Hello Bruce!
- <LI>nope i've never seen or been to a gallery just showing painter works (except when metacreations had a picture of the day)
<LI>Needs vs Wants While it is something I would like to see, it is not something I feel I need. It would depend on how you built this site. Would I spend more of my time there instead of here? unlikely. But I'm just not big on browsing galleries. Although I love to see other people's work, I'd rather spend my net time here and working on my own graphis. (one person's opinion)so I may not be visiting daily. . . it would have to have compelling content that changes daily to make me want to come back (and high volume of visitors or return visitors are probably going to be part of what you'd be selling to advertisers)
<LI>questions 3 & 4 seem like variations of the same question [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] Possibly something that might be attractive would be if this gallery could somehow allow me to purchase prints from a certain artist (and perhaps you could make a few pennies from the sale of such a print) or if you were really ambitious you could offer a gift service including matting and framing. But at present, I'm not a big spender so the there would have to be options for buying low cost prints. (As well as the real kinds of prints art collectors really like). And you'd have to make it VERY clear that a customer is buying a print not a piece of clipart. (some people mistakenly think that if they buy a poster they own the image and can re-use it any way they like). Another thing might be to sell screen savers or backgrounds. . . but here like in other markets the free stuff is really going to be a tough contender. Or putting the prints on T-shirts and mugs etc. that might be something else to do.
<LI>Or you could try to sell the advertisers on the number of eyeballs or click throughs. Advertisers could be the graphics companies and filters vendors or people who do the t-shirts, mugs, etc. Customized Christmas Cards or Calendars with special Painter generated art. . . Possibly even art supply stores could and vendors of special papers and canvases for your Painter prints. . .they might also buy ads. Archive quality inks, papers, and printers that use them. . . those would be neat advertisers for Painter users to see. (I'd bet that there are painter users who have not abandoned their other art media)and possibly new users who would like to learn to use the real media that Painter emulates.
<LI>But you know what i wish some sites would do is list their advertisers and have maybe a page that shows all the ads. I have sometimes caught the last part of an ad before it rotates out and wished I could see what they were talking about. (I don't want to wait for them to cycle through again) The down side is that if you only have 3 advertisers. . . well it becomes kind of obvious
<LI>Economic Viability? hmmm truthfully I don't think so. You would need some kind of merchant account and some kind of means of selling the items you intend to sell. The best way to sell things would be to have some sort of shopping cart program (add that to the cost of doing business) and quite possibly you'd have to pay a lawyer to help you with the contract with your advertisers (if you keep the contract simple enough then you could probably bypass the lawyers --hehe ) Does your current web host offer any shopping cart programs or would you have to buy or build one? What would be kept in inventory?(if anything) Or is the main money maker for this site the ad revenue? You could sell this site as a marketplace of painter artists' work but would you allow free placement in the gallery or would someone have to pay to be shown in the gallery?
<LI>While I think a gallery would be a fun site to visit, I'm not sure it would be a money maker to own. At least not for a while. Ok let me clarify. You might get money but will it defray the costs? Really hard to tell. . again it depends on how you build it. I'm gathering that your goal is not to pour too much more money into the venture. . . the goal is more to take advantage of the domain name and web space you've purchased. ( [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] we're probably not talking about some big venture capital funded site)
<LI>FYI Jumbomall (www.jumbomall.com)used to offer an affordable way to sell items or services without you having to buy a secure sockets layer connection from your web host but i haven't checked out their cost recently. They had this cool vault where the customer info would be stored and you could access the data that customers supplied to you in a web form via the web.
<LI>It may take alot of thought but you may be able to pull it off. I just don't think that this is going to be a quick money maker
a really cool article giving advice to people setting up a web design shop
I don't want to be a killjoy but i don't want to encourage you to plunge money into something that may or may not give you the return on investment you are looking for.
Just thought I'd help you brainstorm,
Athena
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
[This message was edited by T. Athena Hatton on January 30, 2001 at 02:58 AM.]
Athena
Our thoughts are bounded by words. The quality of those thoughts is largely determined by the words that compose them.
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