Phase Two is Almost Complete...

So once the new site was up and running it was right on to Phase Two of the new marketing strategy... expanding into the global marketplace. I've been dabbling here and there with different things but now is the time to implement an actual plan. So the plan is to release a series of very simple website templates for sale on fiverr.com. If you've never heard of it, it's a site where you can offer or solicit goods and services for $5. The idea is to drive traffic to the main site where I will offer the more elaborate templates for licence or purchase.

My hope is to attract programmers who may not be as good at design....there are a lot of "needs improvement" type sites out there. I've always described myself as a designer who can do basic programming. It's the programmers who can do basic design that I'm trying to target.

The Fiverr Templates video is now showing on the C2Kstudios YouTube Channel!

The Fiverr release update is coming soon to C2Kstudios.com!

The Spring Update is Live Now!

The Spring 2013 update is online at C2Kstudios.com! About a month behind schedule, but with two kids and four jobs, "schedule" for me is really a state of mind... technically I should have started a month earlier?...

Anyway, it's all there now. Enjoy.

The New Videos

So as I was updating the main site it came to the point where I had to think about my videos...not just doing the new template demos, but because I had used website services to create my ads and video intros, I knew I'd need to secure commercial usage rights before I made a real push beyond just local advertising.

So I went to Xtranormal and Animoto and not only are the prices they are asking completely ridonkulous, but some of the wording in the TOS was pretty sketch...so I had to find another solution.

What I found was a plug-in for Windows Movie Maker, of all things...$15 and I got a sh*tload of extra effects and transitions right off the bat, and access to loads more when I want to go through the list...and, if you're comfortable with XML (which, eahhhhhh....) you can make changes to add colors and photo backgrounds and things like that. Anyway, if you use WMM 6 it's worth a look: www.rehanfx.org/shader.htm.

I was running my videos through 3 different programs because I wanted different things for the titles, the effects, and the overlays...they're all nice programs, but alas, not the fancy (expensive) all-in-one suite that I wish I had...well, I do have one, but it's like, 10 years old, and cannot do 16:9; but now that I have this plug-in, she's dead to me.

So, problem one: solved. But that still left me with my second obstacle—music. I needed some cheap (free) commercial-use audio tracks...and I found some of those, too. Partners In Rhyme has a small collection of royalty-free, completely free, music loops that I was able to parlay into soundtracks for my first run of videos. They also have a deal where if you give them a shout-out on your website or blog (like this one!) they will send you a link to to a more extensive sound library...so check out www.partnersinrhyme.com and tell them C2Kstudios sent you...ha ha! Anyway, they'll be going on the new Links page for sure. Oh, and a special thanks to Mark Lyford, who seems to have written at least some of the tracks that I used.

So after all of that, here's the first (again!) promo video from C2Kstudios:

Check out the rest of the new videos on the C2Kstudios YouTube Channel!

Spring Update Coming Soon!

So once again, winter has been reasonably productive; no brutal illnesses this year, but the general malaise was pretty constant. I truly despise the winters here. It's March 21 and it feels like February 12. Meanwhile, back home Mom is out in the yard getting her gardens ready for planting...sucks, dude.

But the new site update is going well. Again, just a little slowly. The actually paying jobs have to take priority, right? But here is a teaser shot:

Recently I've run into a couple of major snags. I've been playing around on Xtranormal.com for a while, but now, since things are starting to come together and I plan to really reach out globally soon as opposed to just sort of locally, I have to really be cognizant of the legal issues regarding what content I can use.

Turns out Xtranormal.com charges $50/month for commercial usage...that's too rich for my blood right now, but even if it weren't, when you read the TOS the whole thing starts to sound not worth it so much. I guess to a corporation what's $50 a month but to someone like me...so I've had to retire Joe Robot (for now) and come up with a new marketing strategy. I have one, but now I just have to spend time and energy on it that I have to find somehow. There isn't much of either to go around right now.

Animoto.com was another gem that I would have liked to incorporate but at $25/month that too is still too much for me right now.

So ya, it looks like I'm going to have to redo ALL of my videos. Poo.

SO...is there anyone out there who wants to be in a commercial for C2Kstudios.com? I want to do an ad campaign that asks the question, "What is C2Kstudios.com? With random people on camera saying things like: "it is the dream you were having that night when you woke up the next morning and knew that, if only you could remember what it was, it would change your life forever"... really silly and grandiose things like that. Or if you don't want to be on video just send your ideas to webmaster@c2kstudios.com and I'll put them on cards and just walk around and ask random people to read them out. Should be hilarious.

