my web network if you keep looking:
-eBay auctions with low starting bids continue. Look at these three in particular, especially the top two as they’ve gotten relatively few views so far compared to the third but are nonetheless impressive value:
Pastel Pencil art, 16×20 inches, starting at $1.99
Oil pastel art, 18×24 inches, starting at $2.49
Acrylic Painting, 18 x 24 inches, starting at $2.99
-The new batch of polls continue to go largely ignored by website visitors. I’ve gotten *hundreds* of visitors to my websites in the past week, over 700 actually, but the polling page seems to be a bit hard for them to find for whatever reason. It’s a shame, too, given the amazing opportunity for the few who actually take a look at that page.
-Membership options just launched. There are some stupendous perks to being a subscriber and signing up for a Premium Membership status here.
The most obvious is free shipping while a member and 15% or more off all HornbostelProductions.com store items. You could get some great bargains on handmade art doing that right now. $4.99/year for 15% or more off everything, and a list of other extras. Really reasonable.
-The VFX section of Articles were just recently posted. There are four new articles on TriumphantArtists.com, and they are all in that category.
-Still Art section has a few new images and is now sortable. You can now view the artworks I’ve made, organized by year, art medium, or size.
Still Art Page – now sortable!
-Ground work laid for some big stuff updated in the next 30 days. As in, major news related to ‘Spiral Skies’, release of House Trek content, and a new batch of HD stock footage, as well as more comics stuff, finally a new vlog entry, and continued expansion of the articles section with even more valuable information. There’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes and it’ll be publically revealed over time.
-That goofball auction of five hours of my time. Nobody bid, but I am not really surprised given the brevity of the auction. It was kind of an experiment and it failed. Time to move on. Maybe I’ll try that idea again later on with a longer build up beforehand.
-The Vineyard Video Leisure Group is now moving closer to fruition. I posted a teaser image for it just this evening. [See previous post]
MEMBERSHIP PLANS ACTIVATED
You can show your support for my work by becoming a paid member, for a really low price.
You’ll find it’s actually a very impressive bargain given that all the products on the HornbostelProductions.com shop are 18% off or more for members, with free shipping also.
I know, I know, the auction thing I tried last week didn’t go well. I figured it was worth a shot. Maybe I’ll try it again in a month and see if anyone is interested then. A lot of ideas have been suggested to move my creative work forward – and most of them have been underwhelming. Ad revenue? Less than $2 per month at best, even with a few thousand regular visitors, so not a viable option. Art sales work great, on eBay, but that fluctuates wildly and eBay’s fees aren’t great. The subscription option I’m opening up for you here right now, plus the poll I mentioned earlier, seems like a good way to smooth that out – encouraging people to buy on the HornbostelProductions.com shop instead of eBay, by giving everyone great deals. It’s worth a shot and I’m optimistic about how it’ll end up playing out.
Two artworks added to ‘Still Art’ page and new eBay auctions posted!
Two more artworks (one from 2015 and one from 2016) were just posted on the Still Art page. More archived stuff will be uploaded later tonight, plus a couple of alternate sorting methods will be set up soon beyond the current chronological method [images will be sortable by art medium, and by size]
If the Still Art page looks really screwed up briefly at some point around 11 pm to midnight, that’s because that’s when the HTML and JS stuff is being actively changed.
Also, three auctions just posted on my eBay shop, all priced under $4 for the opening bid. Haven’t done actual auctions in a while so I figured now was a good time for that. Check that out!
Incidentally, I’ve just ordered some new art supply materials. More pastel pencils, and a few other things. I’m ready for the next wave of orders.
Shop details
Date the below entry was originally posted – June 21, 2016. If you don’t know why the old copy was lost, check this post: Website Port and SSL upgrade completed
PRICING
The price of items on the shop here will be based on the eBay ‘Buy it Now’ pricing, with typically only a slight 1-4% reduction in price per item. That’s not thrilling in itself.
The good news is there are a ton of additional discounts planned – discounts for repeat customers, aka loyalty rewards, and also if you refer friends to the blog, there’s a discount. If there’s a sale going on, then there’s another discount on top of that. You’ll even be able to join our affiliate program, which means if you refer somebody to the shop, and they buy something, you get a small percentage of the sale amount!
Basically, I will want the people who are fans of my work – the content on TriumphantArtists.com, PanoramicWorlds.com, etc, to spread the word about this shop because if it takes off I could potentially raise a lot of cash – enough to finish a long list of lingering projects that I really want to complete.
TIMING
The first sale on the shop will be an opening ten-day sale – from June 22 to July 2. There’ll also be a one-day sale on July 4th on a few items, but the broader sale will be in the initial ten day timeframe.
NEW PRODUCTS
-Local event services. If you want some sort of service in the Houston, TX area, especially near the 77023 zip code, such as videography of a special event, mural/wall/large surface painting, or group events/workshops, I will make some of those services available through the shop.
-Unique miniatures in N scale. Got a special place in mind that you want recreated in miniature? I can actually craft a miniature replica of a special location chosen by you. You might want your home recreated in miniature, or some other local building there is no premade kit for. The item can be sent ‘as is’ on a flat surface, for integration into a model railroad layout, or it can be placed in a display case with a painted backdrop, or it can be embedded in a snowglobe! Pricing and other details will be viewable on the shop before too long. The miniature category will also include a lot of premade designs to choose from.
-DVDs and Blu Rays with either video content or interactive media/games… found nowhere else and made by me!
-Prints of handmade art I’ve designed, i.e. posters and postcards and other similar items.