When I was in college in the mid-1990s, I was lucky enough to find a roommate who had similar interests. When I was faced with the school’s illogical and uncaring bureaucracy, we decided to write a story: The Pirate Union. Now, I’m not sure that the bureaucracy was the reason for the story. It may have just been coincidental. I do know that my coauthor was smart enough to have suggested as a remedy, but there was no real cause and effect here. At least, I don’t think there was.
Continue readingTag Archives: writing
Changes to Penguinate.com Publishing Schedule
This post will mark my 251st consecutive day of publishing on Penguinate.com. For the last 8+ months, I have posted at least one article. I didn’t take any weekends off, and some days I posted more than one article. All of that work, plus what came from the beginning of November 2018, has created less than $2 worth of revenue, and August was the worst month for income, even though views were the third highest. So, I must be doing something wrong.
With this information, I have decided that I probably need to step back from publishing so much on Penguinate.com and start concentrating on the places where I can bring in more money. To that end, a lot more of what I publish here will be accessible by Penguinators (those who are a part of my wifes and my Patreon campaign) only. Not everything, just much of it.
Obviously, I’m not going to try to keep my streak alive. I may or may not publish anything tomorrow. Those 251 articles represent enough material to make a book if it had been written as such. So, I urge you to join my wife’s and my Patreon to help me continue writing and to read all the great content you get here. No matter what level you join at, you’ll have access to everything on Penguinate.com.
If you have a better idea of how to overcome this discrepancy in work versus pay, let me know. Leave your content. Otherwise, thanks so much for reading and through that supporting our creative endeavors.
Penguinator Newsletter August 2019
Hey Penguinators and those who happened onto this newsletter!
How’s it going? Thank you so much for supporting us.
On Writing
We’ve been busy this past month trying out the Patreon promotion feature, and let me tell you, we utterly failed! I thought if I concentrated on getting new people to join, I would find them, and we’d have 30 new Penguinators on our creativity team. We got zero – that’s right, a penguin egg. Not a single new member… No one picked up on our first offer $30 for 3 months and you get a penguin, and no one wanted to challenge my writing skills on the subject of creativity.
But, if you’ve been paying attention, it’s amazing to fail! That’s a part of creativity, a part of growing and a part of life. If we weren’t failing it would mean we weren’t trying. Of course, the second part of failing is learning from it. So, what did we learn? I’m not sure, yet. Maybe we learned that our offers weren’t enticing enough. Maybe we learned that no one understands creativity and penguins. Maybe we learned that social media is a terrible thing to rely on when it comes to generating new leads. It is the first day since the last offer ended, so I still have to think about it more. What do you think we should have learned? Let us know in the comments.
My SEO job has been giving me fits. I’ve seen the writing on the wall since January; I just haven’t done very much about it. So, this month I started looking for other places to get writing or teaching work. I put a gig on Fiverr for editing and blog writing. I sent out request for anyone who might have leads for editing or writing. I haven’t gotten a paying gig, yet, but I’ve had one writer say he’ll use my editing services (at a deep discount) come August 5th.
I also signed up at Medium.com as a writer. This is a revenue sharing website, but they only use subscriptions not ads. So, I get paid according to the number of people who interact with my writing versus other writings they interact with, i.e. they pay $5 and read ten articles, each writer gets 50 cents. That’s not exactly how it works, but it’s the gist of it. You’ll still be able to read whatever I publish their because I’ll have a friends and family link that I will add to our regular newsletter.
Speaking of regular newsletter… I have started an email list at www.penguinate.com. If you sign up, you’ll get a code for 10% off your next purchase at our website. The emails I have planned going forward will come once a week with a compilation of all the articles I wrote at Penguinate for the week before. You can read why I am starting an email list by clicking on the link.