Oops!

Wednesday, January 23

I've been plugging away at the HTML5 templates as of late...working on marking up some template chassis that I can use to make my templates with quickly. I was doing all my testing on the server and until now that hasn't been a problem, but my one master page is getting pretty big, with lots of 'modules' like photo galleries and videos, and when I'm doing testing I have up to 8 browsers open on my two main machines so I can see it like 90% of people out there are going to see it.

I guess the server didn't like that...I got suspended for the day for high CPU usage...the first time I thought it was all the browsers so the next day I stuck just to Chrome but it happened again...d'oh!

So I pulled the template vault off of the server and now I'll be doing all my back-end development off-line. I'll just upload each template for final testing....they'll be much smaller than the big master files.

Along with the new roll-out will come the next version of C2Kstudios.com...so there's something else to look forward to! I wanted to be done by the end of January, but these days, with the kids, this is just proving to be a horrible time of year. I wish I could take some solace in the knowledge that everything that we'll be exposed to over the next couple of decades will leave us with iron-clad immune systems for our later years...but sadly, I think those days are long gone....

Saturday, January 26

So late Tuesday night a friend of mine asked me a question on FB about his power supply...and the next day, mine started making a very unnerving noise. Right when I stopped writing this post on Wednesday, in fact.  Such is my life. Anyone who's read the Celestine Prophecy will know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I pulled it out, (gave the whole chassis a good cleaning while I was in there of course), and sure enough, the fan was now settling against the base of the shaft...i could hear it moving in there when I'd turn it over...So that night after dinner it was a bus-ride down to good old Canada Computers for a new one...thankfully, it wasn't too cold outside that night. Thursday I spent re-wiring everything; I made a couple of minor improvements to some connections and the position of my subwoofer but otherwise everything is pretty much the back to the way it was. I had thought about putting my second machine up off the floor, but that would mean putting it out of reach. On Friday the Bean had a PD day from school so I took the girls out for breakfast and hot chocolate at the pub where I work weekends. And now, it's on to the templates!

I'm pretty happy now with the "template chassis" I've been working on the last couple of weeks...the ones that were giving me trouble with the server... I've built them like frameworks with modules that I can take and create a template out of pretty quickly. They're colour-coded too, so it's easy to see across all browsers how margins are behaving and things like that. The main one is especially large; these are shots from Chrome at max zoom-out:

The rest are for different formats, menus, borders, things like that. So guess what I'm off to work on right now?

Ho Ho HoTML5 Templates!

So for the last few weeks I've been slowly working my way back through my current selection of HTML5 templates...updating them and getting them ready for the new roll-out. Doing some end of year maintenance and gearing up for the holidays...so I won't really be doing anything major again now until after the new year.

Here are a couple of template preview pics...I'll be redoing the demo videos and posting them to YouTube.

  

I had to go through my graphics inventory and make sure (as sure as is reasonable, anyway) that all the fonts and images and other media I'm using is all legit for commercial use and resale....I think I'm pretty much set now.

Also started a new ad campaign for the social mediaverse...this is just the first tiny sampler:

Have a Merry Christmas and we'll meet again after the holidays!

C2Kstudios

Going to Get There Soon!

So I have this idea about a new marketing strategy that entails me pumping out these HTML5 templates. I'm wondering how it will play if I advertise them as hand-made (they're all hand-coded now, no Wordpress or other builder software used), uniquely tailored sites that are almost like works of art...my plan is to make really basic ones available through sites like Fiverr and then offer more elaborate ones on C2Kstudios.com. I'm also going to look into sites like Odesk; I can also offer extra services like hosting, PHP security and basic SEO setup - making sure that the meta tags are up to par. Building quality backlinks is a lot of legwork - that's how SEO companies make their money, is through their networks and affiliates - you're basically paying for access to already well-established lists of sites. Building backlinks is not what I want to be spending my time doing. I think I might know someone with access to that kind of thing...it could prove to be a great partnership if that's the case. I need to ask a few more pointed questions, though.

Right now I'm working on a rebuild of my family history website, and once that's done I'll be able to throw all my effort into getting some templates up and putting the word out. I've got years of inspiration to fall back on, as I intend to go back and rebuild some of the old ASAW sites into templates, too.

I intend on updating the main site alongside as well to emphasize the hand-coded aspect. You're not going to get something that looks like another Wordpress blog. Keeping in mind that I am completely self-taught - as I get more and more fluent with the code the designs are flowing easier.