S.F. Chronicle In Jeopardy

The Hearst Corp., the parent company of San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, announced yesterday that it must quickly slash costs including severe workforce reduction, or has to sell or close the newspaper. Hearst's announcement is triggered by the greater than expected loss projected for the year. According to Hearst, the newspaper has been losing money since 2001 including a lost of more than $50 million last year.

The Chronicle is hardly alone. Hearst recently announced that it was closing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, unless it can find a buyer. The Tribune Co., which operates the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, filed for bankruptcy protection in December last year. The Philadelphia Inquirier and Daily News' parent company also filed for bankruptcy over the weekend. In addition, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and Tucson Citizen in Arizona may close, if they can't find a buyer.

There is nothing new that the newspaper industry has been hit hard by the popularity of the Internet, which has drastically changed how news is produced and distributed. The newspaper companies used to be the only source of news. Not any longer. At CNN's iReport.com, individual citizens are contributing lot of news content at real time. I was very much impressed by the number of eyeballs I attracted, when I published my Cartoosh's View editorial cartoons to iReport.com. In my post about a cartoonist's dream, I also discussed the change in the syndicate industry.

The popularity of iReport.com is just one of many success stories in the new era of "user-driven content" business. In my post about how to produce passive incomes, I discussed user-driven content sites including eHow, HubPages, Squidoo, CafePress, Zazzle, and SaleForce.com's AppExchange.

Although news readers now receive free news from the Internet, many of them feel overwhelmed by the massive amount of information. With keywords you enter, the search engine returns lots of relevant web pages. Thanks to the technology that analyzes content relevance and website authority, such as, Google's PageRank, the quality of search results has significantly improved. Websites like Digg and StumbleUpon are offering an alternative to highlight important or interesting news and information by human surfers instead of search engines.

Still, how to consume news and information effectively with limited amount of time available in people's busy daily schedule remains a challenge. The news companies can play a new role in finding a solution of this challenge. Although the printed newspapers are not going to disappear completely, the future of the newspaper companies is closely related to how they leverage user-driven content and address effectiveness of news consumption.

Economic Downturn Hit Zazzle

The troubling global economy has impacted every corner of the globe including many start-up companies in Silicon Valley. Among the victims, Zazzle announced a 15% layoff at the end of January, 2009, while CafePress already went through the pain a year ago.

The layoff included 28 out of 110 in the corporate office and the rest in the company's factories. Zazzle, a rival of CafePress, was founded by Robert Beaver and his two sons in January, 1999. The company was primarily backed by by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures, who in 2005 provided $16 million in series A funding. The company has enjoyed steady growth over the past couple of years. With consumers tightening their spending, the company has seen drastic decline in revenue.

I hope Zazzle has got the wisdom in navigating the economic storm, as I have enjoyed working on my Cartoosh Gallery in the past month. Let's wish them well and keep our fingers crossed - for all of us!

Light Up The Engine Of Your Internet Business

[Updated 2/20/2009]

It's a wonderful day today. The cloudy sky in California finally broke up for sunshine after restless raining for about two weeks - which is very much appreciated, since California had not got nearly half of the rain as in the normal winter season.

But, the other great thing is that the second phase of my Internet business has reach a new altitude. The gigglePanda - our latest gigglePet member to join giggleZOO (see the attached picture) won Today's Best Award at Zazzle. Within a day, I've received quite a few excellent 5-star ratings and comments from the visitors of my Cartoosh Gallery. It feels like watching your kids receiving wonderful praises or joining the principals honor roll list (which actually happened to my son last week :) The traffic to both my Cartoosh Gallery and giggleZOO has increased as a result.

I'm still at the early stage of the second phase of my Internet business. I'm still exploring myself to see what I could do in arts and trying to find the angle to differentiate myself in the crowded and competitive art-selling marketplace. I still have a long way to go. But, the recognition at this stage helps confirm the direction and the strategy in my Internet business.

If you're contemplating what to do for your own business adventure, I'd suggest you start by "looking inside yourself for potentials and trying to leverage your strengths" rather than simply follow the crowd or "the so-called experts." Some self-claimed experts on the Internet, for example, suggest you read articles published by others and "rewrite" them to become your own. Or, use a program to collect the articles from the Internet based on certain keywords and instruct the program to produce copies that are often not readable by human. To earn a sustainable income, you'll be spending the whole day producing at least twenty or thirty articles. That's fine, if you enjoy doing that and feel proud in dedicating your life on that. Even if you can make decent money, would you be able to tell your kids that's something you've been doing for the past five or ten years?

Passion can evaporate in a few weeks or months. Passion alone is not enough to make a successful business. You need a business that is in line with the values of your life. Not only is producing cartoon arts a long-time hobby of mine, but I'm also thrilled in sharing a few giggles with people. I've been exploring my own potentials in cartooning and found something I didn't realize I could do before. That's what keeps me going everyday. Don't settle for something solely to produce incomes. You have to find "the true engine" of your own and light it up.

