One of the questions that comes up SURPRISINGLY INFREQUENTLY is: “What will I actually earn from an Artistic.ly sale?”

Now, most people would typically ask this kind of question before getting involved with a fledgling venture like ours. But as we know, artists tend to think a bit differently!

Speculating, I  don’t think this absence of enquiry can just be dismissed by commercial naivete. Perhaps artists are so used to having their work undervalued and underappreciated; or realise that finding an audience is the most difficult challenge they have to overcome; or are simply used to being ripped off that any additional income is a bonus?

Either way, I thought it would be useful to outline in blog post what you can expect to earn from any Artistic.ly sales if you were to make it through the submissions process.

We try to work in as transparent a way as possible and the following table outlines the numbers we are currently working with:

Now, there are a few things to highlight with these figures:

• Our current consumer offer includes free, worldwide delivery, shipped to any country in the world without any additional charge.
• Due to the vagaries of volumetric shipping pricing it’s VERY expensive to send large framed prints to any country outside of the UK. In reality, it typically costs an additional £22 to deliver our framed prints to the US and an additional £45+ to send to places like Australia (where, as luck would have it, quite a few prints have ended up being purchased).
• This means we are heavily subsidising all International sales and selling at a loss. Even we realise that this isn’t a sustainable model in its current form.
• You might ask yourself “Why we are they doing this?”. Well, it’s a good question and there is some method to the madness. It comes down to a few things, such as running pricing experiments to see how price sensitive our consumers are, determining whether free shipping makes a difference, determining how much of a difference free shipping makes to conversions, etc - all with the aim of establishing the *best* price point for the product. Our original aim was also to try and create a new niche product-type: to ensure our artists’ work actually got consumed, despite unframed prints being a FAR more lucrative option.
• We also wanted to give our first customers (i.e. the people buying your artworks) an absolutely fantastic deal; offering the highest quality framed prints at an unbeatable, affordable price. We know we could easily lower the quality of materials we use to produce the products in order to maximise profit per sale but this isn’t one of our current objectives. 
• NB If it were, then we really should be retailing the framed prints for a minimum of £250 ($400) and there is no doubt we will either need to increase prices in the future or charge for delivery. If we do, the artist guaranteed share will also increase inline.
• Oh, and PayPal is a disgraceful rip off.

Finally, to finish off this post, there are a few other questions that also occasionally come up:

• How does the artist get paid? Via Paypal, so you will need a PayPal email.
• How often does the artist get paid? Truthfully, our intention is to pay monthly but things have been a little sporadic to date due to our focus on other projects. We promise to get better.
• How can I track my sales? You’ll have an admin ... when we build it ...

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Huge thanks to everyone that completed our survey, pleased to annouce the winners of the limited edition prints are: 

Dan @ DKNG

Luke Brookes

Randi Antonsen 

Go checkout their work. 

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Hi All

We are working on a couple of new (£free) marketing tools for artists and we are trying to find out which solutions / apps you are currently using in order to help us focus our development efforts. 

The survey is really short & mostly multiple choice. Please click the following link to take it:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/artistic_ly

All completed surveys will automatically be entered into a prize draw.

The first 3 randomly selected people who complete the survey will get a limited edition artistic.ly print.

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Here's an excerpt from a blog post that I really enjoyed by Matt Webb of Berg London in relation to Instagram's purchase by Facebook and the 'invisible' value (and tangible in the case of Instagram's acquisition) large networks of engaged users can create when differentiated by compelling user experience and tightly integrated network effects:

"What is the labour encoded in Instagram? It's easy to see. Every "user" of Instagram is a worker.

There are some people who produce photos -- this is valuable, it means there is something for people to look it.

There are some people who only produce comments or "likes," the virtual society equivalent of apes picking lice off other apes. This is valuable, because people like recognition and are more likely to produce photos.

All workers are also marketers -- some highly effective and some not at all. And there's a general intellect which has been developed, a kind of community expertise and teaching of this expertise to produce photographs which are good at producing the valuable, attractive likes and comments (i.e., photographs which are especially pretty and provocative), and a somewhat competitive culture to become a better marketer.

