[IF GCU is heading in that direction, then will there be a change in the way artists/designers - whatever one wishes to title themselves - be compensated for their efforts?  ]
 
 
I don't know. I'm not privy to whatever their plans are, but if I had to guess, I'd say no. I imagine things will continue to go the way they are now with "pay per card" payments.
 
Most stock sites actually pay this way now to - 50 cents a sale for certain uses if it's a subscription sale is a pretty estimate, though some pay less and some pay more. Sales of images that are "one-offs" (ie: non-subscription) can be double or triple that, and special uses (extended licensing) can earn you anywhere from $3 or $4 to $25 or $30 for a single use. On a stock site (or micro stock site), specific types of sales have their own fees.
 
On GCU, it appears that "we" are selling cards, but if I remember what I was told when I complained about getting an ITIN for taxes (I'm not a US citizen), I was told by GCU that we aren't actually selling goods, but licensing our images for use on the cards and so need to fill out the tax thing because what we were earning was considered "royalties".  You don't earn royalties on the cards, but on the images.
 
I think. My memory is a little fuzzy on that.
 
But in those terms, then GCU is a little bit like a stock site - they license images, they pay per image sale, and they pick and choose what they want.
 
[I'm taking all this in and attempting to make sense of it all so I can make a proper decision on how I go about my future here]
 
Yes, well I nearly threw in the towel with the last rejection of a perfectly good image. But decided I was better than that. I'll take what they don't want and sell it somewhere else. At least one other site has cards every bit as good, and provided you don't break any copyright rules you can pretty much sell whichever cards you want.
 
What you might consider is diversifying. GCU has perhaps better sales ratios than some of the PODs like Zazzle, but promoting your own work on some of those other PODs can make them very successful.
 
So if you use other places, then whatever GCU won't take, you can sell yourself somewhere else, if you want public sales.  I'm not sure where you live, but locally we have a very active art community. Most of our local shops (including flower shops) will take cards for resale from local artists on commission, so you might think about trying something like that. I had a look at some of your cards and found some pretty charming stuff.

Paul and Randy -
 
I was thinking along the same lines as you about eliminating the page after page that we have of age-specfic and name-specific cards etc in favour of letting the customers 'customize' the cards to meet their needs.
 
But I think there is currently a flaw in that idea in that we don't have a 'custom' subcategory under Birthdays, Retirement and so on. So our custom-front cards have to be buried amidst all the existing cards for a certain age/person etc. Doesn't make sense to me.
 
I have asked for a 'custom' category, alongside the 'photo card' category a couple of times but never received a response.
 
Customization is growing more and more popular and I can't understand why GCU doesn't advertise 'customizable' with a tab of its own like it does for photo cards.

Hi Mindy
 
I'm going to be an utter bore and suggest that you go back and re-read my suggestion for a plan that would have achieved GCU's aim of reducing the number of cards to only those that were marketable in a way that would be seen to be fair and not reliant on the subjective judgements of the reviewers - as well as costing GCU less work, and therefore less money, to carry out.
 
I think it's very important that you let us know why my suggestion wouldn't have worked, in essence if not in the detail. That way we may be able to begin to understand why GCU chose to go about this so-called 'cull' in a way that has aroused suspicions as to GCU's real motives as well strong feelings of fear, frustration and bewilderment among many artists.
 
So far I have only heard objections to my suggestion based on not having really understood what I was suggesting, even though I thought I had set it out clearly.
 
Thank you -
 
Judy

Quote from Paul_133086 on Dec 6^th, 2011, 5:25pm:

 
Paul,
After reviewing the sales of your top selling card and one other card of similar design & concept I found both of them to have significant frequency AND recency of sales and have asked the review team to bring them both back online.  Your clever and appropriate verse seems to really resonate with buyers.  Thanks for affording me the time to dig deeper into the sales history.

Mindy, you do have to admit that this is all just a little bit ridiculous.   Not to mention time consuming for GCU, reviewers, and artists alike. Is there not something that can be done that would be more consistent and make more sense than deleting cards and having to put them back for sale because of a reviewer's bad judgement? How do you expect us artists to act in a professional way when we are seeing things like this from the ones who are supposed to be in charge and know what they are doing?  

