ed told me to.

I'd be bitter too. But as of this year I have decided I shall be mercenary.

I want to talk business with you. Say, let's whore the fan art book-mark thing. Possibly.

Business idea. Trying to get some cash.

I'll probably call you sometime in the next week or so.

[...I like 'Bleach'.]

My icon is from MPD Psycho. And I love the series to little bits.

Internet/JAFWA/WAICON, anywhere I can to get some money.

Isn't matt finish the one that's not shiny? Like it's glowing from internal virtue, rather than from the light source? :DD More like the covers to Saiyuki? I considered buying Saiyuki before I knew anything about it just because of how nice the covers were. Really.

One would imagine ideal price here would depend on quality, selection, and how many of the other things the buyer's likely to want. (That is, he might be perfectly happy to spend $4 on two different bookmarks, but will be reluctant to pay over $10 even if he really wants that third one. And forcing him to narrow down his choice by one might lead him to conclude that he doesn't really need any of them.)

There is no way I could possibly express my love for your icon. I keep wanting to propose to it, every time it comes up.

But be careful with that! For some reason, when there's a bargain, I'm even more critical of the normal price. And if you have to buy four or five of something before it kicks in, especially if it's quite a large discount, as a percentage of the original cost, I get all >:/// and tend not to buy anything at all. Internal rip-off alert, I think. (Then again, I only like to think that my experiences can be generalised for the rest of the buying population. I actually have no idea that this is so.)

Personally I prefer longer if not wider bookmarks, since they're not as easy to lose. ^^

And I wouldn't pay more than $2 for a bookmark, even if it had fanart I liked on it, not when I could get a simple bookmark for less than a dollar in some places.

How much I am willing to pay for a bookmark (or anything at all) depends on four factors, listed by order of importance:

1. The artist.
2. The art style.
3. The quality of the merchandise.
4. The publisher/co. that made it (that is, whether the product is copyrighted).

Obviously I'm willing to pay good money for a bookmark made by a professional mangaka. But I can also be persuaded to spend the same amount of money on a fan artists' work (both fanart and original art) if I like their art style. For example, I never hesitate to buy P.L. Nunn's doujinshi, prints, or other merchandises that I like. The price is not a factor there, though I have to say she charges very fairly.

So I can't really give you a price until I've seen the product.

If you're going to sell online, I forsee lots of Paypal payments (I even get Paypal payments from locals when I sell online - such a waste of Paypal fees D:), so perhaps currency isn't such an issue? After all, the American dollar seems to be the online standard.

Matte finishes are really, really nice, especially after lamination. I got some really great B&W art printed on matte paper and then laminted, and there's this lovely 3D raised-art effect going on.

As for what to draw on them, I'm not sure? Maybe have some regular lead characters, and say "we'll draw your bitch for you for $XX!!" for custom-ones (because you never know when a crazed fan might pop up and wave money for their favourite artist to draw). In the meantime, I'll hide my sorry arse attempt at raising money for Medecins Sans Frontieres *hides Green Lantern fanart postcard*.

Your print shops charge more for matte? Gee, the ones here charge flat rate for matte and glossy. In fact, when I had some A3 pieces of art printed, they gave me a stack of sample papers to print them on for all the same price. So naturally I went for matte.

An alternative is heavy card stock, or else cheapo prints laminated. If you're in this for the long haul, it may actually be cheaper to buy a small lamination machine. Should set you back about $50, but the lamination pouches are quite cheap. You'll break even and start saving when you hit a certain volume.

Well... remember that fanworks are essentially copyright violations. But there are plenty of artists who make things like bookmarks, and in Japan it's practically a fan-culture to violate copyrights like so XD;;

Thanks for the compliment - still mada mada dane.

If you have an idea of what you are doing, and you don't mind sharing it, why not email it to me at darkly[at]limitlessdesire[dot]com? I can go through it, give you suggestions and all that. Been selling online since 1999 after all, and I'd also like to think that my fascination with marketing can actually be applied to real life.

It sounds to me like you won't actually need that much to start off. My startup capital, excluding the actual merchandise themselves, couldn't have been more than a hundred dollars.

That being said, you have to be realistic. It sounds to me that you are doing something similar to cafepress - basically getting a bunch of artists to draw and produce a specific merchandise (for now), paying them a percentage while you take the rest, etc. That kind of business won't net you much money unless you expand, and since your profit margins seem low, it may work out to be a poor per-hour rate for the work that you're doing (contacting artists, updating site, going to printer's, buying supplies, etc). I won't continue to speculate for now - shall be interested in seeing your ideas later!

How much I made? Initially, before anime stores became prominent in USA (that's where most of my customers are), I could make quite a nice margin. But now with the competition, I'm just not cutting it anymore. Just as well that I'm shifting to a niche market. Basically, there isn't as much to be made as before. But something original still enjoy a certain amount of popularity since:
1) supply is usually limited, and
2) supply, if available, is rarely shipped outside of the country of origin.

Just something to think about while you write up the stuff :D Not going to spill all my money-making beans here now, am I?

I'd just like to add, though, that at the start you probably can't afford to pay for IP to the artists, so you may want to secure a few artists on a percentage rate at the start, re-negotiable after XX amount of artworks. Remember always to protect yourself - include a clear clause saying that if negotiations fail in R2, you still retain the right to reproduce the works prior to R2 of negotiations at the same percentage rate.

And so on and so forth.

See? I do listen during my Technopreneurship lectures!

If you're selling online and shipping internationally, best to use $US since that's almost standard.

Problem is, if you are selling online and going to use Paypal or something similar, then you're going to lose a lot in fees. Either you price the bookmarks higher to off-set the fees and run the risk of putting people off, or have a lower price and deal with fees+production = little/no profit.

And I've found that fanart sells more than original as a rule.