GCU Forum - Business viability questions from artist

131327

Ex Member

Business viability questions from artist
Feb 20^th, 2007, 3:08pm

I'm an artist and part of the TheArtofLicensing@yahoogroups.com discussion group (where I read about your site). I'm considering putting my artwork on this site. I read that your initial goal at launch is 100 artists and 1000 cards.

Here are a few business-related questions.

1. With the proliferation of e-cards, do you have marketing research to indicate enough customers will pay $2.49 -$3.49 to buy printed cards to make this viable?

2. What is your ramp up timeline to make this a viable business?

3. I see that customers can have the card sent to themselves (for personal delivery, I assume). Is the real business opportunity in the customer personalizing the card and having it mailed directly to the recipient?

4. Is the Reminder Service the engine driving this business?

5. Can you help protect the art from simply being downloaded off the screen as a Save As file (it will be a small image but usable)?

PJ Ryan Huh

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P. J. Ryan Designs :
http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/pjryandesigns

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Mindy

GCU Administrator
Community Manager

Posts: 6537
Gender: female

Re: Business viability questions from artist
Reply #1 - Feb 21^st, 2007, 10:58am

Hi PJ,
Great post and nice to see you thinking this through. Let me respond to your questions and let me know if you need more details...

1. Absolutely, the ecard market although highly popular has hardly touched the paper card market. See this current and interesting article citing both Hallmark and American Greetings...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070213.wecardss0213/BNStory /Technology/home

2. Our ramp up time to make this public to shoppers is the 100 artists and 1,000 cards. We are just a couple of weeks away from that goal. As a complete business model, GCU is one small piece of a much larger business (see www.BigDates-Solutions.com btw: that's me on the home page "hi!" Cheesy

). We are committed to not only making GCU a prominent greeting card destination site but more importantly, providing a great and unique selection of cards for our reminder service based sites. We've been in that business for over 6 years.

3. The real business opportunity is both for shoppers to send directly to the recipient and to themselves first (typically to hand sign). Of course the more info a shopper has in their GCU address book and reminders the easier it is and the more likely they'll use GCU to send cards each year.

4. Yes, the reminder service is the marketing drive for this business. Leveraging our BigDates reminder service sites to "push" the right cards to the right people at the right time. Moving GCU cards into reminders outside of GCU is scheduled for 3/1.

5. This topic of image protection has just come to the top of the list. We're looking at watermarking the larger images (not thumbnails). Please follow this topic in the News & Anno forum topic I'll start today.

Thanks for your great questions Roll Eyes

Mindy

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David_131259 GCU Newbies artist Posts: 6	Re: Business viability questions from artist Reply #2 - Mar 26^th, 2007, 12:09pm 2. Our ramp up time to make this public to shoppers is the 100 artists and 1,000 cards. We are just a couple of weeks away from that goal. As a complete business model, GCU is one small piece of a much larger business (see www.BigDates-Solutions.com btw: that's me on the home page "hi!" ). Yowza! LOL
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Kerra_131306

Senior Member
artist

Posts: 263

Re: Business viability questions from artist
Reply #3 - Sep 26^th, 2007, 3:21am

Quote from 131259 on Mar 26^th, 2007, 12:09pm:

2. Our ramp up time to make this public to shoppers is the 100 artists and 1,000 cards. We are just a couple of weeks away from that goal. As a complete business model, GCU is one small piece of a much larger business (see www.BigDates-Solutions.com btw: that's me on the home page "hi!" Cheesy

).

Yowza! LOL

Wow=-==how many artsit does GCU have now? (I see the above date was back in March)--I'd love to know how fast you're growing!
-Kerra

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Icansketchu Paper Greeting Cards:
http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/icansketchu

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Corrie_131338 Gold Member Posts: 1610	Re: Business viability questions from artist Reply #4 - Sep 26^th, 2007, 7:58am Hi Kerra, If you go to GCU's front page you see all relevant info on the left : Artists: 524 Total Cards: 16,142 Cards to be Approved: 20 New Cards Today: 0 Card Categories: 593 Corrie http://www.corrieweb.nl
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Kerra_131306 Senior Member artist Posts: 263	Re: Business viability questions from artist Reply #5 - Sep 28^th, 2007, 3:07am Hey, Cory--thanks! That's pretty impressive--go, GCU! -Kerra
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Karen_132334 GCU Newbies artist Posts: 22	Re: Business viability questions from artist Reply #6 - Oct 19^th, 2007, 2:51pm >of a much larger business (see www.BigDates-Solutions.com btw: that's me on the home page "hi!" David, I think you morphed into Mindy on that home page... LOL Great job you've done in the past few months!!!
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Kerra_131306

Senior Member
artist

Posts: 263

Re: Business viability questions from artist
Reply #7 - Oct 22^nd, 2007, 4:06am

Quote from Corrie_131338 on Sep 26^th, 2007, 7:58am:

Hi Kerra,

If you go to GCU's front page you see all relevant info on the left :

Artists: 524
Total Cards: 16,142
Cards to be Approved: 20
New Cards Today: 0
Card Categories: 593

Corrie
http://www.corrieweb.nl

Thanks, Corrie!
GCU is growing so fast it's amazing!

-Kerra

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Icansketchu Paper Greeting Cards:
http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/icansketchu

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