March 10, 2010

an open letter to my newsletter subscribers

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Hello Every­body,

I hope you guys are having a great time recei­ving the news­let­ter. I’m sure having a blast sen­ding it out!

Obviously, as a car­too­nist I like peo­ple rea­ding it. So equally obviously, I want to grow the list.

In terms of gro­wing it, I’ve got my own ideas, cer­tainly. But then I thought to myself, maybe it would be more fun and inte­res­ting to reach out to you ins­tead. This is “social media”, after all. And even though I’ve doing it for years, this “open source” stuff is still REALLY inte­res­ting to me.

So here’s what I’m asking: You guys receive the news­let­ter. You guys are a savvy crowd, and you will have plenty of opi­nions of your own.

So what do I need to change? What could I do bet­ter? How could I improve the layout? What new ideas or tools could I be using? And perhaps most impor­tantly, what could I do to make it easier for you guys to share it with your friends?

If you’re already a subsc­ri­ber, feel free to leave a com­ment below of send me your feed­back at gvdailycartoon@gmail.com. Thanks a lot!

UPDATE: Since I first pos­ted this an hour or two ago, the com­ments have POURING in below. Thanks, Guys, this is REALLY helpful!

Be Socia­ble, Share!

"Hugh's Daily Cartoon" Newsletter. A new cartoon sent out every weekday morning to your inbox [RSS version here.]. A wee chuckle to start your day off right etc.

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86 Responses to “an open letter to my newsletter subscribers”

  1. Dave says:

    Layout? Who cares about the layout? It’s what you SAY that mat­ters. It’s your con­tent that I care about.

    • Hugh MacLeod says:

      Dave, I hear what you’re saying… and agree somewhat. Con­tent is King etc.

      But if there’s any good desig­ners lur­king around, I’d cer­tainly value their input, too :)

      Thanks!

      • Jeremy says:

        I agree with Dave that the con­tent is king, but as a brand mana­ger for Uni­le­ver I also unders­tand that if I don’t get the majo­rity of the mes­sage in 1.4seconds – you’ve lost me. As a NEW “con­su­mer” that is. Per­so­nally, I ALREADY love your stuff (which is why I name check you so much on my blog) – so ‘you had me at hello’ (!) – but for the new­bies – I think it’s ALL about the packaging.

        The best advice I ever got was to spend 50% of my time wri­ting the head­line and 30% on the design and 20% on the content.

        As an artist – you’ll pro­bably agree that aesthe­tics are impor­tant, but the con­tent REALLY needs to kick ass. That said – it’s funny how I share all your artic­les that con­tain ‘busi­ness wis­dom’, but only smile to myself at the ones that fea­ture love or your obser­va­tions. I guess I only share your stuff when I think it will ins­pire someone.

        The best advice I ever got was to spend 60% of my time wri­ting the head­line and 40% on the design and 20% on the content.

        As an artist — you’ll pro­bably agree that aesthe­tics are impor­tant, but the con­tent REALLY needs to kick ass. That said — it’s funny how I share all your artic­les that con­tain ‘busi­ness wis­dom’, but only smile to myself at the ones that fea­ture love or your obser­va­tions. I guess I only share your stuff when I think it will ins­pire someone.

  2. artcurmudgeon says:

    “So what do I need to change? What could I do bet­ter? How could I improve the layout? What new ideas or tools could I be using? And perhaps most impor­tantly, what could I do to make it easier for you guys to share it with your friends?”

    Okay you asked for it…

    Layout– Ask for desig­ners to sub­mit a site layout(within cer­tain gui­de­li­nes) put it up for a month or two with their name and link in bold print. You get fresh designs, they get pro­mo­ted on a high traf­fic web­site. win-win

    Change or do better? — When is your next book coming out? sam­ple chap­ters are a won­der­ful hook, (we get hoo­ked and you get sales) win-win

    New tools? — have you con­si­de­red video blogs or a lives­tream, I know I would watch, and you would be acces­si­ble to a new audience. again win-win

    • Hugh MacLeod says:

      Thanks, art­cur­mud­geon! LOVE those ideas.

