Electricity Kills Cousin and Blew Arms Off Another

There was a request made for a very specific greeting card the other day.  The request was to congratulate someone for finishing electrician training and becoming a full blown electrician.  Well I had a cousin who was an electrician and when we were about 30 he was killed when a generator arced out and fried his ass.  So naturally the first thing that came to my mind regarding an electrician was being electrocuted.

This is the sketch for the card

As I write this another sad and tragic memory of electricity pops into my head.  I traveled with the carnival when I was about 19 - 20.  I met a lot of interesting characters, and those days normally spawn long conversations at parties.  But specifically I met a guy with no arms.  He had them both blown off by electricity.  His family operated midway games and he was setting up that game where you try to ring the bell at the top of tall pole/board by using a huge hammer to whack a lever.   Well when he stood the pole/board upright it hit some live power lines...you image the rest for yourself.  Buy The Card Here

Oh, and you get a free Pope joke.  How's that for value?

Inspiration Low, Questions Abound

 

I haven't felt too inspired lately to write.  I don't have any particular ax to grind, I'm not in a deep funk or manic phase, I'm pretty even keeled right now.  That being said,  I've been wondering what about my blog is bringing people here to read.  I'm able to keep track of activity to the blog and it has been steadily gaining visits.  What I see is about 25% are repeat visitors, Thank you to y'all.  With, duh, the balance, 75%, being one time, first time visitors. (Thanks to you also).  So I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how to appeal to my audience, to really make it grow.  

I posted a long time ago I wanted to start a regular comic feature and have it posted here.  Obviously I've failed at that endeavor.  I've not mustered the discipline to be regular.  Heck lately I'm not doodling as much during the day.  Or at least not random undirected doodles.  I've found myself limiting my doodles to the development of ideas for cards and gifts to stock my Greeting Card Store and Cafe Press store.  I've focused my efforts there for two reasons, exposure and earnings.  Additionally, I've worked on spreading out the tentacles to create buzz or a following by tweeting, and promoting a follow on Facebook.  I just wish I could figure out that magic switch to go viral.  Is it one thing or a collective, ever building thing that burst out like a dormant volcano?

What do you want from me?  What can I give you?

So what is it you are interested in?  Are the visits and future visits just random occurrences associated to nonspecific post that just come up on random Google searches?  Are the repeat visitors interested in the struggle I present, or the doodles, or find me funny in some way?  Are you patiently waiting to for me to develop a regular feature?  Is it my warped perspective on life and my rambling commentary on disassociated events?

Will my success come from one venture or a convergence of success from the blog, Facebook, greeting card, and gift items?  Do I need to go back to marketing to newspapers, where I found a market once before?  I hope I can uncover some clue to provide me the direction to drive this endeavor.

I'm selling cards, but not a dime from cafepress.com.  I figure for the limited number of cards I have for sale, I'm not doing too bad, but it befuddles me why not one single item has sold in the shirts and gifts.  I did read some research the other day about greeting card buyers and found that (not too surprising) the majority of card buyers are women.   Maybe the cafepress.com buyer is the same.  Without a doubt I think like a guy, most of the time.  So I'm thinking if I want to really gain some success in greeting cards I've got to start thinking more like a woman.  Basically, get in touch with my feminine humor side, if that can even be done.  Or can I figure out a way to gain notoriety via the blog for just being who I am.  Can one drive the other? or Are they all independent?  The question abound.

This all reminds me of the Boondawgoggles Shirt I have on Cafe Press: "What Me Worry?"

http://www.cafepress.com/oneguydrawing.776332795

Boondawgoggles - Shirts

The Office Birthday Celebration

Isms - Boonisms or Boondawgoggles

As a sales manager over a sales force of about 50 guys I used to produce a daily announcement sheet.  At the top of every one I'd try to make some motivational comment.  The sales guys eventually started calling them Boonisms.  I looked up ism the other day and it has a definition

Noun A distinctive practice, system, or philosophy, typically a political ideology or an artistic movement.

Synonyms doctrine - theory On occasion I've been know to make random notes, or comments in my sketch pad.  Just expressions of what I'm feeling or thinking.  Essentially, now that I look at them closer, isms as defined above.  So I've decided to see if I can create a branded line of items based on these isms, and have decided to call them Boondawgoggles. I figure it will take a long time to get any SEO traction due to the less than likely potential that Boondawgoggles would be a top search word, but what I'd anticipate eventually garnering out of the experiment is a success that rivals that simple "Life is Good" dude.  Yea, I know he has a name but I can't remember it now and don't want to bother looking it up.  This strategy is not too different then the strategy I wanted to approach "Why Aren't I Retired Yet?", it just requires a lot less time.  I don't have to come up with a new drawing for each design.  I just have to use the same forlorn Boon logo and put apply the Ism.  This way I can flood the market, touch a lot more individual buyer personalities.

Let's Make This a Better Year

Yes I'm still doodling.  Not much lately, but see below.  

We are one month into a new year.  (It just astounds me how quickly time flies) and I'm still trying to get my barrings.  I've been spending some time working on launching greeting cards on Greeting Card Universe and gift/apparel stuff on Cafe Press.  Aside from the illustrations I've been trying to figure out how to develop the traffic and awareness and how each work.  So I've tweaked the way the blog looks, made changes to Twitter and Facebook.  I'm trying to get everything to work together.  I even went ahead and bought three domain names: BoonDawgoggle.com, BoonCartoons.com and OneGuyDrawing.net (yea you believe that the dot com for that one was taken)

I've been putting some emphasis on the cartooning side of my world to get some traction so it will start bringing in some money.  Yea money, sorry I'm not a purist that much.  I've made money doing it in the past, and a little extra cash now would be nice.

The other side of my world, the side I've not shared too much about, is getting off to an okay start, but because I got whacked by what are called charge backs I'm digging my way out of a hole.  My company just had its annual yearly KICK OFF rah-rah meeting.  I've been sick to my stomach all last year at how poorly I did, and was quite frankly embarrassed to be at the meeting.  I can't allow that to happen again it would just kill me.  But as in every year in the past, me and everyone I compete against start at zero