There are also the workers who build the factory -- the behaviour-structuring instrument/forum which is Instagram itself, both its infrastructure and it's "interface:" the production lines on the factory floor, and the factory store. However these workers are only playing a role. Really they are owners.

All of those workers (the factory workers) receive a wage. They have not organised, so the wage is low, but it's there. It's invisible."

This is a subject matter myself and the team here have been spending a lot of time thinking about, particularly in relation to our own nascent community and the ways in which we can help create value, or, at the very least, provide a 'framework' or 'tools' or an 'experience' from which our users can derive value. 

We are working really hard to execute on this vision at the moment and should hopefully be able to share some of our new developments within next couple of months.

If you are interested in being part of our initial test user group - helping us refine the tools we are building - then please get in touch as we'd really appreciate your input.

Now, go and read the whole of Matt's article here, it's worth your time.

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Lands & Peoples - Pop Guilt on Hypem

Oblivion - Grimes on Spotify

Lost Boys - Death Grips on SoundCloud

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KAREN HUMANRESOURCES is a dead pan set of 100 monochromatic characters created by Jock Mooney.

They stare out at us, with their dead eyes and name badges, inviting us to gawp with a clear conscience and ponder their lifestyle to the enth degree. What do they do for a living? Where do they live? What do they do for fun? What are they having for lunch? What are they wearing that hideous jumper for? What prison did they break out of?

Does a 'Richard Gash' look-a-like work in your office? Which character is most like you?

Or maybe you bought a deep fried pizza from someone who was the spitting image of 'Thud Hudson'? Maybe it was Thud Hudson.

These, and numerous other questions can be raised by this speculative series of 100 portraits. Share them with your real friends, or made up ones, and keep an eye out for the real life doppelgangers.

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Hey team, we are busy working on some cool updates to the platform that will hopefully help you publicise your work further.

As with all IT projects, this is taking twice as long and costing twice as much as we initially planned.

In the interim, we'd love to use this blog and our various Twitter accounts (@artistic.ly, @magnoliaboxing, @foolsold) and Facebook account (9k+ followers) to help promote anything you are up to. If you've got something you'd like people to know about, just drop us a note and we'll blog about here and promote it to our world.

First up, some great new images from Jock Mooney...

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Earlier this month, we decamped to Austin for the SXSW Interactive Festival. It was, in SXSW-speak, "awesome". However, outside of the bleeding-edge ideas and tech, we also learnt a lot of things about how to survive those 4-5 days. What follows are some general tips if you're thinking of heading to SXSW 2013.

Take a battery pack for your mobile/tablet

All the venues have plenty of power points, but it's so much easier if you can just charge up in the middle of a talk (or indeed a bar). This Tecknet 7000mAh charger kept the three of us going.

Three is the magic number

There were three of us from Artistic.ly in Austin, and it worked out pretty well. We were able to split up to cover as many talks as possible (a good thing considering the inevitable variable quality of the talks). It was rare for more than one of us to be in the same talk.

Also it means that no-one is left on their own, if any of the following occur:

• someone is networking with a great contact
• someone really wants to see something in a venue on the other side of town
• someone wants to go home to bed instead of going to another party
• someone has a snooze on a chair at the Hilton
• someone gets locked in your flat
• someone is hungover in bed and can't get up

None of these happened to us, obviously.

Sort out a good deal for your data roaming charges

There’s a decent amount of free wifi but the sheer number of attendees means that it’s often hard to get on to the official SXSW or public wireless networks. If you’re not from the US, having the convenience of a 3G connection without worrying that you may have to remortgage when you get home is definitely a good thing. Some networks may offer pre-paid bundles for international travel, or you should consider getting a pay-as-you-go US SIM card.

Talk to everyone

...although if you don’t, they will talk to you anyway. You never know who the person in the queue for coffee might be - could be relevant to your business, could be a speaker, could be start-up squiillionaire, could be anyone - doesn’t matter, you’re bound to learn something.

