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Business as Unusual: Week of 3/23/2009 – Finding Balance in Your Work
March 23rd, 2009 | Author: admin

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned being a stay at home, work from home father starting my own business is to find balance in my work. By this I mean finding time for both my work for others and for my personal projects. Work for others grows business worth, personal projects grows self worth. It is a welcome break. A chance to work in your own world. A vacation. Above all else, self worth directly grows business worth.

I have found as I work on my personal projects, my inspiration and excitement towards my business work grows. Even if it is just 15 minutes a day, I set time aside for myself. It is a means for me to unwind and relax my creativity. It is a reminder of who I am and why I love design and love my job. I set goals for myself and always keep plenty of ideas in my head for the future. It keeps me fresh and ready to tackle any project.

This week has been my busiest yet. I have begun work with a company designing CMS websites. I have spent a vast amount of time training with the technology and I’m excited about its possibilities. I have decided to migrate my Duck of All Trades site over to a CMS system. I hope to have this done in the upcoming weeks. In addition, it will most likely be combined with this blog. The combined site will be put on www.duckofalltrades.com and this site as a mirror site. Nothing will change with my blog and you can still read it here, but it will be more of an integral part of Duck of All Trades. This should be a great example of personal work influencing business.

I will keep you up to date and share my experiences with the new websites I will be producing. In addition, this week should see the finishing of Stromple the puppet. He now has skin! Just not on his body. I will have a big update for him tomorrow and he should be done by the end of the week for an unveiling on Monday. Wednesday I should have a Moo-Pig update for you and Thursday Purple Fish will stop by. Of course Friday’s are always fun and exciting.

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Business as Unusual: Week of 3/9/2009
March 09th, 2009 | Author: admin

 

Todd Spitting Peas at Jeff

Todd Spitting Peas at Jeff

What a weekend! Sadly I must report that I’m still being held captive by Todd Pigworth and his piggy minions. He has me tied to a chair. Currently he is busy spitting peas at me. “Can you stop that?” I asked him. He wouldn’t. So I asked nicer “Can you stop spitting at me? Pretty peas?” *insert drum sound* Apparently he didn’t think this to be a funny joke. If I ever get loose, I’m going to mow his pants down with a lawnmower. Luckily he is allowing me to make an update on my blog…I’m sorry, my BOG. Geeze, who knew pigs could be so particular?  How am I typing with my hands tied together you ask? Simple. I’m really good at typing with my feet.

Last week was a success for Duck of All Trades. First, I was honored to display my puppets at the McDowell County Chamber of Commerce Annual meeting. I had 16 puppets on display. I am very grateful for the opportunity. I made new contacts, had a great meal, watched an entertaining ventriloquist act and won a “bag full of stuff.” Yes, I won a door prize that was touted as a “Bag Full of Stuff.” I could care less what was in it. This is the first time I have ever won anything like this. Maybe I’m starting to get my mom’s luck? 

The highlight of the evening for me was meeting Peggy Miller, a wonderful ventriloquist. You can visit her site here. I was impressed by her puppet skills. She was able to use two vent dummies at once, switching between multiple controls, multiple voices and multiple personalities. If you ever have a chance to see her, please do. 

Business wise, I have a few new clients this week. Adwords seems to finally be paying off. I am still getting a small click through ratio (.06% or one pet gerbil) but apparently it is enough to generate interest. www.duckofalltrades.com stats are also improving. Since starting with adwords, I have gone from about 4 unique visitors a day to an average of 21. While this isn’t great, it’s an improvement. I have also spent time optimizing my site for Google. As a result, my placement has been better and I’ve been getting more traffic from searches. In the coming weeks I plan to work harder to improve the site by adding new content. Some of the ideas I have for content are:

  • Original articles taken from this blog, such as the Birth of a Book series. This will show potential clients my process and sell me to them as an illustrator.
  • Create a publishing resource directory filled with valuable information from sites and sources I recommend. Not random sites, but sites that are genuinely useful.
  • More samples of work.
  • Tweak how my work is displayed. Make it more user friendly.
  • Create faq page.

These changes will be done over time and the end result should be an increase in traffic. For now, the goal with my site is to begin to tailor it to what people are looking for. Despite more traffic, some visitors leave after viewing one page. This has lead to the question “If I were to show one potential client one page for a minute or less, which page would that be?”  To answer this, I’m going to set up new “portfolio pages.”