      I was thin­king maybe adding a “Daily Link”. Something fun or inte­res­ting from the blog for peo­ple to read… Maybe a new chap­ter from the new book– that does have a lot of possibilities…

      Rock on :D

      • Lisa says:

        Or bet­ter yet — how about you pay a desig­ner. Would you work for free in the hopes a link on someone’s site will gene­rate some buzz? If not, why ask others to do it? Respect.

        I think artists, desig­ners, etc should be paid for their work. That is a win-win — desig­ner gets paid — you get a new design.

        PS — I admit I recently (maybe yes­ter­day) unsubsc­ri­bed — daily is too much email for me — I don’t have time for it.

  3. fernando says:

    These days I pro­cess email on the iPhone.

    So, I’d love to see the news­let­ter load fas­ter and bet­ter for the sma­ller screen. Slightly sma­ller file size for the car­toon and much sma­ller logo at the top of the newsletter.

  4. I’ve been get­ting the news­let­ter since you star­ted it, but I’m con­si­de­ring unsubsc­ri­bing. Email News­let­ters aren’t that use­ful for me — if I want to save or share the item it’s much more work than if it were an RSS feed where I just click share and add a com­ment. I can’t just pop open the url and tweet the link. I can’t visit a page and read the com­ments to share in others reactions.

    Every­day your email comes in like a todo item — I must pro­cess all the unread mes­sa­ges. Since I’m just wor­king down a queue, I click on yours, read it, and move on — item done. With my News Rea­der, its less a queue and more a “oh let’s see what Hugh / Seth / etc pos­ted”. RSS feeds are read when I’m taking a quick break from my task, or have a moment while something is pro­ces­sing (hap­pens a lot when you are a pro­gram­mer). Further, I can let your posts build up and then read over them Satur­day mor­ning with a cup of coffee.

    On another note — your last book was great, and I’m loo­king for­ward to the next. Because of your car­toons I make sure to get the dead tree edi­tion (I do most rea­ding on my Kindle).

    • Hugh MacLeod says:

      Hey Michael,

      I con­cur, e-mail is not for every­body. That’s why we also have an RSS feed:

      http://us1.campaign-archive.com/feed?u=028de8672d5f9a229f15e9edf&id=c141d052e6

      Both the last book and the next one will have Kindle edi­tions– with car­toons, so no worries…

      Thanks!

      • Vitor says:

        Well, the feed doesn’t work all that well. Every once in a while a whole bunch of old items show up as unread in my goo­gle reader.

        • Yeah, I am facing same issues as Vitor with goo­gle rea­der. I am having days when I am get­ting many old news­let­ters at once.
          I have no idea why.

        • Dan Limbach says:

          The RSS feed works fine for me on my iGoo­gle home page.

          Loo­king for­ward to the next book, too. In the mean­time, if you haven’t read Linch­pin, grab a copy. Seth fea­tu­res Hugh in the book, and it’s great for many other reasons.

      • Thanks — I guess for the email design I sug­gest poin­ting out the RSS feed (I couldn’t find a link in the emails).

        Using Goo­gle rea­der as well, and I think GR is a bit buggy. I have mul­ti­ple feeds mark everything as new, inc­lu­ding some of my own every now and then and I can con­firm nothing chan­ged in the feed.

  5. Len Kendall says:

    How about an intan­gi­ble reward for your rea­ders? For exam­ple anyone who is a subsc­ri­ber will receive a link/code to watch a live stream of your dra­wing a cartoon(s) and res­pon­ding to questions?

  6. Derek says:

    I’m a big fan of your news­let­ter. To improve it, I would love to see links to one or two other daily car­toons which talk about the same topic. A rela­ted car­toons link if you will.