Use Sched.org

Before we set out, we were struggling to find a decent scheduler for pruning down the huge number of talks into some sort of personal itinerary...until we found http://austin2012.sched.org/. Great to use and nice export features to Google Calendar, iCal, etc. Needless to say then, it was pretty cool to bump into the guys that made it in a random bar on 7th St - but I guess that’s SXSW for you. (See previous point.)

Don’t stand (or sit) for a bad talk

When I say “bad” I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean poor quality. Some are not quite as advertised, some are too general/too specific, some are too techie/not techie enough, and (fair enough) some are just bad. So just leave - you can use your time better elsewhere, even if it’s finally getting round to grabbing some lunch.

Freestyle

Nothing new here - everyone at SXSW makes this point. You’re not going to get into every talk you want, and definitely not into every party, but don’t worry - there’s always something else somewhere else. A quarter of a million people descend on Austin over the course of the Interactive/Film/Music Festivals - you are going to bump into some of them no matter where you go.

Don't feel bad about skipping some sessions or half-day and just recharging the batteries. Four solid days of talks/discussions along with four solid nights of, um, "networking", can be a tough gig.

Book your accommodation and travel early

As far as we know, there were still badges available up until Day 1. The limiting factor was accommodation and flights in and out of Austin. Worry about these first and then get your badges. Kudos, though, to the people we met who had driven from Ohio to Austin for the festival. That's a helluva road trip.

Take an umbrella AND sunglasses

It will rain. And it will be really sunny.

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Are you interested in marketing, technology and the arts?

We are offering an opportunity to gain experience with an exciting start-up based in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. 

Magnolia Box create custom print on demand solutions for visual content owners.

Our software helps artists, photographers, and museums sell their content online using their own dedicated e-commerce website, in-store touch-screen kiosk or iPad app. Our clients include Tate, British Library, National Galleries of Scotland, Natural History Museum.

We are currently developing a new platform designed to capture a diverse range of emerging opportunities. The business possibilities are endless and there are a huge number of potential niche markets we might explore.

To help prioritise our strategic direction we are now looking for exceptional candidates to help shape the future.

The 3 month internship role will be project specific, with tangible deliverables:

• Identify potential strategic opportunities;
• Producing quantified analysis assessing market sizes ;
• Conduct market research with potential customers;
• Developing and executing new marketing campaign strategies;
• Developing marketing collateral to test marketing strategies;
• Exploring the competitive landscape for arts based social marketplaces;
• Designing and executing meaningful social marketing strategies.

Your time will be spent learning various skills and getting some genuine practical experience.

We will pay £100 per week to cover expenses.

Candidates are likely to be degree educated, highly motivated, proactive and possess excellent communication skills.

Please email a one-page CV and covering letter by 29th February, 2012 to james [at] magnoliabox [dot] com. 

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We are looking for a highly motivated junior web developer wanting to experience life in a venture backed Internet start-up.

Our ideal candidate is someone who’s interested in art, photography and has a passion for developing web software.

You should have a real attention to detail and be comfortable working in a fast-paced environment where you will be expected to rapidly develop complex new skills.

The role will primarily involve working with our cutting-edge API, helping to create new features, functions and applications designed to commercialise digital imagery.

Experience to be gained

• Experience of working in a start-up
• Experience of working with scalable, cloud based Internet applications
• Experience developing mobile applications
• Experience developing social applications

Technical & professional skills to be developed

You will develop experience with some of the most in-demand, and highly rewarded technologies currently available:

• Ruby, Rails, CSS3, HTML5, Javascript, AWS, EC2, Mongo DB.
• You will also develop an understanding of API’s.
• You will gain experience using Agile development processes.
• You will lean about the lean start-up methodology and have the opportunity to apply this methodology to your own personal projects.

Essential technical requirements

• Very high standard of technical competency
• Very high commitment to learning about developing consumer or mobile web apps

Desirable technical requirements

• A passion to create ambitious, quality software using the latest technologies
• Familiarity of working with Git

Necessary personal attributes

• High work ethic
• Huge self-motivation to learn new skills
• Willingness to go the extra mile
• Proactive in soliciting input and feedback from mentors and supervisors.
• Active application of feedback to help improve performance

Desirable personal attributes

• Interest in art, photography.