These will be pages unique to my different services, crafted with relevant information all on one page and linked to my adwords advertisements. The first page I will create will be a “Children’s Illustration” page. Instead of having thumbnails to other pages, this page will contain a self contained gallery. It will also show an estimate of time and cost, information about myself, links to “Birth of a Book” to show my process, and any information I feel like will sell my services best. I am limiting the gallery to ten images. For these ten images I am creating a new portfolio. Below is the first image I will include in the portfolio. I hope to create 1o new pieces for the page. Just what I need. ANOTHER project. The next update, I hope to have the beginnings of this page as well as an update on Stromple the Puppet (which I have fleece for).  There are many more adventure to come.

I also hope to be freed from peas.

 

Under the Sea Birthday Surprise

Under the Sea Birthday Surprise

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Category: Business as Unusual, Illustration, Puppets, Stay at home father  | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  | Leave a Comment
Business as Unusual
March 02nd, 2009 | Author: admin

I have a business update for you this Monday, but before I get to the boring stuff, here is what is going on in family life:

I ripped my pants. One of my favorite pair of pajama pants that is. It started out as a small hole with a little draft in the seat and ended up in a good laugh. I can’t resist a good laugh! I communicated with Keeley about the the hole in a way only her and I could understand. The way married couples do. This left Samuel, my son, out of the loop on what was happening so he had no idea I knew of the hole. Keeley told Samuel as I pretended not to hear. Playing dumb comes natural to me. He was having a bad day and needed a good laugh. He waited until my back was turned and I was distracted. He gripped both sides of the hole and *RIP.* What started as a small hole was now an open gash. He couldn’t stop laughing. When he finally did, I simply replied. “you mean I have had a hole in my pants? No wonder every time I tooted I heard the sound of a flag flapping.” This sent him into more fits of laughter. I think there is a moral here. Maybe take one for the team? No. When life gives you a problem, the best cure is laughter? Maybe. No, I think what I think the moral is this: Toot jokes are super funny to a six year old.”

I have put a lot of work into my freelance design business this week, mostly by working on the website. I have optimized, socialized, prioritized, adwordatized, tednerized, designatized and etceteraized www.duckofalltrades.com with one goal in mind: Create a self maintaing site that I can easily update with new content as needed that meets the needs of my target audience. I’m hoping to get it to a point where I can focus less on the business side of DoAT and more on design. I want the site to take care of itself.

When I last left you, I realized how little time people actually spent on my site.  Most people were clicking on one page and then leaving. I set out to fix this problem by directing searchers to new front pages that are designed to draw their attention in more and be targeted to what they are looking for. The results are a success so far. On an average, people are staying 2-4 times longer and clicking through more of the pages. Traffic wise, I’m still averaging about the same as before. I’m hoping to increase this next week. I have a few ideas on how to do this. I’m trying to be creative about it. Should be fun. I am thinking it will be better to push this site and use ite as a launching pad to my other endeavors. I want to create something people care about.

I should have numbers to share with you next week. Right now it is still too early for them to be significant. I can tell that this site has been successful so far. Readership has doubled every other day! I already get more people on this site than the DoAT site. I have been using AdWords to advertise DoAT now for about two weeks. So far I have had little success. When I say little, I mean none. My click through ratios are HORRIBLE. On an average, they are .04%. What does this mean? Out of every 100 people that view my ad, only .04% click on the ad and go to my site. That isn’t even a whole person! That’s like a whole person’s pet gerbil. So out of 100 people, 1 pet gerbil goes to my site. Gerbils don’t need design or illustration. I think they just like to play with mice.

The hardest part of being an artist is knowing when to put then paintbrush down. When to stop? I thought I was at this point with Moo-pig. Apparently not. I had an idea yesterday that I just had to try out. Originally I had planned to do the book in black and white. Then it turned to black and white with a splash of blue. Yesterday I had the idea of adding in more color to see how it works; a pig color/texture for Moo-pig and only Moo-pig. The idea? In Moo-pig’s world, she seems out of place, not real. She isn’t one thing, she isn’t the other. But visually, she could be colorful and real in an otherwise black and white world. She is herself and that is what makes her real. Might work, I’m playing around with the idea. Here are two images. One with her in black and white and one with her in pig color. What do you think?

