New~! MySpace for Arts~!

[AveHurley]

Possibly the NEW ' MySpace for Arts'~? This is my Vision for AHI-FAN ~!! One can only imagine~ THEN one has to act~ and that is what I am doing with AHI-FAN!
I have been legally disabled since '1991 legally and physically disabled since' 1985 when I had my accident. I fell through a window and severed my right wrist causing 85% damage to my hand when it was reattached, ending my art career in NYC where I was from.

It has been downhill healthwise since then, but we have to persevere~so I must~

I have been living on disability and initially started working on the internet initially hoping just to make enough to cover its monthly costs. I started out working with Prepaid Legal and was their sole North East US representative, but it was taking so many hours and ratio wise there were few commissioned sales that I finally bailed out of it.

I learned alot of marketing techniques from them however which was beneficial to my other online endeavours thereafter, including this one here on AHI-FAN.

Learning little bits here and there about different businesses, has given me more than just a glimpse into online marketing /

My daughter & her husband did those Amway type companies. I can't remember its name....ah Quixtar~ They ended up spinning there wheels and had about a years worth of cleaning supplies by trying to make sales quotas..

Then they got into Primerica and busted their butts but never got far with that as it was chasing rainbows.. only those on top make the money, everyone else gets a whiff here and there and lands a big sale, but all the legwork involved has no guarantees that will feed a family ~ so they reluctantly left Primerica as it is a good company but couldnt meet their needs. I know they are loyal to it and it is perhaps a sideline job occasionally, but they too learned valuable lessons while promoting and selling Primerica.

I also tried selling Melaleuca, but soon realized early on it was bogus for a career, but still good stuff, just too many gimmicks involved to lead most members into only buying their own needs and providing free leads to the company..

All those promises of fortune but MLM is MLM and no one but the top ultimately makes any real money.. They toss a bone occasionally, enough to hook a poor sap into working tirelessly a year or two before they go broke! or burn out from exhaution...

I have been working hard online, but not for any other company anymore, figuring if I am going to bust my proverbial butt, it should be for myself and not some corporation~

I have gone so far down the rabbit hole that I do about 12 jobs at once and its gotten so complicated that I figured it was a waste to do it all solely for myself and that others can benefit from my own self styled way of doing things. I began sharing what I am learning with others who, like me want to sell their art online.

*IF* I already had a broad base of repeat customers, I could easily have about 12 departments with separate full time jobs for people and I could go back to painting and just hand the painting over to my staff~ as a proof over to the Promotions Department and have my hired Digital Art Print Shop size and set up prints, have another area where the Printing Department would then print and trim them.

They would then send them to the Quality Control Department to be inspected and the images would then be sent them to the "Art Department" for touchups prior to my having to hand sign each one.

After that they would be made ready and sent to Customer Service Department where they would be paired off with their Certificates of Authenticity, registrations to the buyers recorded and then attached to the customer invoices .

Finally they would be sent on to the Shipping Department where they would be readied to be sent out to the customer.

I would need to also have a Sales Department that was based on commissioned salaries as well as leads from a Promotions Department, those who would be my editors , working full time listing my artwork on auction sites, sales shops, blogs, internet web searches and more..

People that sell Kirby vaccuums get a 10% commission on sales. My son worked for them for over 4 years and put in so many hours I felt bad for him, but admired his spirit in wanting to be successful in sales.Sales persons are a special breed of people. They may get those hi-end deals accomplished, but they work very hard at what they do .
When he first began in sales, he got 3 sales one week and made $1029 check which hooked him into the next 5 working more years than 130 hours a week, on commission with no guaranteed paycheck unless he made the sale.He was in all their promos where sometimes he'd even lower the price to make the sale to reach his quota, often winning monthly sales awards, but those discounts came out of his commissions - so he often sold without getting paid much at all~ but he was dedicated and an asset to that company.

When I told him that I am now seeking experiences sales people that can also work independently like he did, that I would give them 33% commission.

He said that is too much that commissioned sales people can't get more than 25%.
I said it is worth it to me to just start making more volume sales. -
I look at it as 1/3 materials, 1/3 me and 1/3 salesperson.

Maybe thats naiive, but it would work for me.

I made an ad for it on my site but it is currently on a back page.There is only so much to put on a front page. I often worry that it gets overwhelming for members as my site is already over 130 pages deep not counting the 3000+ picture pages and the 100+ albums~! Editing and visual appearance is everything with a website.. Simplification is needed as well.

There was a sales rep from Dunn and Bradstreet who was really impressed at how much I was able to do with my AHI-FAN site, considering it is a preformatted ning and how I was able to innovate and work with what I had to build it to be so unique.

I realized too that I haven't even listed everything I do online in the SuperGroups Directory yet..

There is always more. It is growing fast and it will grow more.

I am trying to establish a method of easy promoting in steps, so everyone can promote their own work. When asked why, I say I want to help others who are in a similar circumstance to me, an artist with less than the amount of income required to live comfortably~

In doing all the background, behind the scenes promotional work, I realized how tedious it gets and is and that in itself might be enough for me to even need hired editors, as some members cant even do it on a basic level or perhaps they just wont or would want it, but get too overwhelmed trying to do it themselves, so based on that I now offer my editing services for a small fee, since they do take up most of my time.

If a person understands how complicated and time consuming promoting is, then they are more than willing to pay people like Dunn and Bradstreet to do it for them and figure $895 a year is actually a bargain. Who can you get to work below minimum wage to help you become potentially richer?

I'd love to have one person to do all my auction listings. That can be another full time job too.

Even to have someone creating Etsy listings - another tedious thing.

I made some new listings on Etsy tonight for it so they will be good for a few months..

So to do what I do and to have people subscribe, I figure $5 is affordable [its more like a tip] and better than $0 and as the promotions grow.

As I get more systemized in doing promos and ads, I want to train a few people to do edits, but those types of jobs are usually a min of $25/hr ,so I need to hone in my skills and make a training manual that could make it so 3-4 people can be promoted during the same hour, so I figured $7.50 a person split up. Then I could relist and update the promos that are out there and add in cross promo links.

I know I couldn't afford Dunn & Bradstreet, so I took there 'basic' free offer and just as I promo others free, they do too to get more business and their hope is that I will bring them business which I said I will put their logo somewhere on my site and promote them.
Only thing I didn't like was when they took a snippet from my RSS it was some blog of a member that I was considering deleting and that is now stuck in my page promo~ I might be able to fix it but havent spent the time researching how yet.

I would love to see success for everyone on my site and for those yet to come.I am working towards success for all my members as well as myself.

There is strength in numbers too , so as the site membership grows, I will receive offers from advertisers which would offset time costs and by then I will be able to polish my skills and be able to hire some computer programmers to write the script needed to make the site automatic.

I envision that as soon as an artist/craftsperson enters their picture of what they are selling , that it will automatically fall into all the categories applicable and go directly onto a promotions list and auto send to all the sites where promotions are received. Imagine 50+ blogsites receiving auto writeups on your art/crafts/sculpture/ jewelry at once~

The internet can be swamped with sale offers and our network would become the MySpace for Arts~!

So I think we all can be successful if we all work together and push forward with our best efforts. At this point in time there is no site that does it all, so the direction I am taking my network in will be unique..

I just realized as I wrote this to a friend and fellow artist that it would be good to blog about, so I have taken a portion of the original letter and used it for this blog... So you see, you are helping me too~! Ideas come and go but to catch them and bring them to life is the best way to move ahead of the line~!

:) Ave Hurley ~ AHI-FAN