  7. Hugh, I won­der if you could offer a “weekly digest” ver­sion of your news­let­ter? You seem to pre­sent your work in the­mes any­way, so grou­ping together a week’s worth of news­let­ter mes­sa­ges might make a lot of sense, and you might get subsc­ri­bers who other­wise wouldn’t subsc­ribe since it means an extra email every day.

    I value your art, but what I really like is the peek inside your head that you offer when you talk about what ins­pi­red the piece you’re sending.

    From a design stand­point, I agree that having a much sma­ller logo area would help to put more of the good stuff “above the fold.” Let’s face it: by the time I click on your news­let­ter, I already know who it’s from, so a little tiny logo on top is all I need to rein­force that. I’m ope­ning the email because I want to see what you’ve sent that day: the art and the com­men­tary. The fas­ter you can give me the good stuff, the better.

    Keep up the good work, and thanks for sha­ring it.

    • Hugh MacLeod says:

      Hey Pam, thanks…

      Yeah, I’m put­ting more effort into the writ­ten expla­na­tions of the car­toons. Peo­ple seem to like them more than I ever pre­dic­ted… a nice sur­prise, frankly.

      I LOVE the “weekly digest” idea! I rec­kon that would work for a lot of peo­ple. Very cool…

  8. Matt Langdon says:

    Is it just me or do the car­toons and mes­sa­ges tend to turn up on the blog a few days later?

    When I first sig­ned up, the news­let­ter was the once in a while thing that had great con­tent and stuff that I felt was only coming to us, the subsc­ri­bers. Now it seems the advan­tage to being on the list is to get chea­per prints. That’s a great advan­tage, but maybe not for everyone.

    I like get­ting a daily car­toon, but I liked fee­ling spe­cial too. Regard­less of how spe­cial I actually was :)

    • Hugh MacLeod says:

      @Matt, I totally get that… How exc­lu­sive or open do I make everything?

      If you find the ans­wer, please let me know :D

      But yeah, I really should make more effort with doing spe­cial subscriber-only stuff.

      It’s evol­ving…

      • Matt Langdon says:

        Don’t get me wrong — I’m along for the ride.

        The tough balan­cing act is fin­ding out what the dif­fe­rence bet­ween a mai­ling list and a blog is.

        My impres­sion is a blog is more for the “what’s in Hugh’s head?” stuff. The mai­ling list is those peo­ple who are inte­res­ted in what’s hap­pe­ning in “Hugh’s World” and for the True Fans loo­king for ways to feel like they’re clo­ser to you than the gene­ral blog reader.

      • JohnO says:

        I’ve found that the super-hi res ver­sion for only subsc­ri­bers has been fan­tas­tic. I often make the car­toons I reso­nate with desk­top back­grounds. I should take a straw poll how peo­ple in the office feel about that ;)

  9. Ed Gaile says:

    Per­so­nally I like the layout of the daily news­let­ter and look for­ward to chec­king it out with the mor­ning cof­fee. I do find your com­ments about what ins­pi­red the dra­wing very inte­res­ting. Sort of a peak into Hugh’s mind/world. Maybe along those lines, you could offer news­let­ter subsc­ri­bers an occa­sio­nal 2 minute gaping void docu­men­tary. There is Hugh, there is a busi­ness card — go.

  10. Mark says:

    Hugh:

    I like the current layout — and since I work in a place FILLED with digi­tal immi­grants, I have to print off the emails/cartoons to share. They go over quote well, even if only in black and white.

    I’d like to ahve some insight into how the car­toons are made — perhaps a monthly (or weekly, depen­ding on how moti­va­ted you were) little docu­men­tary about “How Hugh does it”.

    The design is cool, too. But then again, I’m not a design guy. I like sip­ping cof­fee and rea­ding your stuff.

    Good work, keep it up, man!

  11. Hugh MacLeod says:

    Hey Ed, video is high on my list of “Things I should do more often but never quite end up doing…”

    A nice idea, certainly.

