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

Save Money With Pay As You Go Phones

[Updated 2/13/09]

The economy downturn is hitting on us in many aspects of our lives. While the government is working on the economy stimulus plan to help us spend more, my advise to you would be quite the opposite. You see... What gets us into this catastrophe is careless borrowing and spending over the past few decades. Continue this spending spirit would not get America out of this mess but worsen the situation. To get out of this financial crisis with a stronger America, we need to change our culture - spending on what we need and saving for our future. The point I'd like to put more emphasis is to invest your cut expenses in your future, such as, your business assets that could fuel growth of your business in the long run. If we had done this, our economy and American people would have been at a much better condition today, because we have got the savings needed to ride out the economic storm.

Having said that, I decide to make a change to my cell phone plan to save some bucks. I have got a local phone service and am able to make interstate calls using a service provided by a prepaid phone company. My cell phone is really for emergency calls or occasional talks with my family members and friends. Yet, I'm paying about $50 every month, which is $600 a year. A pay-as-you-go prepaid phone service would cost me only $100 for a full year based on my usage; a $500 that I can invest in my Internet business.

It would be just a good idea to call up your cell phone company to find out when your current contract expires. You may be pleasantly surprised that you're already out of contract. In my case, I knew my contract would last for another year. But, I called and found that I'm actually out of contract due to the switchover, when the company consolidated their billing systems.

Here are some key elements you want to consider, when shopping your pay-as-you-go phones:

1. Network Coverage:
You have to know where you'll be using your phone, and check the vendor's coverage map to make sure those areas are well covered. Based on my research, Verizon offers the best coverage across the country in general. T-Mobile has spotty coverage in many areas and customers of T-Mobile have experienced lots of dropped calls. Again, that all depends on the areas you plan to use the phone. Coverage is the most important factor to me. After all, if the phone can't get any signals, what good is the phone? It's true that most of the vendors offer roaming services. But, roaming services are normally charged at a much higher rate that you would want to avoid as much as possible.

2. Plans
There are quite a few plans available from cell phone vendors. Even though the plans may look the same, different vendors may impose different interpretations or rules. So, you should always speak to the sales representative to find out the details. But, one thing you should be aware of, before you call:

• Daily access fee: In general, the big three vendors - AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile (Sprint does not offer pay-as-you-go) offer plans that charge various dollar amount depending on how much so-called daily access fee you're willing to pay. The fee is an extra service charge in accessing the vendor's network for the day you use the cell phone. The daily access fee ranges from $1 to $4 dollars; each comes with a different airtime costs per minute. For example, Verizon charges $0.99 of access fee for $0.10 of air time per minute, $1.99 for $0.05, $2.99 for $0.02, and $3.99 for unlimited air time. In addition, Verizon also offers various benefits of unlimited use (e.g. nighttime, weekend, and mobile-to-mobile).

Some vendors offer plans that don't charge the daily access fee. For example, Verizon Prepaid Basic charges $0.25 of air time per minute without the daily access fee. To me, this plan is ideal for an emergency phone. Verizon Prepaid Basic is a new plan and has not yet appeared on their website as of today (2/11/09). Refilling $100 or more with T-Mobile gives you special gold rewards, such as, $.10 per minute with additional 15% free air time and without having to pay the daily access fee.

One advantage with a no contract phone is that you're allowed to switch among these plans anytime you wish.

3. Expiration of Refills
When you purchase a new prepaid phone, the phone comes with some free (usually $10 worth) airtime. You'll have to made additional purchases of air time (called refills) within a certain period of time (60 days for Verizon). You consume the airtime for both outgoing and incoming calls.

Be aware that each refill comes with an expiration date. The larger your refill amount is, the longer your refill lasts. For example, Verizon has the following refill schedule:

• $15-$29.99 expires in 30 days
• $75-$99.99 expires in 90 days
• $30-$74.99 expires in 60 days
• $100 or more expires in ONE YEAR!

Your leftover dollars typically roll over to the next period, provided you make another refill prior to the expiration date.

4. Phones
You can purchase the prepaid phone from retail stores, such as, Target, BestBuy, and WalMart, as well as on the Internet. Before purchasing the phone, you should clearly spell out the exact features you need. Keep in mind that we want to scale down what we want to what we absolutely need. And, the more features you get on your phone, the more service charges you're going to pay. So, ask yourself honestly: Do you need a phone that surfs the Internet, downloads the ring tones, accesses your emails, or lets you do texting? Can you live without any of those services?

If you purchase your cell phone in California, watch out for how much taxes you pay and you'll be surprised (this time, unpleasantly). Regulation 1585 of the state code on sales and use taxes specifies that all cell phones will be taxed at the full retail amount, regardless of the price paid as part of a special offer. My cell phone was listed for $20 on Verizon's website. But, I have to pay $16.50 of sales tax, because Verizon claims that the retail price of my phone was $200. Ouch! If you're interested in learning more about this insane tax code, read this article.

5. Activation Fee
Once you get your new phone, you'll have to activate it. And, sure enough, there is an activation fee. Verizon charges $25 to activate your phone. You may be able to avoid the activation fee, provided you pay $100 of airtime upon purchase of your new phone with Verizon. There is a catch, though. The $100 airtime expires after 60 days instead of a year. Ouch!

6. Small Vendors
When you go with small vendors like Net10, TracFone, Virgin, and Metro PCS, you'd have to do more research on their coverage. Some of these vendors re-sale the bandwidth from the big four vendors (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint). You also need to watch out for their charges for roaming services, when you're in an area outside their network. If you plan to use the phone outside the states, you better have a in-depth discussion with your customer service staff or sales representatives of the service providers. This in fact applies to the big service vendors, too.