Salary (per annum)

• £16,000 per annum

Method of application

• Single Page CV + Online portfolio examples (Github account very desirable)
• Email to james [at] magnoliabox [dot] com

Closing date

• 28th February 2012

Driving Licence / car required? 

• Not essential, location very close to train & bus station.

About Us
We create custom print on demand solutions for visual content owners.

Our multi-tenant SaaS app helps Artists, Photographers, Galleries, Museums, Publishers and Picture Library's sell their content online using their own dedicated e-commerce website, in-store touch-screen kiosk or iPad app.

We are currently developing a new platform designed to capture a diverse range of emerging opportunities in numerous image–related niches.

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JavaScript Developer for Yorkshire / London Start-up

Magnolia Box is a specialist web business with offices in London and Harrogate. Our clients include Tate, Natural History Museum, British Library, News International and many others.

Our primary focus is art, digital imagery and print on demand. It’s a cool, fast moving space with huge potential. 

We are currently incubating a venture-backed start-up with the aim of commercialising the world’s digital imagery. 

We are now looking to recruit a high calibre developer (we don't use embarrassing names likes 'Ninja' or 'Rock Star' but equally we don't want any journeymen) to help architect and develop applications on top of our REST API using client-side JavaScript technologies such as Backbone.js, Ember.js or similar. You will contribute to all areas of design, development and UX and take ownership of the new projects, applications and features.

You will take a fundamental role in the selection of libraries and tools used to develop robust and state-of-the art applications.

You Must Have

• Excellent JavaScript skills with extensive experience building modern AJAX applications;
• JavaScript TDD/BDD development experience;
• Strong UI design / development skills with CSS & HTML5;
• Ability to create high performing applications at Internet scale;
• A passion to create ambitious, quality software using the latest technologies;
• Familiarity of working with Git;
• Awareness of current libraries and technologies;
• Experience working with cross-domain REST APIs in JavaScript, ideally with frameworks such as Backbone, Ember/SproutCore, etc;
• Examples of work through a blog, portfolio or GitHub account.

In addition, it would be really great if you:

• Have contributed to / released open source projects;
• Have experience of provisioning API platforms and supporting libraries;
• Take pride in writing elegant and robust code;
• Have experience with working with Ruby, CoffeeScript, Node.js;
• Have a strong, clean design aesthetic; and
• Have good understanding of UX/UI design.

Practical details

We are happy to consider both full-time and part-time positions. 

In a perfect world this will be an on-site role. However, we are realistic and flexible: we are thus happy to consider remote workers or whether you wished to be based in either London or Harrogate. 

We are also able to sponsor one non-EU developers using an existing licence so we can also consider International developers seeking to relocate to the UK. 

In terms of salary and benefits, these are obviously competitive and can be flexed to your individual requirements.

About Us

We create custom print on demand solutions for visual content owners. 

Our multi-tenant SaaS app helps Artists, Photographers, Galleries, Museums, Publishers and Picture Library's sell their content online using their own dedicated e-commerce website, in-store touch-screen kiosk or iPad app.

We are currently developing a new platform designed to capture a diverse range of emerging opportunities. 

If you are interested in finding out more then please send an introductory email or CV directly to me, including relevant links (Github, portfolio, etc): james [at] magnoliabox.com

ABSOLUTELY NO RECRUITMENT AGENCIES. 

WE DO NOT WORK WITH AGENCIES.

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Who has some suggestions for their favourite albums of 2011? Hit us with them in the comments, we won't be snobby...

Here's a list of our team's favourite albums of 2011.

Little Roy - Battle For Seattle

Did you know that Nirvana's Nevermind was 20 years old in 2011? Little Roy has made this totally unexpected awesome album of reggae'd Nirvana covers! If you missed the band on Jools Holland, then check out Heart Shaped Box on YouTube; bloomin' brilliant. This got played a lot in the office and since it was on everyone's list and the ONLY album on Alex's list, it goes at the top!

PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

Each of James, Ian and myself are really excited about just how good this album is. A very worthy winner of the Mercury Music Prize.