  12. Hi

    First off love the work and from my point of view even though e-mail is a task I really enjoy get­ting a treat in the middle of dea­ling with it so I will stick to the e-mail list.

    Unfor­tu­na­tely I have an inter­net con­nec­tion that tends to be somewhat inter­mit­tent and some­ti­mes your news­let­ter takes fore­ver to load. And from my point of you the big­gest cul­prit seems to be the big box of solid color — maybe get rid of that.

    Also it would be great if you could give a rela­ted links tid­bit at the bot­tom of the e-mail…If you enjo­yed this car­toon you might like these 2 as well :)

    Keep up the good work.

    • Another way to perhaps grow your e-mail list is allo­wing peo­ple to repu­blish your car­toons on their sites with full attri­bu­tion and a link to subsc­ri­bing to the newsletter?

      • Hugh MacLeod says:

        @Trisha, they’re already allo­wed to repu­blish. guess i ought to make that more obvious somehow…

        • Trisha Cornelius says:

          Thanks…I just saw the crea­tive com­mons link at the bot­tom of the e-mail. I mis­sed it pre­viously :)

          Maybe the way to make it more obvious is by put­ting in a link on the news­let­ter “to repu­blish this car­toon click here”?

  13. balazs says:

    i’d place the sha­ring but­tons higher up, maybe right below the car­toon.
    also, add a tumblr option :)

  14. Steve Robillard says:

    I would like to not have to down­load ima­ges each time, but because the email is kind of weird neither appro­ving the sen­der or domain seems to work. Also I would second a pre­vious com­men­tors thoughts and say that it could bene­fit from a designer’s touch.

  15. Noah says:

    I love the daily email.

    I like when they are short and sweet. Car­toon and what you’re fee­ling. Don’t need a lot more than that.

    I’d rather read full upda­tes via RSS or visit the blog on person.

    What are you loo­king for in regards to a com­mu­nity manager?

    Cheers
    Noah

  16. I sent you an email yes­ter­day with some ideas in it. I’m not sure you’ve mana­ged to wade through to that one yet. I hope you like some of them.

  17. Roy Jacobsen says:

    Hugh,
    I second the call to make the repu­blishing options more explicit.

    I see the Crea­tive Com­mons link, and I have read it, but it’s kind of buried there at the bot­tom of the page.

    And regar­ding the “non­com­mer­cial” res­tric­tion: I’d love to use the “Writer’s Block” car­toon above on my blog, but it’s part of my busi­ness, so is that a com­mer­cial use. On the other hand, I don’t charge for the blog con­tent, so is it non­com­mer­cial? (I’m so confused!)

    I also have trou­ble with the ima­ges in the news­let­ter not loa­ding every time. I use Out­look, and I’ve tried “Add Sen­der to Safe Sen­ders List”, but it doesn’t seem to “take.” Is the sen­der slightly dif­fe­rent each day, or what?

    I like the pithy, to-the-point for­mat. Keep it up!

  18. Not sure if all Moto Droid users expe­rince this, but whe­ne­ver I view your news­let­ter in web-based mobile Gmail, the brow­ser crashes. Doh. (Doesn’t hap­pen with any other emails.)

    Would pro­bably be a pain for you to track down the bug. But, I’m 90% sure that if you had a more mini­mal design, it would fix the problem.

    Love your work, btw.

  19. Hugh,
    we all love what you do. Your car­toons are enter­tai­ning, ins­pi­ring, funny, some­ti­mes “dark” enough to ins­pire some deep thoughts. Car­toons are ok.
    The best way to engage with the audience would be to allow them to “com­ment” your car­toons, but not just with com­ments. They have to draw another car­toon, send it to you, and you publish the best “res­ponse” soon the­reaf­ter.
    My 0.02. :)

  20. Shannon W. says:

    Hi Hugh, chan­ne­ling JFK, I ask not my car­too­nist can do for me, but what can I do for my cartoonist?