(Click to see the award winning product!)

Baby gigglePanda by cartoosh
Design a customizable stein At zazzle
See more Cartoon Art Mugs

Selling Arts at CafePress and Zazzle

Many artists, professional or amateur, have been publishing their arts or designs at CafePress and Zazzle. The artist makes their incomes by taking a share of profits from the sales of the gift items or products with their art designs printed on top. CafePress has been a success story being the first prominent player in the online self-publishing industry.

Yet, web technology has evolved greatly in the last few years. Many web sites are now built with Web 2.0 technologies that significantly change the user experience and improve productivity. One of the runner-ups is Zazzle. Equipped with better technologies, Zazzle has brought self-publishing to the next level. Learning from its predecessor, Zazzle has introduced many new features and improvements. CafePress also has made a strategic mistake in charging a monthly fee for so-called "premium store" that comes with more features and no limitations in product creation compared to its "basic store." As a result, Zazzle has taken away a significant chunk of business from CafePress over the last coupe of years, as you can tell from the pictures below.

I'll go into a lot more details in my next post comparing the two sites. Stay tuned.

Fig.1 Daily Page Views Comparison (Click to see the full sized chart. Source: Alexa.com)

Fi.g.2 Daily Reach Comparison (Click to see the full sized chart. Source: Alexa.com)

Fig.3 Daily Traffic Rank Comparison (Click to see the full sized chart. Source: Alexa.com)

Tips to Create Your Special Zazzle Gallery

Many of you are talented in arts and crafts. Why not show the world your talent and even make a profit of it? There are print-on-demand websites like Zazzle and CafePress that provide you a space on the Internet to showcase your art graphic works. And, if people like them, they can order from a variety of products or gift items (e.g. T-shirts, mugs) with your works printed on them. You don't need to worry about printing and shipping. All this is well taken care of by those websites. As a talented artist, all you have to do is to produce your artworks, load them up, create the products for your own gallery.

In this post, I'll show you how to open your own Zazzle gallery, create your own products, and promote them. I'll share with you some of the lessons I've learned, so you can do this effectively and efficiently.

Set up your Zazzle gallery and create your products
Setting up your Zazzle gallery is easy.

1. Simply go to http://zazzle.com and sign up an account for free. It's import to pick a nice user name for your new account, because it'll become part of the URL used to access your gallery.
   
2. Once done, you'll go straight to MyZazzle to create your own gallery by choosing its appearance and filling out some basic information.
3. Assuming you've got your artwork (e.g. photos, graphics, drawings) on your computer, you can click on the Products tab and start creating your products. Zazzle allows you to create a wide variety of products ranging from T-shirts, mugs, postcards, to buttons of your choice. Creating each individual products one at a time is a repetitive process that could take away too much precious time of an artist. So, I strongly recommend you take advantages of the quick product builder. Click on "quick create many products" at the top left corner, which brings up a 3-step wizard to speed up the process.
4. Note that you don't have to create all products for each of your artwork. Choose the right products for the right design. For example, if you have a design of a political figure, you may not want to put it on infant's creepers. You should avoid placing politically controversial designs on postage stamps.
   
5. For each product you decide to create, make proper customization and adjustments. For example, you may want to make sure your design looks as expected on the dark apparels. I also recommend you check the flag to grant your customers the privileges to further customize based on their personal preference. This does not mean you should leave all customization to your customers. Keep in mind that not everyone is familiar with the customization tool.
   
6. One cool thing about Zazzle is that you can decide how much you want to charge your royalties. The royalties are added on top of the basic cost that Zazzle charges. Check the prices of other products to figure out the right percentages that reward your hard work and at the same time keep your products competitive in the marketplace.
   
7. Organize your products using product lines and sub-product lines and offer your customers easy navigation and better shopping experience. You can always reorganize your products using the batch operation "Edit Selected" at the Products page of MyZazzle later.
   

Promoting Your Gallery and Products
Once you have your gallery and products created, you'll want to get the words out and start promoting them. There are several ways:

1. The first step is to carefully choose right keywords suitable for your products. I recommend you use more specific keywords instead of general ones. The general keywords typically result in tens of thousands of products and give very little chance for your products to appear in front of the shopper.
2. Use as many promotion tools from Zazzle to promote your gallery and products on your own websites, blogs, and social networking sites. Zazzle offers many tools ranging from a simple link to your gallery using zBar or Zazzle star to hosting your gallery as part of your own websites depending on the level of your effort and your skills. Click on the Gallery tab under MyZazzle and look for links under Link Building and Serious Tools at your left. In Serious Tools, Zazzle also provides you the promotion tools specifically for MySpace and Facebook. Create a Zazzle gallery showcase lens at Squidoo, too.
3. Max your profit by becoming a Zazzle associate and earn extra on every sale referred by your promotion widgets. Once signing up as a member and creating a gallery, you'll automatically assigned an associate id. You can find your associate id by clicking on the Gallery tab under MyZazzle. Look for Associate Center under Associate Account at the navigation panel at your left. Click on the Associate Center link and you'll see your associate id at the top of the main content section of the page. The promotion links or widgets you create in the previous step automatically include your associate id to track the referral transactions.
4. Join the Zazzle community, make comments and friends, and participate in the forum. Integrate your blog with your Zazzle gallery, which unfortunately does not support Blogger at the moment.
   