I have connected my Patreon to my website, so now I can put exclusive content on my website for you! I will always put a link to the content in a post on Patreon about the same time as the link on Penguinate.com goes out. This is designed for me to be able to recruit new readers to our Patreon. If you prefer me to post solely on Patreon for you, please let me know. (If you’re reading this, you’re already on the website!)
In case you missed it, I was featured on the Sweep Spot podcast for my book “The Haunted Mansion Is Creativity.” Check it out.
On Penguins
In other news the penguins keep marching. Checkers is in New Zealand and has his own Instagram account. He and his mom have been so supportive of us. They stepped up and purchased a Pay-It-Forward penguin. Some lucky child will get a penguin at Salem Holiday Market in December unless we find a reason to give it away sooner.
We also have a new penguin. We don’t know its name, yet. I was thinking Reggie, Regina, or Reginald, but I haven’t discussed it with Jenya, yet. Stay tuned for a “Meet the Penguin” post soon!
August 12 is our Patreon anniversary. August 14, I will release “Popeye, criticism and creativity.” August 22, will be our second Penguin of the Month photo. And on every Tuesday, there’s a behind the scenes photo shoot of the Penguin Countdown. All of these will be for Penguinators only.
That’s all I have on the news front for now. Thank you, Penguinators, for your support. I’ll be sending out an extra creativity article just for you sometime during the month of August. (If you’re not a Penguinator, and you’re reading this think about joining our Patreon for more penguins and more creativity.)
Below, I have sent out a copy of our first blog post email for our email subscribers.
Thanks again for reading and supporting.
Shad and Jenya.
This is what our first Mailchimp Blog summary looks like. If you sign up for our email list, you’ll get an update every week. It’s also available at mailchimp’s archives.
| Look what we’ve written about over the last week! Thanks so much for being a part of the community! |
| penguinate.com Creativity to the infinite power |
| Excerpts:The ABCs of Creativity: Well Creativity: Even if it’s fun, you sometimes need to step away to get better. Read on » Did You Catch the Creativity Secrets in the Countdown? Almost everyone missed these Easter eggs in our Patreon countdown, did you? Read on » Behind the Scenes Photos with the Penguins Day 10 to 7 Behind the scenes for Patreon members only! Read on » Layover at JFK? Problem solved with TWA: Photos from the Hotel Layover at JFK? Problem solved with TWA Hotel. Read on » Just One Day Left for More Creativity Join now and be part of something bigger. Read on » Heroes of the Haunted Mansion: Claude Coats Claude Coats provide atmosphere and more for the Haunted Mansion. Read on » 2 Days Left to Get More Creativity Just two days to go! For every 5 people that join our Patreon by July 31, 2019, I’ll write an extra creativity article! Read on » Southwest Airlines Shows the Luv on ‘The Kindness Diaries’ Luv will find a way! on the Kindness Diaries. Read on » What Would You Do if You Were More Creative? Three is the magic number to join our Patreon before this deal expires. Read on » 8 Cool Things about Penguins from 2 Videos Have you seen this adelie coming to rescue emperor penguin chicks? Read on » |
Is a creativity storm coming? You decide. Nine Days Left for You and Your Friends to Sign up!
The penguins are out of the box (even if the cat is still in it). A creativity storm is coming, but it can only happen with your help! For every 5 people that sign up at any level for our Patreon, I will write an additional creativity article. If you want to know more about creativity, this will get you there quickly!
Our current schedule looks like this:
- August 1: The blog email list – this is open to anyone who has signed up for our email list at Penguinate.com and should include a summary of all the articles that we released on my blog.
- August 2: I will post a copy of the blog email and add some tasty tidbits to it like a creativity tip.
- August 14: Creativity Post 1 – What do 1980’s ‘Popeye,’ criticism and creativity have in common? This will be released on Penguinate.com with a reminder on Patreon sent the next day.
- August 18: Our Patreon Anniversary!
- August 22: Penguin of the Month photo
Join us at Patreon to make sure that I have to write something about creativity every day! The more people that sign up on or before July 31, the more articles you’ll see.