Mindy, I would like to know why reviewer 619 just bluntly declined this card saying, "Thank you for submitting this artwork to GCU however we're sorry that your submission has not met our Marketability Standards and has been declined due to the following reason: The repeated image is so tiny that it cannot be easily seen, and appears to be out of focus. Additionally, the rows are not straight and dip to the right. Thank youi." - Card # 885019 Notice they misspelled you? Not a professional!
 
Reviewer 758 said, "Hi Rebecca,  
Cute idea. It is really hard to make out the subject in this image without seeing your explanation in the Reviewer Notes. Would you consider making the images a little larger? We would certainly like to see this little guy/gal. Also the images do not seem to be straight in the frame, we recommend making them straight or making the angle a little more definite so it is not perceived as a print error by a shopper.  
Thanks." - Card # 885202 A very nice reviewer with respect for me enough to let me try and fix my mistakes. Handled in a professional manner that did not at all make me upset. The only differences in these two cards was one had text on the inside, and the other did not.
 
Now tell me there is not real problems going on here with the inconsistent review process. The reviewers are supposed to help us improve like # 758 did, not like # 619. How is that reviewer helping us become a more professional site by not giving us a chance to fix our mistakes, and to beat it all they can't even spell. I have been very nice about all of this, but I feel if I do not stand up with the others nothing will ever be done about this problem.  
 

Quote from Rebecca_140932 on Dec 8^th, 2011, 11:45am:

 
Thank you for your kudos for reviewer #758.  It is appreciated.  However know that reviewer #619 has received much praise as well for being helpful and providing suggestions and fixes.
 
I find it amusing, but I do understand, that you are quick to label a reviewer unprofessional for a typo in an administrative review message but gush over the assistance a different reviewer offers you on your errors in your submitted card.  It would be nice if the courtesty went both ways.
 
The reviews of your identical design Pom Clause were not inconsistent.  Both reviewers found your submission to fall below the bar and for the same reasons - the size of your repeated image and the crooked alignment.  One reviewer choose to decline it and the other chose to return it for edits.  
Both reviews however were professional.
 
We advise reviewers to afford new artists more leeway in their errors and to spend more time in their reviews to help them make corrections and sometimes even making a correction for the artist like a title, keyword or category.  Just some extra hand holding so it's not so overwhelming that they give up.  This is very time consuming and slows down the review process for all artists but we feel it is an important investment to make until they learn the ropes.
 
At some point however, maybe 6 months, artists should be pretty self sufficient and familiar enough with the site and tools to a) make no to few errors and b) make the fixes themselves.
 
I'd say seeing that you've been with GCU for almost 2 years that reviewer #758 went above and beyond the call of duty for you.  Nice and appeciated but not fair to the other artists with pending cards who have not made errors yet have to endure the slower review time.
 
A good refresher here re: artists' due diligence and the reviewers' actions:
http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/forum/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1234562095/15
 
Specifically:
Important - it is NOT all about speeding up the review team.  Artists play a BIG part in improving the process and have a responsibility of due diligence.  Many artists are submitting less than perfect cards and relying on the reviewers to catch careless mistakes.  It is not reasonable to submit cards created with a low level of care and poor attention to detail AND expect quicker reviews.  It is also not fair to the conscientious artists whose cards get delayed in the queue as a result.
 
Change in Review Practices:
The reviewers will no longer FIX titles or keywords that are less than optimal as this slows down the review time and penalizes the savvy artists that have taken the time to educate themselves and submit cards with well termed titles and keywords.  We will not delay these card but will approve w/ comments suggesting where improvements can be made.  
 
We will continue to NOT approve cards with errors, but will no longer take the extra time to make it more marketable.  That is each and every artist's job.
 
We understand that the sheer number of categories and our finicky rules can be overwhelming so we will continue to be involved with those and provide guidance.  This change is specifically addressing "keywords and card titles" that we will not put the extra time into improving for artists.