As an example, you can take a look at the Cartoosh gallery at http://zazzle.com/cartoosh* (yes, with the aster sign.)

(Click to see the full sized picture.)

How to Generate Passive Income Over the Internet [Updated]

[Updated 12/2/2008.]

The first phase of my Internet business adventure is to explore potential opportunities, such as knowing what marketplaces are out there and what tools are at my disposal. Since my primary interest is to produce passive income, I have excluded ideas like selling on eBay or Amazon. My goal is to continue my income streams, even when I am not at it actively.

As discussed in this post, there are several ways to generate passive income over the Internet. Although the ways vary, the bottom line of all this is content - the King of the Internet. Income is generated by traffic to your sites, and traffic is generated by the content you produce. Knowing this, my job is to keep producing content, the kind of content that produces passive incomes. I discuss a few types as an overview.

1. Royalty-Based Content

There are many types of royalty-based content; for example, books, photos, articles, paintings, images, video clips, etc. You can protect your content via copyright or trademarks. You then claim royalties when people use them or make a copy of them. To produce passive income, though, you want to avoid handling orders from customers and shipping the products yourself.

There are many content sites that can store your content, but not all of them enable you to profit from them. For example, you can place video clips to YouTube, but you do not make a profit when people view it. Luckily, some content sites have done all the hard work and all you have to do is to produce the content for them, which is what you are good at. Advantages of this approach are that the sites handle orders, production, and shipping for you, and that there are already crowds looking for you.

Here are some examples of these sites: Istockphotos is a popular market place where people look and shop for the pictures others have produced. CafePress and Zazzle are marketplaces where people shop for T-shirts, mugs, gifts, and many other things with pictures or graphics designed by artists a.k.a yourself. Lulu.com is a marketplace for self-published books, music, and videos, while Etsy.com is for things that are hand-made.

2. Informational Content

Many Internet surfers are looking for insightful information to help them make a wise decision for their next purchase or how-to for doing certain things. If you are an expert in doing certain things or domains, this is an opportunity for you to publish your knowledge or share your ideas. Surfers typically do not directly pay for informational content, but indirectly via clicking on the searching or affiliate ads at your site.

The easiest way to set up your site(s) for the information content you produce is perhaps blogging. A blog is like a journal in which you publish informational content. You can start your own blog immediately, after opening an account with popular blog sites, such as, Blogger, TypePad, or WordPress. You will have to do affiliates and place ads on your blog(s) as well as conduct promotions to get traffic to your blogs. For more information on blogs, read my post that compares Blogger and WordPress.

Luckily, there are also content sites that have already attracted huge crowds looking for your new content; such as, eHow, Squidoo, and HubPages. All these sites provide cash-back incentives to the authors, based on various factors such as, the number of readers and the usefulness of what you wrote. You can read my other post for details on this subject.

3. Applications on the Cloud

I consider software application a special kind of content. Traditionally, application developers build the application off-line and deploy it to public on their production web server. Thanks to Web 2.0, the paradigm is now shifting towards on-line development. The most successful vendor in this frontier is salesforce.com. Through its subsidiary, force.com, the company provides not only the tools (as well as the infrastructure to host the application) to build the business applications, but also the market place, namely, AppExchange. Application developers use the tool for development and testing and publish their application to the marketplace when it is ready. Customers of salesforce.com can browse or look up the available applications in the marketplace and install those that suit their needs and demands. Application vendors can either make their applications free or charge certain subscription fees based on the number of licenses and duration. The profit is split between the application maker and salesforce.com who makes this all possible.

Be aware that the customers of these types of applications are not regular consumers who browse and shop on the Internet. The customers of salesforce.com are enterprises or businesses of various sizes that demand both complexity and quality of the application. It is therefore not surprising that developers of this category must clearly understand the business needs of their customers and be equipped with a certain level of programming skills. Though, it is considered easier and less time-consuming compared to traditional application development using C, C++, C#, or Java.

Finding the Right Marketplaces and Tools that Suit You

Having seen such a wide variety of marketplaces, you may feel lost, and start wondering where to start. By now, you should understand that each category discussed above requires different skill sets. It is important that you understand your talents as well as your passions. Here are some questions to help you figure them out:

1. What are you talents?
2. What are your passions?
3. What are your skill sets? Or, can you afford to hire someone to do it?
4. Which market sectors or domains do you know the best?

While trying to answer these questions, please also keep in mind that it is important to leverage other people. They can be your family, your close friends, your co-workers, or even hire someone if you can afford it.

Read this post on eHow, HubPages, and Squidoo.