DJ Shadow - The Less You Know The Better

Mind-bogglingly brilliant. This is my top pick of the year. It's a big dose of eclectic sounds and impecible production from a dude with the ridiculously huge record collection! Amazing.

The Roots - Undun

This album reminds me of Curtis Mayfield's 'New World Order', which is one of my all-time favourite albums. It's much more downbeat than their last (also brilliant) album 'How I Got Over'; a really immersive and soulful beauty!

Wild Beasts - Smother

Woah man, that's some mellow chilled out album. I've listened to this a LOT!

Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part Two

One on both Stuart's list and mine. It's really hard to describe this FAT album without using the word FAT in-between every other word. It's the production, it's really really FAT, you'll know what I mean if you listen to it!

The Full Lists

James

• The Black Keys - El Camino
• PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
• Various - Kitsuné (Kitsuné Parisien, Kistsuné Tabloid remixed by The Twelves, Kistsuné Maison Complations 11 & 12)
• Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring for My Halo, - , .
• The Girls - Father Son, Holy Ghost
• Feist - Metals
• Little Roy - Battle For Seattle

Stuart

• Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part Two
• The Black Keys - El Camino
• Little Roy - Battle For Seattle

Nick

• Saint Vincent - Strange Mercy
• Feist - Metals
• Pete and the Pirates - One Thousand Pictures
• Death Cab For Cutie - Codes and Keys
• Metronomy - The English Riviera

Ian

• Joan As Police Woman - The Deep Field
• Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes
• Kate Bush - Fifty Words For Snow
• Camille - Ilo Veyou
• Feist - Metals
• Bjork - Biophilia
• PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

Alex's Massive List

• Little Roy - Battle For Seattle

Me!

• DJ Shadow - The Less You Know The Better
• PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
• The Roots - Undun
• Wild Beasts - Smother
• Patti Smith - Outside Society
• Plaid - Scintilli
• Warpaint - The Fool
• Raphael Saadiq - Stone Rollin'
• Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part Two
• Black Keys - El Camino
• Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie Xx - We're New Here
• Ziggy Marley - Wild And Free
• Tom Waits - Bad As Me
• Bootsy Collins - Tha Funk Capital of the World
• Steve Mason & Dennis Bovell - Ghosts Outside

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We giving away 5 free framed prints (worth £125 (US $200) with free worldwide shipping) from the Artistic.ly launch collection as part of a Twitter competition running on @artistic_ly.

The product is absolutely fantastic, making for a terrific Christmas gift:

All you need to do to enter is either Retweet our competition Tweet or become a New Follower. 

The draw will take place LIVE on Twitter at 5pm today, GMT.

The excitment is building to fever pitch.

And for all those interested in these kinds of thing, we will be doing a post afterwards outlining all the results from the competition, helping to provide any insight into its value/worth as a marketing tool.

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The dust is finally settling after our launch party and we are now receiving a healthy number of requests from illustrators and artists wishing to join the community.

This is brilliant and really exciting for us. In terms of the submissions process, at the moment we aren't opening things up for full 'self-service' so I thought it would be useful to provide some further details for anyone interested in applying.

Step 1: Send an email, expressing an interest in being part of our community. Fire over portfolio links and images.

Step 2: We will visit your site and have a good old sniff around.

Step 3: If we like your work we will drop you an email saying: "We really like your work"

Then, there are a few additional steps. 

1. Provide (by email) up to 5 images that you think would make fantastic, beautiful or interesting pieces of wall art. NB Framed wall prints are the only product we are currently interested in supporting, which might restrict some of your work or require specific tailoring of existing work.
2. Please state whether images are exclusive for our use as wall art/prints. Exclusive content is prioritised. We do not mind whether the work is available on other media, etc...and you obviously retain all rights.
3. We will then make a final selection from submission and say: "Yes, we love this, this and this".
4. We will then send instructions in terms of how to prepare the files for our print purposes. 

Apologies if this is all a bit of a pain.

We want to grow the site steadily and would really love to hear from anyone interesting in being part of what we are up to.

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Pictures of every piece from the launch party.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Massive apologies to the fantastic Jes Hunt whose work was not hung due to an error on our part.