Moo-pig in color

Moo-pig in color

Moo-pig black and white

Moo-pig black and white

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Category: Business, Illustration, Life, Moo-Pig, Uncategorized  | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  | 2 Comments
Rekindling a creative fire…
February 24th, 2009 | Author: admin
Moo-Pig enters the mooing contestFinally, it was Moo-Pig’s turn…

I have had an over abundance of ideas as of late. So many that I don’t know how to begin to explore them all. I have nimbly jumped from one project to the next, pushing myself creatively. In the process, I have discovered a large part of me that had been lost. I have been bounced around the design world over the years so much that at some point I lost the creative fire that drove me. I began to focus on survival.  I never realized this until recently when I began reflecting on my work. Not the kind of work we do because we have to, but the work we do because we want to and need to. Sadly, it dawned on me that my best work was in the past. Not by a few days, nor weeks, nor months, but years past. When was the last time I did something I could pass to my kids or share with my wife? Two months ago, if I told you about my latest book, I would have to go back 5 years. I guess sometimes we get so focused on survival that we forget the things that allowed us to survive in the first place. I began this year hoping to get this spark back…to rekindle my creative fire. I figured it would be a year long process, at least. Who knew it would take only a month? I have a Moo-Pig to thank for this. Speaking of which…

Work is continuing on Moo-Pig. I’m hoping to have it wrapped up by the end of next month. Above is the newest sketch. I can see the finish line at this point and look forward to sprinting towards the end.

Moo-Pig contains mainly spreads. To make things easier, I have counted in spreads rather than pages. This is from spread 12. There will be a total of 15 spreads. As you can see, I have begun adding in color, but very minimally.  The idea here is that this is a story of black and white and the illustrations are meant to reflect that. I’m hoping this adds drama for the sparing use of blue.

I am still undecided about what to do with this project in the end. When I started Duck of All Trades, it has always been a goal of mine to self publish. Moo-Pig may be the perfect candidate for that. With it’s use of two colors, it would be inexpensive, at least by children’s book’s standards, to print.  I have also thought of making it available through an e-book. I own the site moo-pig.com and could easily set up a site around this book for all to enjoy. If I decide to submit it to publishers, I will keep it updated here. 

In other news, I have began to work on yet another secret project. More to come in a few weeks. All I can say for now is it has to do with “Sockets” and their odors.

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On The Road Again.
February 09th, 2009 | Author: admin

 

The Wild Thing

The Wild Thing

A man and his Volkswagen is a complicated relationship not easily understood.  Mine started when I was very young, still in elementary school. While my brothers were into larger, faster modes of transportation, such as Jeeps with enormous tires and Camaros  that would drain the color from your face with a tap on the accelerator, I fell in love with the german engineered air-cooled car that could. I counted the days when I would own one, never losing that dream. As I grew older, that love never went away. When I was 13, I bought my first VW, which was actually just an engine lid. I claimed it was my first piece, and I would build the rest of the car around it. High School came and went with no Beetle. I had to have something more reliable, something safer, something to get me from point A to point B and eventually college. College came, still no Volkswagen. But the dream lived on.

 

After college in 2002, my dream became a reality. I came home from work one day to find a little red, 1971 Super Beetle in the back yard. My dad  and mom had bought it for me as a graduation gift. My dad had even risked his safety and clean driving  record by driving it home illegally and in need of a few repairs just to surprise me. I immediately took up with the car. It was loud (rusted out muffler) and dirty, the seats were filled with holes, it was covered in years of VW grime from bumper to bumper, which it was missing along with a other few parts and it sported a paint job fresh out of a spray can. In other words, it was perfect. I painted murals on it, stuck in a new muffler, made a few minor adjustments and never looked back.

7 Years later, a new engine later and hours of work later, here we are. A man and his Volkswagen. My life has changed so much. With two kids and another on the way, it’s not practical for the family to pile in on a family trip. However, with so many memories, so many years in anticipation and so much work, this car will forever be a part of me because so much of me is in it. It may only get used for late night runs to the store, or early morning runs to pick up breakfast, but it will always be my car. It proves that even though my life has changed, I haven’t

However, The Wild Thing (that is its name because, simply, I painted a mural of “Where the Wild Things Are” on the side) has been out of commission for a few months. The battery has died numerous times. Last week, the “idiot” light came on . I wasted no time in diagnosing the problem, a burnt out generator. I immediately went to work and 2 hours later, my hands covered in VW Grease, I had a new generator installed. Voila! Problem solved. It is at that point, my relationship with this particular Volkswagen became clear. It’s not just a car, it is more than that. This is my hopes, my dreams. This is all the things I wanted and all the things I have. This is something I can fix. It’s a perfect gift from proud parents and a shared ride with my four legged best friend. It’s stuffing socks in the air vents on a cold winter morning and the smell of gas fumes on a hot summer day. This Volkswagen isn’t just a car, it is me. And sometimes all it takes is a simple repair and its new again. A little work and the lights shine bright again.

That is the secret to the relationship between this man and his Volkswagen.

Wild Thing's Engine Bay

Wild Thing's Engine Bay

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