Pay-as-you-go phone plans may not be your best choice. But, they're inexpensive choices for those who are light in cell phone use. If you would spend some time reviewing your cell phone usages, chances are you'd be able to eliminate or scale down some of your subscribed services. Or, you might simply cancel your local and long distance phone services and completely live with your cell phones. Any of these actions can put more of your hard earned money in your banks and eventually improve your financial status.

If you're interested in other saving ideas, read my earlier post that discusses where to look for saving opportunities without sacrificing much of your standard of living today.

Fair or Unfair Use of Obama Image?

[Updated 2/13/09]

A recent lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles-based artist, Shepard Fairey, on Monday has attracted lot of attention and discussion. I'm particularly interested in the outcome of this lawsuit, because I, as an artist, would like to see a wider playing field created by The Fair Use Project at Stanford Law School.

The attempt of the lawsuit by Shepard Fairey is trying to defend his right of using a picture of President Obama taken by a freelance photographer who was hired by the Associated Press at that time. Fairey took the picture and transformed it to an artistic read-and-blue image (see the attached picture; source: AP), which has now appeared popularly on T-shirts, buttons, posters, and many other things.

The AP accused Fairey of copyright infringement for his work without permission on February 4. It was reported that the motivation behind such accusation was the profit that Fairey made from the acquisition of the image by the National Portrait Gallery last month. Fairey, represented by lawyers from the Fair Use Project of Stanford Law School and a San Francisco-based law firm, beat the AP to court on February 9, Monday to defend his right of use.

"Fair Use" is a legal concept that allows exceptions to copyright law, based on, among other factors, how much of the original is used, what the new work is used for and how the original is affected by the new work. Under the Fair Use Doctrine, one is allowed limited use of copyrighted material without permission, typically for parody or satire. In particular, Fairey took the original picture, transformed artistically, and used it for a totally different purpose. Such actions are allowed and protected by the Fair Use Doctrine.

The court has been struggling in this area of copyright laws. Not long ago, the rap group 2 Live Crew won from the Supreme Court their copyright lawsuit of their song "Pretty Woman" - a rap version of the original "Oh, Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison. In a ruling by a federal judge in New York, however, the author of "Harry Potter" books, J.K. Rowling, won the fight against the publisher of the "Harry Potter Lexicon," an unofficial companion guide inspired by Harry Potter books.

The key element that resulted in different outcomes of the two similar lawsuits appears to lie on how the judge perceived and interpreted the concept of "transformation." I've seen lots of art graphics and designs at CafePress and Zazzle that are "transformed" from many pictures copyrighted by the media companies. I doubt the laws would be very clear and crisp anytime soon in interpreting the concept of transformation. For now, if you plan to "transform" any of the pictures from the newspaper or on the Internet, not only should you make sure your work is used for a different purpose, but your transformation is also significant enough to establish value of its own. Otherwise, avoid this practice, unless you've already secured lawful help from the Fair Use Project of Stanford Law School.

Read my previous post that explains the basics of copyrights and trademarks.

New Comic Strip: giggleBites

I'd like to introduce to you our new comic strip - giggleBites. The giggleBites comic strip presents lot of funny things and conversations between the two little kids - Andy and Kerry. The series is featured at our two cartoon blogs - giggleZOO and Cartoosh. Hope you enjoy giggleBites!

(Click to see the full sized comic strip!)

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)

Celebrate Grand Opening at giggleZOO

Hello World!

I'm so glad to announce that giggleZOO has finally opened for you and your kids. giggleZOO for Kids is the clean and fun place for your kids and gigglePets to hang out together. They'll enjoy reading their own cartoons and comics just like you do at Cartoosh as an adult.

Upon your arrival at giggleZOO, you'll be greeted by our three adorable gigglePets - giggleCubby and the giggleBunny twin (see the new pictures of the bunnies below). We've learned that many more gigglePets are on their way to the zoo. We've also heard that the hosts of our new comic strips - Andy and Kerry are arriving soon.

For more details, read the press release from giggleZOO for Kids and visit the zoo!

Donate Your Love with Valentine Bunnie by cartoosh
Shop the t-shirts section of zazzle.com
More Major Holidays T-Shirts

Donate Your Love with Valentine Bunny by cartoosh
Make Custom T Shirts At www.zazzle.com
Browse other Major Holidays T-Shirts

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.)

Press Release: Cartoosh Has Arrived

Hello World! I'm glad to announce that our long waited cartoon blog - Cartoosh™ has finally arrived. What is Cartoosh™ about?

• Cartoosh™ expresses a casual view of our lives through cartoons. I hope these cartoons bring some giggles to your hard working days. After all, life can't be so serious with cartoons.

I hope you all enjoy Cartoosh™ and don't forget to give us feedback and comments. Thank you for your continuous support.

Note: Problem with Flash Player 10 on Vista x64

I'd like to give you a heads-up that you need the Flash Player 10 plug-in for your browser in order to see our blogs properly. The upgrade to Flash Player 10 is necessary due to the slide show widget from Amazon that displays the selected items I would recommend to you. The upgrade is normally painless except Flash 10 does not work with the 64-bit version of Internet Explore (IE7) on Windows Vista x64. To work around the problem, you can switch to run the 32-bit version of IE7 by following these steps:

1. Create a new shortcut on your desktop and set the Target field to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" instead of "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
2. You should consider giving a different name to the new shortcut to differentiate from existing ones that point to the 64-bit version.
3. Use the new shortcut to launch the 32-bit IE7.
4. The upgrade to Flash Player 10 for the 32-bit IE7 should be very easy and smooth.
   
5. You can drag and drop the new shortcut to the Quick Launch list or the doc, if necessary.

Sorry for any inconvenience. If you still have problems, don't hesitate to drop me a note or send me an email. Otherwise, enjoy your reading...