Author: Gareth

We’re down to the wire, folks, and there are so many more tools and tips out there. So today, we’ll do a holiday grab bag for you, looking at a digital delivery service, a wordpress media creation plug-in and a Flash game creation platform — each of these could easily have merited their own entry in the series, and are really worth checking out. It’s Christmas Eve, the family is gathering, so let’s not delay any more — here we go!

Anybody selling digital products should look into Payloadz which runs ecommerce and file delivery. Payloadz features secure file storage and delivery from their servers; integration with your site or sites like eBay; support for Paypal, Amazon Payments and more. Here’s a brief introduction video:
 
 

 
 
Powerpress is a free, open source media creation plug-in for WordPress (which I covered a couple of days ago). Perfect for integrating a podcast or vlog onto your site (using HTML5 audio and video players), adding iTunes-compliant feeds to your site, along with the ability to upload and update iTunes listings and artwork. PowerPress is developed and maintained by Blubrry, a media company and community providing tools and resources for media creators to measure, monetize, publish and host media content. No membership is required to use Powerpress, although it can also be used in concert with Blubrry’s other services (like Media Stats and Hosting).

Stencylworks is a platform that enables game designers to create iOS and Flash games without coding, by using their online library of functions and graphics (or via uploading your own). It’s available in a free “lite” form (which watermarks the final game, and does not publish it to the app store), and a pro version costing $149 per year, which removes the watermark, gives you access to private forums, and publishes your games to the App store. Plus, Stencyl is currently working on expansion into the Android market and HTML5 development (instead of Flash). A brief overview video follows:
 
 

 
 
What tools have you discovered that we haven’t covered so far? Please share via comments below! We’ll see you back here tomorrow, for our final Insurgent Creative entry of 2011. What do we have planned for 2012? You’ll have to wait and see….
 
 

There are a number of sites on the internet that offer print-on-demand production of merchandise: shirts, mugs, iphone cases, refrigerator magnets, widgets, what-have-you. You upload your designs to their specifications, and when a customer orders, the object is manufactured and shipped to them. You pay no inventory cost, no warehousing, and earn a percentage of the sale. Of all of the sites offering similar services, I have the greatest amount of experience with CafePress.

Cafepress was founded in 1999, and currently has more than 13 million users. The site produces over 250 different types of products, ranging from poster prints and banners, to drinkware, to all manner of clothing. The process is simple — you create your storefront (which can be customized to match your website), upload your custom graphics (following the free downloadable product templates), set your price (Cafepress will tell you the cost of production, and you set your mark-up above that price — which is the amount that you earn per sale), and activate the product for sale. Cafepress handles the sale, the production, and the shipping, and pays you your monthly commission within 45 days of the month in which it accrued.

If you wish to run sales entirely through your own website, Cafepress also allows you to buy your own merchandise at cost, with price breaks for bulk ordering — so you can order inventory if you prefer to handle all aspects of the transaction yourself. Given the ability to customize a Cafepress shop to match your own, and embed it using simple HTML (iframe, for example), though, there’s not many drawbacks to simply letting Cafepress handle most of the back-end. If you follow the templates provided, I’ve found that the quality of Cafepress’ production is excellent. The poster that we did for THRILLING TALES, featuring the artwork originally used for the classic Justice, Inc. cover, turned out so well that I had a copy framed at a local art store and it now hangs in my living room.

The creation and sale of merchandise isn’t likely to be your primary focus as an Insurgent Creative — I suspect there are few of us who say “I want to design and sell original T-Shirts, gifts, stationery and more” (and those of us that do want to will probably figure out some way to traditionally produce inventory, as it brings the costs down significantly). However, for writers, artists, musicians, game designers, etc., the ability to have merchandise available that is branded for your property serves not only as a nice way to market your main property, but also acts as a good source of additional income. Whether you’re looking to have merchandise available online, or you’re interested in having some stock produced for sale at conventions or other events, Cafepress is a good option with minimal headaches.
 
 

The internet is the “killer app” that enables the Insurgent Creative life — it levels the playing field by offering audience aggregation, tools for production, distribution and more. As I’ve stated a number of times during this series, the best way for a creative to make a living is to get their products out to as many high-traffic platforms as possible. Even with this wide presence, though, it is best for you to have a single central site for your efforts. Your website can serve as a secondary sales source (behind the market-leading sites), an informational source for news and updates, and the center for your marketing efforts, by offering a single location to which you can direct customers. With hosting as cheaply available as it is today, the only remaining hurdle for the Insurgent Creative is the design of the site itself. If you have coding skills in HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc., you can take care of the nuts-and-bolts of this yourself. If you don’t (or even if you do, but prefer to rely on an open-source framework that you can then customize), your best option for content management is, in my opinion, WordPress.

WordPress is a PHP and MySQL-powered platform, free for download, using customizable template system and plug-in architecture. It currently is the most popular content management system on the internet, with a huge user base, and a vibrant community producing add-ons, plug-ins and templates that can meet any need you might have. This blog is run on WordPress, as are all of my sites (Adamant Entertainment and the Far West website, for example).

There are themes available for every conceivable site use, from magazine-style websites to artist’s portfolios. Many of these are freely available, although, to be honest, I tend to use premium professional themes, because they usually are more robustly tested, more stable, continually updated to reflect the latest iteration of the WordPress software, and offer support as part of their purchase price. My favorite premium theme company is Viva Themes, who charge $45 per theme. This blog is built from their Method theme, Far West is customized from the Amantina theme, and Adamant’s site was built around Republica. I’ve found their coding to be easily understood and adaptable, and the support forums covered any questions I have had.

There are plug-ins for a nearly countless variety of functions available for WordPress, and again, some are free and some are premium. One of the more important tools you should look into is some sort of eCommerce platform, allowing you to run a webstore on your site. Even though most of your sales will most likely occur via the market-leading site in your particular niche (Amazon if you’re writing books, for example), it’s always a good idea to be able to sell through your own site as well (not the least of which is because you earn a greater percentage of the sale price).

The eCommerce plug-in that I use (currently on Adamant’s webstore, and coming soon to the FAR WEST site as well) is Cart66. Cart66 costs $89 per year for a single-site license, integrates with most payment processors, and enables the selling of everything from digitally-delivered product to physical products and services. Here’s an overview of how it works:
 
 

Cart66 Overview from Lee Blue on Vimeo.

 
 
There are more ways to adapt WordPress than I could possible cover in a single blog entry — in fact, there are dozens of books that have been written about it, with more coming every month. I’m sure that some of you reading this have recommendations for really useful plug-ins, great themes and more — and I invite you to add them via the comments below.