    I often share your work, cre­di­ted and with a link, on my blog and twit­ter, Some­tiems the link is to the news­let­ter subsc­rip­tion, but what would you pre­fer? How can we best further your Evil Plans for glo­bal domination?

    • Hugh MacLeod says:

      @Shannon, I’m afraid the onus is really on me– to create ways that make it easier for my rea­ders share them… or even har­der, create ways to make it easier for peo­ple to con­vince their friends to sign up, as well.

      One thing I’m fin­ding out quickly– it’s get­ting har­der and har­der for me to both do the actual car­toon work, AND play com­mu­nity lea­der. Might need to delegate.

  21. Jeff Harbert says:

    I’ve been enjo­ying the expla­na­tions under the car­toons lately, so thanks for that.

    Others have sug­ges­ted a weekly collec­tion rather each car­toon being sent daily. One other idea is to let users choose when they receive it, such as right after the begin­ning of a lunch break for cubicle dwe­llers, or Satur­days at 7pm for the weekly folks. That sort of thing.

    Ask your subsc­ri­bers to share their thoughts about the impact your car­toons have had on their per­so­nal or pro­fes­sio­nal lives, then inc­lude one of their sto­ries every Fri­day. And/or, share a pic of one of your cube gre­na­des in the wild.

  22. Jordi Soler says:

    In my case, a little request.

    I’ve been trying to use this Face­book app (don’t know if it’s the offi­cial one) but it never seems to work: http://apps.facebook.com/gapingvoid

    It’s a shame, because I’d love to share your dra­wings in my Face­book pro­file, just as I do with xkcd and others, but I haven’t been able to until now.

    Given how big Face­book has become, I think it would be great if we could share your art in this network.

  23. David L says:

    Hugh,

    Sam­ple of one stuff:
    I get your Twit­ter feed, which I lar­gely enjoy, and often click on your high value links and even the rants about Brits and my home town Edin­burgh are good value.

    And I get your email (and goo­gle makes me click to see the daily car­toon #fail) and I read it most days, and archive the ones I like.

    Agree that sha­ring via Face­book would be good; I’m not a tech guy but could you reward ret­weets not just with recog­ni­tion as you some­ti­mes do, but perhaps a weekly or monthly car­toon prize, par­ti­cu­larly a per­so­na­li­sed com­mis­sion. I still don’t know why I spent 30 mins thin­king and sent you half a dozen tweets when you had a recent com­pe­ti­tion to win a car­toon (in Feb)…the last com­pe­ti­tion I ente­red was 30 years ago, but I really wan­ted to win one. So maybe others would too.

    Any­way, ran­dom com­ments — hugely enjoy your work.

  24. Steph says:

    Hugh, I think you have some really exce­llent sug­ges­tions by your grou­pies here. I feel the urge to add, perhaps very sel­fishly, that the news­let­ter works for me, exactly as it is, I love it, it loads fast on the iP and on the com­pu­ter, woo­pee. I would not dis­dain further insights into your crea­tive pro­cess (that is my inte­rest above all, I must con­fess), but I am not likely to drop off the list if you don’t pro­vide that.

    I am sure there are plenty of ways to engage one’s audience above and beyond what you are already doing but some­ti­mes I like to think in clichés such as: you can lead a horse to water but you can­not make it drink. And I’ll tell you what Hugh, I’ve got a horse and some­ti­mes… you can­not even lead it. All the best to you and all fellow grou­pies as well.

  25. Wogan says:

    I –was– a subsc­ri­ber, and enti­rely for the car­toons, but what star­ted get­ting under my skin were the cons­tant “Buy This Print” links under the cartoons.

    While I do believe in the prin­ci­ple of making things more acces­si­ble, it felt a little less honest and a little more com­mer­cial when every email came with an option to purchase. The only thing I’d change is to move that link somewhere more disc­reet, and not make it seem like you’re trying to sell the art more than you’re trying to dis­tri­bute it.

    That, and I was get­ting kinda fed up with the valen­ti­nes stuff :| Thank­fully that sea­son is over.

