Hold On to Your Dreams by Creative Thursday
Please read Part I first and then Part II before reading this.
Hi from both of us; this we're hoping will be the last (for awhile) on the subject of magic, copying, etc., but we just wanted to tie a few loose ends up this week and tell you our plans with respect to all of it.
We spoke up, because we felt it needed to be done. And thank you to the community for all of the support. That was magical to see your response. Those of you who wrote, commented, tweeted; thank you for restoring the magic and keeping it real. It's an issue we are going to take forward in a more stronger sense in the months to come in some sort of capacity - the definitions just haven't worked themselves out yet.
Our take on copying goes like this. If you are making something for yourself, a friend, your mother, then D.I.Y. away. If you have the skills and love creating, that's your business if it's for personal use only. But if you're going to sell it, then that's where it crosses the line. You're going to loose credibility fast and not only is it uncool, it just can't make you feel good.
With respect to copying our business model. What we were speaking to was more about the unfairness to the handmade community versus copying our idea. To be fair to the community, a market like ours needs the readership from an established blog like ours to send traffic to it. Some started a blog with the launch of their market or perhaps 2 months before. As well, the poor ethics in which some of these markets were created. (e.g. first by participating in ours to see how it worked, and then by offering our vendors free space to create a false sense of a successful market to others visiting. Then others would then join, and so on and so on). That was the clincher and what we were talking about. What we are saying is, "buyer beware".
With respect to newbie's teaching e-courses on blogging and marketing that have no credentials, also, buyer beware. It wasn't to discourage newbies, but the opposite, to empower them to not buy into these types of courses. There are alot of good courses out there by established people from the community, and we will address some of that soon (see second last paragraph about our plans).
And with respect to the newcomer. We can't stress how much we love new. Especially in this business. Because things get old fast online and we like things fresh and new. So we disagree with anyone saying it's harder for the newbie. It's not. If you have talent and are original in some way you have just as much a chance to be featured as any established artist out there. There is no elitism. Anyone who knows us ore reads this blog knows that. One of the reasons we're doing this is for the underdog. We're champions of those sorts of things and we cannot bear to see any type of unfairness, deception, or elitism.
If we haven't replied to your email, or haven't posted about your work, then there's two things at play. We haven't had time, or we haven't seen your email. We're getting at least 200 emails a day; and a lot of it goes into the junk folder, which we are currently looking into and in the meantime, try to check, but there's just some days it empties itself before we can get to it. So we're sorry for that. So try us again, and if we still don't reply, then try again and ask why. We truly will respond if we can.
And now for our plans. In the new year we are going to be offering up something "in the spirit" of the way the old internet days were. It's going to be free, and it's going to help those who feel they need help out there. We are excited about it and we hope it will start a new wave of "magic". In the meantime if you have any questions feel free to email us.
Also if you get a chance, please visit Renee of Wolfie and the Sneak on the tragic things happening with respect to design theft and Marisa of Creative Thursday who wrote a thoughtful post on Becoming an Original in responce to our posts. They're both worth the read!
Till then, we think it's time to get on with the season! Thanks again for your readership and for your support.
xo
jan and earl
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