What to Do when Old Goals No Longer Serve You
[Author’s note: If you want to get the short notes on this story of discovery, look for the list of three steps below. It should be easy to find.] I have always heard that as a writer, I should read voraciously. I just couldn’t find a lot of time to do so. I had heard about presidents who would read an amazing number of books. Teddy Roosevelt read a book a day at least, in addition to magazines and newspapers. Even at my best, when I had nothing to do but read and no desire to do anything else (the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school), I could only read about 100 pages a day unless it were a particularly good fantasy novel.
Continue readingThe Non-Kickstarter for ‘There Are No Penguins in Alaska’
There is a lot of misinformation about Alaska that Alaskans hear from tourists and see in movies and TV. Some people think the money is different. Some people think everyone lives in an igloo. Some people think that there’s gold lying on the beaches waiting to be picked up. And some people ask where they can see the penguins in Alaska. There are no penguins in Alaska.
When I left Alaska in 2012 and traveled through the Lower 48, I got asked a lot of questions about my time in Alaska. Does it really stay light for 24 hours a day in summer? How cold does it get really? What do you do for fun in the winter? What’s the best part of living in Alaska? Why did you leave? Did you see any penguins while you were there? I would answer each of the questions as well as I could. For the last question, I would point out that Polar Bears would eat the penguins and that there are no penguins in Alaska.
That trip gave me an idea for a book: “There Are No Penguins in Alaska.” The idea would remain just that until 2018 when I published my first book, “My Life in the Projects: A kid’s-eye view of HUD housing in the 1980s.” Once I realized I could publish books, I also realized I could publish my penguin book. The problem was I let my art skills degrade for a long time and was no longer up to the task of drawing what I needed to make “There Are No Penguins in Alaska.”
Well, my art skills haven’t improved much over the last year, but fortunately, I was able to find a couple of artists to do the work. Antonisa Scot and Oscar Feliz of Transcend Studio put together “There Are No Penguins in Alaska” and now it’s ready to be published. In fact, you can preorder it on Kindle and as a hard copy coloring book at penguinate.com. However, there is a catch.
In order to publish “There Are No Penguins in Alaska” as a coloring book at a reasonable price ($2 per book my cost to retail at $4), I need to order 750 or more copies. That’s $1500 for anyone playing along. I could get fewer copies, but the price goes up pretty drastically, capping out at $5 a copy for 50 copies. That’s only (Haha! Only!) $250 but then I would have to charge $10 per book to make any money. Who’s going to buy a coloring book for $10? Maybe you, since you’re reading this, but not most people. Most people won’t even spend that on a regular kid’s book or any eBook.
Other writers or artists, at this point, would probably launch a Kickstarter, or maybe they would’ve launched it sooner. I, on the other hand, realize that I will publish this book in one form or another, and a Kickstarter would take away from my opportunity to write more books before I start touring the inland states in June where I will sell my books at Lilac City Comicon in Spokane, City Cakes and Cafe in Salt Lake City, Ogden UnCon in Ogden and Amazing Las Vegas Comic Con in Las Vegas, as well as any other bookstores, coffee shops or venues on the way that will have me.
In lieu of running a Kickstarter, which would definitely kill one or both of the books I plan on finishing before June, I am offering a presale. The price for the preorder is set at $8 in case I have to settle for the higher printing costs and to account for shipping and handling, which is more expensive than people would believe. If I can get 80 preorders of the hard copy and/or the Kindle version of the book, I will find the other money I need to print the rest of them. Even if only two people preorder, I am still going to print them, just not in the massive quantity of 750 or for the cheaper price.
This is a challenge. I haven’t sold 80 of any single book, so this preorder, if it works, would make “There Are No Penguins in Alaska” my most popular book. If you’ve read this far, thank you for your interest and support. Please share this page to your social media network, tag me and add “#penguinate.”
Penguinate! Positive Creativity 