Blog Catalog Discussion: Any freelance artists here?

ZackBrandit on 'Any freelance artists here?'

ZackBrandit — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:28:27 -0500

Our approach is very honest, that is why we ask what would be expected in return. The discussion is open and we want your feedback.

We are not a magazine and we do not make money out of our blog. There is no commercial interest here. We use our blog to communicate and want it to be interactive, creating participation with different communities.
If we have to pay for the illustrations, so be it.
Tell us how much or what is expected?
That is what we're asking here.

Making a weekly contest is certainly not absurd as we would require an illustration every week and it's the easiest way to receive works by people we don't know. It is not difficult to find illustrations, we have our own contacts and there are specialized websites.
The whole point is to go a step further, include and discover artists or just people with a hobby we haven't met before. We just want to bring a "small extra" to the blog.

You say everybody can upload on flickr and promote himself; fair enough.
We do not have any use putting all the received illustrations on Flickr, it doesn't bring us anything, if maybe some nice content.
We want to do it because we believe that it would be a shame not to show the work of all those who participated and didn't win. On the other hand we can just post the selected illustration and forget about the rest and nobody will ever know about the other works which were made specifically for this one particular blog post. There should be a relation between the art and the content, and the received works can show the artistic quality but also the insight of the one who created it.

Our business model is about helping companies develop their online sales and is not at all related to publishing or sell illustrations. On the other hand having some personalized content is a nice to have. And if we find some great but unknown artists, we might ask them for special projects later on or refer them to contacts who might be interested working with them.

Social media is about exchange. We want to use some of your work and we're asking what you want in return, plain and simple.

8MinutesOld on 'Any freelance artists here?'

8MinutesOld — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:12:48 -0500

You say you are a start-up, so you have commercial interests. I think every serious freelance artist tries to make some money with his art, too. So, concerning your question, my answer is simple:

I think you should pay them!

That's the way it is, at least with the magazines you refer to. People work for you, you pay them. Making a "contest" out of every post is absurd. To me it seems as if you are looking for free illustrations when you say: "... idea would be to gain visibility and a link to his own blog". Every website can provide this. Furthermore you want to publish every submitted picture on Flickr and Facebook. That will be of no use to the artists but only for you. Everybody could upload their art to Flickr and that way promote himself, without you.
You probably should think about this again and maybe you find a more honest approach.

ZackBrandit on 'Any freelance artists here?'

ZackBrandit — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:04:19 -0500

Achyut,

From our side, the purpose is to have original pics which are directly connected to the content of our posts. Same thing as cartoons in a magazine

For the artist, the idea would be to gain visibility and a link to his own blog. We do the same thing with LinkedIn where we ask questions and the best answers get published.

This means that it works like co-branding, one helps the other to get more readers and more exchanges and interaction.
With time, our desire is to build a small community around artists and help them to get known.

You should see it as a weekly competition. First place is to be published in the post, but the others are not forgotten and their work can be seen through Flickr and Facebook.

We understand however that some might think it is not enough for the time they spent drawing.
That is why we start this discussion. We would like too know what you expect more.
When you say "what's in it for me", we want you to answer this question and based on the answer see what we can and cannot provide.

Hopes this clarifies a bit.

Achyut on 'Any freelance artists here?'

Achyut — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:24:06 -0500

Well I do draw...mainly portraits though....
You can check it out on my blog page-
http://www.achyutktelang.blogspot.com
I draw cartoons etc as well.....so what exactly am I supposed to do and what's in it for me?
Could you write in more detail specifically?

ZackBrandit on 'Any freelance artists here?'

ZackBrandit — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:28:27 -0500

Hello,

Our blog focuses around social media, web2.0 and the services we as new start-up wish to provide.

Instead of looking for pictures for every post we write, we want to give some visibility to graphists, painters, draftsmen, cartoonists, etc.

The way we envision it is that we provide one week in advance the title of the post. Then we collect the pictures and publish our favorite(s) one(s) in the post, while all the others will be visible on our Flickr account and Facebook fan page.

We would like to know if people would be interested to participate and what is expected in return (in addition to credentials and visibility)

We're a new start-up wishing to go a step further with interaction between different kinds of communities and would like to create win-win situations for all.

You can check the blog at http://blog.zackbrandit.com

Additional ideas and comments are most welcome.