    ~ Wogan

    • Hugh MacLeod says:

      Hey Wogan, well, I for one have NO QUALMS WHATSOEVER about put­ting a “Buy This Print” link under­neath the car­toon. Scott Adams does it, after all ;-)

      But we have moved that link to bot­tom of the page, for the rea­sons you spoke of. You’re right, it’s OK to want to make a living, but you don;t want to be too in your face…

      Thanks! :)

  26. Shivika says:

    Hi Hugh,

    Just a thought: for get­ting your design work upgra­ded, why don’t you hire stu­dents to free­lance (talk to design uni’s like Par­sons, FIT, Pratt). It not only gives them an oppor­tu­nity to get a “real world” expe­rience, but you are bound to get tons of fresh new perspective.

    Best,
    Shivika

  27. Shivika says:

    For­got to add sug­ges­tions:
     — Why do you have STORMHOEK ran­domly in the middle of Gallery and Book — maybe you need to remove it from the hea­der and adver­tise it under something like “Other Boring Stuff Hugh’s Making Bet­ter and Coo­ler” or something like that.
     — How about crea­ting con­tent cus­to­mi­zed for the type of your follo­wers or clients. For exam­ple, tabs on the top: LONER/MISFIT (tons of rela­ted artic­les and car­toons under this tab); HIGH PROFILE SUCKER (again, rela­ted car­toons under it); GO-GETTER — you get the gist. The idea is to allow fresh rea­der or clients to con­nect with you based on what they are fee­ling that day or who they relate to. So the artic­les under each cate­gory will ins­pire them to move to a bet­ter cate­gory or give them a “kick in the pants” enlightenment.

    Good luck!

    Shi­vika

  28. Helmut S. says:

    Hugh,
    Really liked your first ver­sion of your news­let­ter, also enjo­yed rea­ding your blog. Loved your book.

    But — the second ver­sion of your news­let­ter looks for me to much like adver­ti­sing — espe­cially loo­king at all the links with tracking-functionality. Fee­ling to much obser­ved. Also, one a day is too much for me.

    So, will unsubsc­ribe your newsletter.

    But any­way, still like your site, your thoughts and the­re­fore will look at your blog, even­tually try your rss-feed.

    • Hugh MacLeod says:

      Thanks, Hel­mut, sorry to lose you…

      I don’t think the trac­king soft­ware is that big a deal… all it tells me is what per­cen­tage of peo­ple who recei­ved the email actually ope­ned it, and what per­cen­tage of peo­ple ended up clic­king on which links. If you find that too Orwe­llian, fair enough, but it’s help­ful for me to know these things… other­wise everything I do is mere ama­teur guess­work: and I simply can’t afford to run the busi­ness that way, even if I wan­ted to.

  29. Max Capener says:

    Have you thought about having a really really sim­ple iphone app pro­du­ced — lite­rally just a cartoon-a-day job? Click the app but­ton and there it is…

  30. Michael says:

    Hi Hugh

    I like your car­toons and your work but I find the daily news­let­ter to be a bit too much. I would pre­fer a 3/weekly or once/week for­mat. I find myself skip­ping the daily emails but chec­king your blog.

  31. Barry says:

    An occas­sio­nal link to a video of you wor­king on and com­men­ting on one of your art­works would be inte­res­ting. I’ve got your great book and look for­ward a lot to your next. I’m an artist and find your work and ‘tell it like it is’ atti­tude to be inpiring.

    Thanks for your daily upda­tes — I espe­cially like the RSS feed.

    Barry — from Ire­land

  32. Anita Lobo says:

    Hugh,

    I relish the daily car­toon and usually check it out on the mobile.

