Sam Woodfin's Micro

Hello, Shana Logic!

Monetizing a web site is easy. Successfully monetizing a web site is hard. And -- much like privacy in a connected world -- ethically monetizing a web site is a minefield. So I was thrilled this morning when this site was approved for Shana Logic's affiliate program. (No, it's not that difficult. Yes, I am that easy. And easy = happy. So there.)

A bit of back story:

Long, long ago, when I'd just gotten my first computer with a hard drive, and I was running Mac OS 9 in an OS X world, my favorite hobby was customizing my Mac's appearance. One of my favorite sites for finding desktop icons and desktop pictures was Pixelgirl Presents. (To this day, when I want to dress up my PC for Halloween, or when I just miss seeing some of the old stuff from MacuserX [nee The Devil's Desktop], Pixelgirl Presents is the first place I go.) And a few years later, when Shana Victor, the owner of Pixelgirl Presents, started Shana Logic, I became a fan of that site, too.

If you know me, at all (and I know that most of you reading this do), you know that I'm not big on shopping. But I am big on art. And one of the coolest things about Shana Logic is that it supports independent artists. This is a snippet from the shop's "About" page:

The shop is 100% made & designed by artists and small indie businesses! We've got 1000 amazing items created by 100 artists from around the world!

 

Shana Logic is owned and run by one girl (Shana--nice to meet ya! ;-). I started the shop in 2003 in my teeny basement but today I run it out of a small warehouse with the help of my three fabulous assistants!

And how does this tie in to our current political and economic climate? Glad I asked for you! Simply put, when you support independent artists, you support people, not corporations. You're supporting the arts in a very direct way, and you're helping individual artists to support themselves.

(And hey! When you make a purchase after visiting Shana Logic through a link on this site, you're helping to support me, too!)

On a much less political level, the stuff at Shana Logic has cornered the market on cute.

To recap, I've chosen to affiliate with:

1. a shop I'm a fan of, with or without the potential for me to profit.
2. a shop which enables independent artists to support themselves while continuing to make art.
3. a shop which supports both human culture and economic independence by enabling the things listed in #2.
4. a shop that sells quality merchandise (and, yes, I do always worry about that when pushing my Zazzle products).
5. a server full of adorable.

Whether this will end up becoming profitable or not remains to be seen. But, success or failure aside, kids, this is how you do affiliate marketing without sacrificing your conscience:

You support what you believe in.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive!

This is a lesson I've been learning a lot, lately, and it's been a great lesson to learn at a not-so-great time in my life. Today has just provided another example.

Five days ago, I casually mentioned that I wouldn't object if someone wanted to donate some Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pens and some index cards to my Halloween cartoon effort. Today, these were in my mailbox, courtesy the lovely Jayne d'Arcy:

Those of you unfamiliar with PITT Artist Pens should know that they're very handy, especially for cartooning. This set includes eight pens: black pens in small point, medium point, and brush point; and five more brush-point pens in various shades of grey. The lines and colors look a bit like this:

These pens do not provide the effortless control of a Pilot Precise V5, but they beat out the V5 in a couple of other areas:

1. They use real India ink, which makes the drawing waterproof. This means that I can actually drag out the Derwent Inktense pencils and and Bombay India Inks and color my 'toons by hand. This works out much, much better for me than adding color digitally.
2. Control isn't always the best thing. Brush pens provide flow. Flow is important for cartooning (for me, anyway). Flow means I can focus on getting the idea down as quickly as possible, that I can focus more on that idea than on making careful lines. And it ends up creating more expressive lines, too.

My other favorite drawing tool is an old-fashioned dip pen. But for cartooning, I like the PITT pens better because:

1. The PITT nibs aren't sharp bits of metal. That means they don't hang on textured paper and rip my index cards to shreds.
2. Dip pens are messy. Messy, messy, messy. And I'm messy, too. One wrong move -- which can happen easily when you're working quickly -- and you're not only starting your drawing over, but washing all the way up to your elbow and thinking "Well, the carpet was old, anyway."

If you draw a lot, and haven't tried PITT Artist Pens, I enourage you to give them a try.

And if you're Jayne d'Arcy, thank you so much for helping me to -- hopefully -- make some decent cartoons this year! :)