New designs

Here are 4 new designs for my cafepress shop. 2 of them are in there now, and 2 of them will be in there soon. Here are all 4 nonetheless. They're all relating to being pregnant and the goofy questions that go along with it. While I've never been pregnant, my wife is nearing the end of her second pregnancy (due in about 4 weeks) and she tells me all the questions people ask. Some of the designs are based on those, some are made up. I'm not really at liberty to say which is which :) but I suspect people will enjoy these. Okay, I'll say anyway :) The first one should be pretty obvious... you'd be surprised how often people ask if you're having twins and when you tell them you're not, they ask if you're sure. You'd really be surprised. The next happens when people ask when you're due and when you tell them, they step back, wide eyed, and look really surprised. Again, happens more than you think. The last two relate to people seeing you're pregnant and just putting their hands on you. I wouldn't say it happens more than you think, but it happens, and if you're guilty of that, at least ask first ;-)

Anyway... hope you like them, feel free to comment. Clicking on the first two will show you the designs in place, and I'll implement that on the other two when they're up. For now, click on the last two will take you to the maternity section of the shop.

Added 2 new designs

Added 2 new maternity designs last night. I'll post the pictures up this evening.

Switching the focus of the blog..

Since the focus of my life is changing -- we're about to have a baby and maternity leave (and therefore, only one income for about 3 months) -- I've decided to change the focus of this blog. I'm currently dabbling in a number of areas where I have the potential to earn money on the web, and I'm going to document that process (and it's results) on this page, with tools and thoughts from the process along the way. It'll be an interesting way for me to keep up with it even if no one else ever reads it.

My most successful venture to date was writing an "abstract" (in this case, a 3-4 sentence summary) of an article for Brijit. The third of my submitted abstracts was accepted, slightly edited, and I was credited with $5. No, I don't suppose that's anything to write home about, but it's worth mentioning. It was deposited into my Paypal account yesterday, so that's a good thing. Few more of those and I could buy a cartoonsmart tutorial or various other things... Brijit isn't a bad deal, though reading an 8 page article (or watching an hourlong video) and then summarizing it into 3 or 4 sentences isn't really my strength. It drains me. They do pay $8 for the abstracts based on a video, though, and some of the videos are short (15 minutes, etc). All in all, not a bad deal.

Next I tried Squidoo, and made a "lens" about Kevin Spacey, and another about Call of Duty 4 (which I really do think *is* the best FPS game, ever, btw). I put a lot more effort into the Kevin Spacey one, and it shows, I think. I have a lot of ideas about new lenses on squidoo, but it's fairly time consuming and difficult to do unless you just rip the content straight from wikipedia, which I've seen in a number of places, but that's not my thing, so I'm going to pass...

The latest option, and I really think the most promising, is that I just opened a new Cafepress store where I'll be selling t-shirts with funny thoughts and pictures on them. I don't really know how well it'll all work out, but I've already sold 2 t-shirts in the less-than-a-week it's been up. I think that's a good sign. So far I've had a ton of ideas for new t-shirts (and quite possibly a second premium store) and it's enjoyable to execute the idea into a graphic (though admittedly, my graphic design skills leave something to be desired) and I've currently got more ideas than I can do. I've set out a few goals in the process:

• Purchase a premium store for a timeframe of 6 months for $35


• Sell enough gear to make back that $35 over the course of that 6 months


• Add 3-5 new designs/products a week

As far as completing those goes, I've purchased the store for 6 months, I'm currently at the $2 mark (2 sales, $1 each) and I've currently got 2 categories and 3 designs in the store. I've got 2 more designs that I'm about to upload (which will make 5 for the week, and add a third category) so I'm doing pretty good. I've also got a ton of other ideas that I'm working on -- some will be best suited to just text, others will require some drawing, others some 3D, and others still need some more fleshing out as to how best to execute them. But all in all, I'm pretty pleased with the cafepress idea. My shop will have everything from baby/maternity humor to political humor to plain ole fart jokes. While some people may not like some of it, I hope by the time I'm done there's something there that will appeal to just about everyone. While Brijit does pay at the end of the month and cafepress takes 60 days after the end of the month to process, I think cafepress is going to be a better option for me in the long term.

So... at least for the present, the focus of this blog will be on these ventures, their successes and failures, and the journey along the way.