    My sug­ges­tions on how to grow the group:

    - Create a default mobile option [for peo­ple like me :-) ]

    - Sim­plify the for­ward to a friend — a form + clicks = cum­ber­some on mobile. A sin­gle click for­ward [like email] if you’re pre-registered?
    [can always for­ward the email, but that doesn’t allow you to track sign-ups]

    - Create a face­book page/app/group?: allow read, com­ment, share [much more inte­res­ting than farm/fish/xyz ville]

    - Some­ti­mes, inc­lude a wee nudge e.g. #29/ Tyger — would con­nect with Blake/literature, in addi­tion to peo­ple who ‘get it’ anyway.

    The ‘trans­la­tion’ of poetry in this case, into a modern & acces­si­ble though-piece, is what I found interesting.

    All the best!

    Cheers,

    Anita Lobo

  33. You need not change anything. Keep it as it is because it’s great. The con­tent is all that matters.

  34. Ochuko says:

    Short videos sho­wing you doing your work, more per­so­nal expla­na­tions on the mea­nings of your dra­wings, pro­vi­sion of a true type font variant of your handw­ri­ting style(*not sure u’d want to do this though). Wha­te­ver you decide, don’t change your cute pix!!
    A pra­yer for you: May your light never go dim. Amen!
    I’d think of more later.

  35. Mark Essel says:

    Hire a hotshot design pro out of school as an intern first (low lay). Crank them up to a full time deal if you’re both happy. That’s my plan once I get out of the star­ving foun­der stage for Vic­tus Media.

    Mobile was men­tio­ned, and it’s my pri­mary brow­ser. This trend will grow.

  36. Mark Essel says:

    Low pay not lay (don’t mix those two :)

  37. Hi Hugh,
    I love your work. Thank you.

    In terms of gro­wing the list, have you thought of uploa­ding the ima­ges to other sites like Flickr or Face­book etc to spread the word?

    Adrian

  38. Mare says:

    I just wan­ted to let you know that I love my daily dose of the Gaping Void in my in-box. You’re very talen­ted and so crea­tive. I just wish I currently had the funds to buy one of your prints.

    Keep up the great work and thank you for sha­ring it with all of us.

  39. H-Town Nick says:

    A pos­si­ble team buil­ding exer­cise for the office…

    1) Create a car­toon
    2) Do NOT add your usual cap­tion
    3) Let your fans sub­mit a pos­si­ble cap­tion (the con­tent) that cus­to­mi­zes it to their work­place
    4) The “win­ner” you choose recei­ves the first print for dis­play at work and total e-bragging rights

    you get a print to sell, a busi­ness gets a little expo­sure, etc.

  40. Mike T says:

    DON’T let them see you draw!! When a person/client asks you to sketch an idea for them, never just whip out a pen­cil and paper and start dra­wing right there in front of them. Once they see how quick/slow it takes to do the art, they will assign their own price to how much they think your art is worth. They’ll try and treat you like a dra­wing pup­pet. You are not a per­for­ming mon­key! You lose power when you pull back the cur­tain and let the audience see how the magic is done.
    If you do a video sho­wing your art pro­cess, be care­ful not to show too much evi­dence of how long it takes from start to finish. Talk and com­ment all about it, but don’t show con­ti­nuous dra­wing foo­tage for too long.
    Thank-you.

  41. Dave Doolin says:

    It’s still fresh for me.
    So I’m with #33.

    A bet­ter ques­tion: is it still fresh for you? If it stops being fresh for you, that’s when to get worried.

  42. You did a bit of ‘reaching out’ a while back and asked for peo­ple to help with your ideas of publi­ci­zing Gaping­void Gallery with some sort of affi­liate pro­gram. Wha­te­ver hap­pe­ned with that? Did you use anyone’s ideas? Did your pro­gram ever materialize?

    As far as the news­let­ter, I miss the days when you blog­ged without selling. Now it’s just a daily ad with some wit thrown in. Nice enough and I’m sure suc­cess­ful from a busi­ness stand­point but it loo­ses the spi­rit with which you star­ted clai­ming, “I pre­fer to give away my dra­wings away on the web”. Ahh, the good ole days. Man’s gotta make a buck, I know. Fee­ling a bit of that myself.