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Artistic.ly was launched to the world with a private viewing at Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London on 17th November. It was great to see so many of our foundation artists in attendance, and we hope everyone that came had as much fun as we did!

Check out some photos of preparing the gallery, and from the night itself, below.

Launch party

See the full gallery on Posterous

Setting up the gallery

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Unique QR codes for every image, allowing every punter to buy using their phones.

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We knew the type of product we wanted to offer through Artistic.ly and we knew the kind of cost price we needed to hit.

We've been successful with one part of this and not very successful with the other.

In the end we've decided to increase the quality of just about every aspect of our products and this has had a profound increase in our product buy prices. Ultimately, we think it's worth making the extra investment and sacrificing our margins to ensure that each customer is completely delighted with what they receive.

Nick has spent a huge amount of time with our suppliers perfecting every aspect of the product, ensuring our consumers will be completely blown away with the quality we are offering at the prices we are proposing. Both have done a fantastic job and here are some detail shots from the final samples

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We've worked through all the submissions and now are able to announce our final foundation artists that will all have work at our group show:

Abigail Read, Alex Williamson, Alvaro Tapia Hidalgo, Ana Botezatu, Andrew Groves, Andrew Rae, Andy Rementer, Anthony Peters, Antoine Corbineau, Destroy & Rebuild NYC, Georgia Perry, Heather Landis, Ian Stevenson, Jason Groves, Jes Hunt, Jesse Treece, Jock Mooney, Joe Rogers, Karin Akesson, Kathryn Macnaughton, Lee Ford, Lesley Barnes, Luke Best, Lyndon Hayes, Malika Favre, Michelle Thompson, Miles Donovan, Monsieur Cabinet, Mudchicken, Oliver Wiegner, Patch Keyes, Patrick Thomas, Paul Tebbott, Penny Davenport, Popcorny, Readers Wives Collective, Richard Kenworthy, Robbies Brown Shoes, Simon Tozer, Simon Wild, Spencer Wilson, Susie Wright, Ulrika Andersson, Ulrike Beck, Valeriya Volkova.

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The other night I joined a room full of other Tech City founders and entrepreneurs for drinks with the Duke of York.

The venue for the drinks reception was a rather beautiful reception room at Buckingham Palace. The walls were covered with some truly fantastic art, hung in a salon style. I have no photos as we were (politely) asked to hand in our mobiles when we checked-in our coats.

The event was full of Brent Hoberman-types, including, as one might expect, Brent Hoberman himself. Since nearly all of us were there as individuals, the onus was on chatting to whoever you happened to be stood next to. At the gates I met Mike Butcher, Tim Bradshaw, Jeff Lynn.

Walking in past the armed police, I got chatting to Matt Webb, then Luke Taylor and Eric Van Der Kleij, CEO of the UK Government’s Tech City. Over the course of the evening I spoke to many more people and it was a genuinely interesting and eclectic bunch. I must admit that I really enjoyed it.

However, this Tech City event has caused quite a lot of debate in the UK Tech Press and each side of the story is eloquently summed-up in the following two posts. 

The first, from Mike Butcher, is positive. 

The second, from Bobbie Johnson, is more negative.

From my perspective both make compelling points but overall I'm more aligned with Mike.

The value in this event comes not from Establishment patronage but instead from its potential to act as a catalyst to our own myth-making: Characteristics the UK tech community has traditionally been pretty hopeless at.

As Oliver Sacks argues, the human brain is predisposed towards myth-making. Unfortunately, the UK Internet sector has historically had scant material from which to originate its own 'myths'.

We desperately need 'stories' and, whether you like it or not, high-profile touchstone events like this can form an important part of the narrative.

The TechBritannia night might eventually pass into "Were you there?" folklore for our community. It might be the start of something great or a sign-post to further folly. Only time will tell.

Instead, we should focus on the present and the positive. Our collective profile is being raised and our collective voice is finding a more receptive audience. Our stories need to be heard and it's our responsibility as entrepreneurs to use every tool at our disposal. 

Sometimes this is best achieved by disruption, sometimes it requires engagement.

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