Archive for the ‘site news and updates’ Category
March 10th, 2010
As you may know, my husband has ESRB and is going to be starting dialysis soon. Although he can no longer work his job as a short order cook, disability doesn’t think he is disabled yet. You gotta laugh. So I’ve been job hunting.
I got hired yesterday to do housekeeping at a nursing home. Part of the hiring process was a tour of the home – they have both full care and also assisted living areas. It’s a beautiful place and I think I will really enjoy working there but what really struck me as we walked through was several beautifully colored coloring pages proudly displayed in residents rooms and the activity room. Made my heart all warm and stuff – even though they were not my coloring pages – it just kinda made me all warm and squiggy to see that other adults loved to color. I never get over it. It gave me an idea for some more coloring pages, too – LOL.
Between doctors appointments and working I may not be able to add pages as often as I would like. The fact is that it doesn’t matter how many pages I add or how often I update, the coloring pages website seems to have reached a plateau of $50 a month more or less in adsense income – and has been there for three years now. That’s nice, but it won’t support us now that hubby cannot work.
I have managed to keep the digital coloring book store open for another month. If it doesn’t pick up enough to at least pay for itself – $10 a month – this month, then it’s gone. So if you were one of the people writing and saying “Oh, you should make coloring books and I would buy one or more” then you better get in there and get one, and share that link and such like and so on.
The next couple of weeks look pretty hectic as far as doctor’s appointments and new job stuff going on so you may not be seeing much in the way of new coloring pages. Rest assured, I will continue to draw when I do have the time.
Blessedbe
Summer Fey Foovay
February 16th, 2010
If you were one of those people who went on and on about how great it would be to have a coloring book from the Color-Your-Own.com line drawings or coloring pages you have until March 2nd before the store closes and I toss the whole wasted mess into the recycle bin of my computer to buy the coloring book you claimed you wanted so much. Here’s the link to the coloring book store for while it lasts.
Yes, it’s easy to say – oh I would buy that – and find when the time comes to cough up the small fortune of $6.00 it is just impossible to do. Too bad that I wasted about two weeks, as well as someone elses time and effort, to create these coloring books – and then more time and money to set up the store and pay for it. Luckily, I did NOT spend $600 or more on the AdobeInDesign program to make them. Really really glad I did not do that. That would have paid our rent for a month, or bought groceries for six months or gas for four months and we need our roof, food, and transportation a lot more than a wasted investment right now. 
Live and learn. One more “make money on the Internet” scheme eliminated from the list of possibilities.
Anyway, if you really did want a coloring book, you have two weeks left to get one before they are gone.
Blessedbe
Summer Fey Foovay
January 19th, 2010
Lots of big news this week.
Robert Sloan has agreed to create a number of dinosaur coloring pages for Color-Your-Own.com. I am really excited because I draw really LAME dinosaurs and Robert draws GREAT dinosaurs. This will be the first time I have ever asked or even allowed another artist to contribute at Color-Your-Own.com so that’s a bit of a milestone. I’ll be paying him for the art and I’m sure it’s going to be a really good thing for both of us.
The coloring books are done. They’ve actually been done for a week but…yeah, anyway, AHEM – all that awaits now is for me to find a workable payment system that will let me sell them for a price I think makes sense and in a way that (I hope) you will be able to pay and download them instantly. I’ll look into that some more tonight.
If you are actually interested in my LIFE there is a more complete accounting of what has been going on and why I haven’t been around as much lately here at Foovay’s Cauldron – my main blog.
I sat down this morning with every intention of going back to my former habit of drawing a coloring page first thing every morning. I started doing some research on Valentine’s Day to get some ideas and it’s been downhill ever since – LOL. I just might get a coloring page done today yet – it’s only 8 p.m.
Summer
January 7th, 2010
The coloring books have been put together with tables of contents and all that jazz and send off to the magic man of eBook Connections to be zapped into PDF files. Now I have to decide if I want to sell them only as downloadables (that you can print yourself) or if I want to see if Lulu or some other POD publisher might work to make them available either way (in hardcopy or download form).
I’m so excited – squeeeee
Going to work on changing the advertising on a few more pages tonight (boooooring) to keep myself busy.
January 2nd, 2010
I am in a quandry. I have the images together to create the coloring books. I went to PayPal to see what their pricing structure was like and discovered they charge 30 cents PER transaction. This means that instead of being able to charge under $1 for the smaller coloring books, like “Other Pets” with 16 images, I would almost have to charge at least $1 for each of them. That seems like a lot for a coloring book with only 10 or 20 images.