  43. This is the email I refe­rred to above.

    I have a cou­ple of sug­ges­tions which you might like or which you might think are terri­ble — but I’m going to ask anyway.

    Sug­ges­tion 1
    I have bought seve­ral prints (The Port­fo­lio set 1 and the “Thank You For… You” piece for Valen­ti­nes day — which my wife loved) and want more — I just baulk at the ship­ping costs to the UK. Can you look at get­ting a UK ful­fil­ment cen­tre? I use The­PrintS­pace for my pho­to­graphy in the UK and they might be able to help you.

    “Why bother?” I hear you ask. Well, If there was some way to reduce the mai­ling / ship­ping cost of, as I recall, $40 to get the last print ship­ped I would quite pos­sibly be able to buy more prints. It’s a bit of a zin­ger to be expec­ting to pay $125 for a print and then end up paying ~$170 for it.
    If you could look into that for your Euro­pean cus­to­mers that would be cool.

    Sug­ges­tion 2
    I want to dis­play more “Cube Gre­nade” type pie­ces in my office but I really don’t want to hang a ~$170/£100 piece of art on my desk partition.

    Would it be pos­si­ble to pro­duce a lower cost print on, say, pho­to­graphic qua­lity paper that I can either lami­nate or blu­tack onto my walls? I know it’s not “Art” when you’re doing this but I want to start a con­ver­sa­tion with a good qua­lity, large (A4 / A3) print

    I prin­ted the recent “Remem­ber Who You Are” piece onto good A4 photo stock paper and it went down very well — I’d like to main­tain momen­tum and gene­rate more con­ver­sa­tions. I’ve tried it with other pie­ces but they look terri­ble expan­ded out to page size.

  44. Kathleen says:

    well I sha­red one once on FB as a link and I rea­li­zed it nee­ded an expla­na­tion. The para­graph you usually ad under the illus­tra­tion was not only neces­sary but I felt the illus­tra­tion wasn’t neces­sary. While I like the style, I think the illus­tra­tions need to be more clear in what they are com­mu­ni­ca­ting. They need to stan­da­lone for them to work. for it to make sense when sha­red. That’s not always the case but that time it was. And the mes­sage was a little harsh. Something I was cool with but not for the mains­tream. The car­toons I have seen in the last month are two are a lot more cheer­ful but the harsh honesty of the ear­lier ones got my atten­tion. Maybe it was the illus­tra­tion where you said something about how peo­ple want someone to follow. I for­get the wording.

  45. A little late to the game am I, but the news­let­ter works great for me.

    Regar­ding mobile devi­ces, I have a Palm Pre and my emails/images load up very well, and it’s great to have a daily car­toon to look for­ward to each morning.

    To illus­trate, here is a screenshot from my Pre: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2737/4435714844_bd2f8046db_o.png

  46. The news­let­ter is great — thanks. Works fine with FB… Guido

  47. Hello Hugh,

    This is just an update for ever­yone since you pos­ted this 2 weeks ago.

    1. RSS feed has been fixed no more dupli­ca­tes
    2. We are wor­king on the rede­sign of the daily email based upon all the com­ments —  we can­not please ever­yone, but I am doing my best to try!!
    3.Mobile ver­sion —  there currently is an option when you subsc­ribe for the mobile ver­sion — I am loo­king into whether this is wor­king pro­perly or not.
    4. Sha­ring on Face­book — has wor­ked fine for me.
    5. Spe­cial offers & com­pe­ti­tions will be fea­tu­red very soon!

    All the feed­back has been so help­ful pleas keep the com­ments coming!

    director@gapingvoidgallery.com

  48. […] again to Hugh Mac­Leod for making art that desc­ri­bes my […]

  49. In loo­king for web­si­tes rela­ted to Inter­net hos­ting and par­ti­cu­larly com­pa­ri­son hos­ting linux stra­tegy Inter­net,
    your web site came up.
    You really are a inc­re­dibly good Individual!

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