Would you rather I create one BIG coloring book with all 300+ images to download for oh…well, what would you pay for that? $5? Or would you rather be able to purchase the smaller one subject books, even if it meant they were $1 each for just 10 or 20 pages?
The poll is here, will be on the side as a widget, and I just posted it at Twitter and will RT a few times if I can. I’ll run it until Monday and after looking at the results I’ll finish setting up the coloring book(s) and send them off to be created.
That’s it then – please let me know! Thanks.
December 30th, 2009
Did you realize there are 387 images (not counting some that are duplicated in two sizes) at Color-Your-Own.com? I just sorted them all into folders by subject preparing to have them made into coloring books you can download. Whew. What a job. Here’s the breakdown:
21 bird coloring pages
31 cat coloring pages
23 Christmas coloring pages
2 Dinosaur coloring pages (gotta work on that)
84 Dog coloring pages
7 Coloring pages for spring/easter/St. Patricks day combined
14 Fairy or fantasy coloring pages
14 Farm animal coloring pages
5 Fish (or related animals) coloring pages
11 Flowers/Trees/Plants coloring pages combined
13 Halloween coloring pages
79 Horse coloring pages
3 coloring pages for Independence Day
16 coloring pages of “other pets” (tarantulas, rats, mice, guinea pigs and so on)
14 coloring pages of people (more if you count all the horses with riders – I only included a few of those)
5 coloring pages of places or landmarks
21 coloring pages of Ponies
6 Rainbow coloring pages
6 Thanksgiving coloring pages
22 pages in a folder I called “Western Life” – wildlife, bull riders, barrel racers, things you see around here
62 items in Wildlife or Zoo animals
Yes – that adds up to more because some drawings are included in more than one subject – like the puppy with the turkey leg who is in dogs and Thanksgiving and the Prezwalski horses which I included in Zoo Animals and Wildlife as well as in Horses.
Still more to do – many images will have to be renamed to get them to come up in a proper alphabetical order so I can also create Tables of Contents with page numbers. I probably will not bother creating coloring books for those folders with less than 10 drawings in them. I’m sure in a year or two I’ll have to be creating Vol.2 for certain subjects like dogs and horses that I do a lot of and we’ll see about having enough for those smaller subjects then. It just occurred to me I should write an artist friend of mine about doing some dinosaurs – he’s really good at them. Way better than I am.
I think I might have some kind of giveaway or contest for copies of the little book with just the ten most popular images that I had Jim create for me as the test booklet for a promotion when the others are all ready to go.
I haven’t even begun to redo the pages and change over the advertising yet. Right now, I think I’m going to take a break and go work on my jigsaw puzzle for a while.
Laters!
Summer Fey Foovay
December 25th, 2009
First off – a Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate the holiday.
For me, it’s just another day on the calendar. My husband has to work and will be tired because they will be really busy. Shrug. So I’m working.
I have been doing some background things for the last few days, so while there are no new coloring pages there are some changes in the works.
At my article Line Art on the Internet I talk about how I got started drawing line art and sharing it on the Internet, and how the website Color-Your-Own.com has grown and changed over the years. I can hardly believe I’ve been doing this for five years!
Although I did not set out to make money on the line arts – they were just one of the many things I shared on my websites – they actually turned out to be one of my more consistent money makers. I know you’ve seen the Google Adsense ads at the top and bottom of the page. The funny thing is that Google will tell you that those ads on pages that are image oriented just don’t make money – put them on articles. As you may know, I’m a writer – so from the beginning of my efforts to make money on the Internet I’ve written articles and blogs to carry Google Adsense ads. And what happened? By and large, the coloring pages and clip art made more money than the articles – LOL.
The last year or so I’ve also carried Project Wonderful ads. They tout themselves mainly as ads for blogs – again, I make a bit on them.
But it seems that no matter what I do, how hard I try, how frequently I update and add new coloring pages, or how many coloring pages I actually have available my income has absolutely topped out at about $40 to $60 a month. This doesn’t even pay for my ISP, let alone hosting, domain, and my drawing supplies. If it weren’t for the support of my beloved husband, I would have had to give this up a long time ago.
This year I really put a lot of effort into all sorts of promotions for Color-Your-Own.com. I’ve been pleased to death to see traffic increase to 2000 visits a day, and people actually even search FOR the term Color-Your-Own. How cool is that?
And yet – I am working just about full time at this and making $2 a day still. At best. :/
I wondered how it was that the click through rate on the Adsense ads were so dismal. So I committed an Adsense sin, I clicked through on a few coloring pages links and ads to see what was going on.
OMFG. I got everything on earth BUT coloring pages. I got bombarded with pop-ups and deluged with page after page of MORE Adsense ads disguised as links or directories, always promising coloring pages but very rarely delivering any. It boggles the mind. And NO WONDER my visitors quickly learn to grab the coloring page you want and head out without clicking on anything. Sheesh. I also noticed that the text ads by and large were not very relevant. It’s one thing to have ads to sell Tennessee Walking horses on a coloring page of a Tennessee Walker along with coloring page ads but to have ads for all kinds of completely unrelated things is just a waste of space and time – for you and for me.
Recently I signed up for what I promised myself was my last effort with affiliate marketing. I am actually favorably impressed at the moment – except they assume I’ve got a few thousand to drop into advertising with Adwords and the other big advertising guys like Yahoo and Ask.com. I don’t. But I DO HAVE this website getting 2000 hits a day… and if anyone is going to bombard you with irrelevant ads it may as well be ME – LOL. No seriously, because if you do decide to purchase something or sign up for something, I will get $1 to in some cases $25 rather than a few pennies. And YOU will get a real offer to look at, not just an endless stream of promises to give you more coloring pages. I will also be sharing my Squidoo lenses, many of which really are about coloring pages and coloring books. Since I’ve become a Giant Squid my Squidoo earnings have jumped up and I can’t help but think that they will do even better with some exposure on Color-Your-Own.com and since we already have a relationship, you and I, I bet you’ll be interested in a lot of the same stuff I am interested in.
Meanwhile, a wonderful kind lovely person has offered to create downloadable coloring books in PDF form from my drawings. While this sounds awesome, I am having some doubts. First – I know that many of the older coloring pages will have to be redrawn before they are really ready to be printed out in 8.5 x 11 form and look good. Second – you do realize there are over 300 coloring pages, right? I’m a bit whelmed just at the thought of it. But I’m going to gather my courage, attempt to overcome my perfectionism and get to work on making that available. This person has kindly said it would be just fine if I wish to sell the coloring books thus I believe I probably will.
So expect to see some changes around the website. The most obvious will be the changes in the ads, although it might not be all that obvious after all. Just that I will be getting the affilliate payment or Squidoo traffic instead of pennies from Adsense. I will be going through and repairing and updating some pages and redrawing some of the drawings in preparation for the coloring books.
And most of all, thank you – every one of you wonderful people who use my coloring pages for line art, for crafts, for entertainment. Thank you for being part of my life and giving me this opportunity and most of all for letting me know that someone uses and enjoys my artwork.
A great big group hug to you all.
Summer Fey Foovay
October 1st, 2009
I am without Internet out at the ranch. If you wrote with a request or question and I haven’t gotten back to you yet – do not despair. I am working hard today to catch up the email and also to add some new free clip art which I am releasing to the public domain at this new website. We should have the Internet back on and things back to normal in just a few more days. I hope.
The first part of October I will be working on finishing and editing the novel I wrote for the 3 Day Novel Event. Depending on how long that takes, I hope to have a week or two of break to work on Internet projects – like more coloring pages and clip art, as well as short stories for some blogs I’ve set up to carry my short fiction. If you want to keep up on my writing and other projects, keep an eye on Foovay’s Cauldron.
Right now I’m very excited to be hosting the #110 I and The Bird bird blogging carnival over on Foovay’s Cauldron tomorrow!
See you soon!
August 29th, 2009
I ran onto a deal on eBay a few weeks ago – downloadable e-coloring books on CD. After having a look at them, I’ve decided to offer them free to you at Color-Your-Own.com just as a little way to generate some interest and traffic. Many of them are suitable for younger children, too. Most of my work is more generated with older children or adults in mind.
Anyway, click here and go check out the 40 free e-coloring books and download any that you’d like to have, share, etc. enjoy!
Summer Fey Foovay
July 25th, 2009
I just switched the blog to the Stunning Silence theme. It was nice and easy to tweak and customize. I’ve been feeling like the old theme was so…black and white. True, it showed off the drawings nicely, but there was just NO color to it since the drawings are all line drawings to color! I like the minimal look of Stunning Silence which still makes the artwork the focus, but at the same time, there is a bit of color now. The one thing I wish I could figure out how to do is add a link in the navigation bar directly to Color-Your-Own.com. I guess I’ll settle for one at the top of the sidebar. I also like the way the Plexo from the Coloring Books for Adults and Older Children shows up. I was never quite happy with everything at the bottom of the page.
I’m planning on devoting the whole day to various Internet things, catching up at sites like Tagfoot, and building some sites on some domains that have been hosted but neglected otherwise. And – who knows – maybe I’ll draw us another coloring page or two!
Summer
