Notes to Self

We Appreciate Your Business

I saw a sign outside a corner market on Mission Street in San Francisco yesterday that said this, in plain text on a plain red background, and I thought, you know what?, I should clue my readers in on how this site supports itself and then thank them for shopping through it.

I was having coffee with a friend the other day and he was telling me how he got a $500 grant to shop for his high school art class and he went online and bought art books through amazon and art supplies through Dick Blick. I asked him if he thought of clicking through the ads on this site on his way and he said with crumpled brow, “No, should I?”

And I said, “Of course! How do you think I make a living? Or try to make a living? I get a very small commission from each sale that is made by one of my readers clicking through an advertisement and making a purchase. Or going to the regional amazon aStores that I have on each regional site and making their purchases through them.”

My friend, surprised, said, “You make a commission on top of the advertising fees you get for displaying the ads?”

Display advertising. That’s sort of how magazine advertising works. The companies pay a display advertisement fee for their ads to be included in the publication. Depending on the size of the ad it can be as little as $150 and go into the thousands as the ads go to full pages or a double page spread. That’s how the magazines make their income. That and subscription fees.

Web advertising doesn’t work that way, except on the very big sites. On small content sites like this one, our only income are the commissions we make on sales that are made by our readers clicking through a link and making a purchase. So if no one does that, we don’t earn a living.

And that’s how it’s been for us for ten years.

I told my friend that, “No, I don’t make fees for running ads. All of those companies set aside a small percentage from each sale to pay their affiliates like me. If you go directly to their site by typing in their address, no one gets a commission and the company gets to keep the percentage. So why not make your art and travel related purchases through the links here? The commissions are just sitting there, waiting for someone to earn them.”

My friend thought for a moment and then said, “I don’t think people in general know that. I never knew that!”

“If I was making advertising fees, I’d be able to pay my bills. I’d be able to support myself. I’d be able to pay writers to write for me, the site would get bigger, the stories would be better … Didn’t you ever ask yourself what’s wrong with this picture?”

He replied that he hadn’t. And I don’t think that most of my friends and family have gotten the clue card either, because this is the second time I’ve had this very same conversation in the last two months.

So, now I’m just putting it out there. If you are going to shop and purchase online anyway, use this site as your portal. Besides the amazon stores on each site, there are plenty of links through to travel and art ecommerce related sites. There are also two pages on this site that collate all of this information – yes please bookmark and use them!

artist-at-large.com Travel Resources

artist-at-large.com Gift Guide

And soon we’ll have our own line of eBooks. But I’ll write another post about that.

So, for now I want to say:

Thank you for shopping through us.
We appreciate your business.

:)

I’m not fond of press releases in general. I find them to be full of PR hype and marketing babble, although they are good for getting numbers and addresses and contact information. Press releases about travel are not that usable for anything other than contact information.

What I do love are art exhibition press releases. Somehow this is one thing that most galleries get right. I learn a lot from art exhibition press releases. About artists I’ve never heard of. About their work. Where they went to school. I learn about the creative processes of other people. I learn about the kind of work a gallery likes to present in an exhibition. And, they always come with a usable attached image.

I can use art exhibition press releases. I rely on them. Travel ones, not so much. Although I don’t like to miss out on anything.

Did you know that the earth travels about 584,020,178 miles around the sun each year? I’m sure you knew that the earth travels around the sun, unless you’ve been under a rock since the Renaissance. But I’m more curious about whether or not you know how many miles the earth traveled in a year.

What does that make us? Space travelers? The only difference between us living on the planet and an astronaut living on a spaceship is the force of earthly gravity. That, and that we are constantly traveling in circles, with no appearance of stopping.

As we travel through space, how many of us are really aware of our surroundings? The big surroundings. Or that we are actually moving? Do we look at Orion or The Big Dipper with the same awe that we feel when we look at the Eiffel Tower? Or when we see a landscape, like the Grand Canyon for the first time? Some do, some never thought of it that way, and some never thought about it at all. But we should.

We are all traveling through space. Even as you are sitting in your chair reading this, you are traveling. By the end of the year you will have traveled another 584,020,178 miles. That doesn’t take into consideration the expansion of the universe or the movement of the Milky Way.

Isn’t that just kind of exciting?

By my next birthday I will have traveled 30,953,069,434 miles in my lifetime. Too bad it wasn’t in a straight line …

When does a trip begin?

When does a trip end?

If I think about these two questions for too long a period of time, the answers, and the questions, become like a chicken and egg kind of paradox.

There are many moments in time when a trip can be considered to begin. The moment I arrive at the destination. The moment the plane takes off. The moment I leave for the airport. The moment I (or someone who is actually employed) leave my desk and office behind for the last time before the trip. The moment I pack the bags. The moment I buy the plane ticket. The moment I think about going some where.

In the same sense, when does the trip end? The moment I leave for the airport? The moment the plane takes off? The moment I arrive home? The moment I am done unpacking my bags? The morning I arrive back at the office? When my tan fades, I become cranky, or I begin yet again to feel overworked? Or when I can no longer remember having traveled at all?

When I was younger, and left the backwoods of West PA for California on a Greyhound bus with ten dollars in my pocket and a rucksack with a change of clothes, and my camera, it was the first time in my life that I had really gone out into the unknown. Really. I had no idea what to expect, and every mile that bus drove took me past a landscape I had never seen before. For many years I felt like I was still traveling. No matter how long I lived in California, it always seemed like an unfamiliar adventure to me. It still does to some extent.

Because … I am not in the place where my roots are firmly planted.

So while I hear about other travelers coming and going on their journeys, I sometimes think that even though I’m sitting here, stuck, sort of, for all kinds of reasons, I am still traveling too. My individual trips have come and gone, but have I ever really stopped traveling?

Pam over at Nerd’s Eye View is going off to TBEX, a conference for travel bloggers in its second year. She wrote a post about going to this year’s event in New York City, why she wants to go, and she’s also been wondering what makes her fellow travel bloggers tick. She asked the following questions of herself and her readers:

Who’s your favorite travel writer?
Henry Miller. He is hands down my favorite American writer who was also an expatriate both inside and outside his homeland.

What’s your favorite blog for reading about travel?
I rarely read other people’s stuff. For the same reason that I don’t look at other people’s artwork very much. I get too inspired in the moment, and I tend to absorb other people’s ideas and concepts and then it changes my work – but usually not for the better!

What percentage of your travel is sponsored trips?
None, or maybe 1%. If I could find sponsored trips around the subjects that I like to write about – art, language, culture, food – I would make more of an effort to go on them.

Do you have a day job, supporter, other source of income?
I am so lucky in that I have a room in a house in Berkeley that was given to me in trade for pet sitting. I also petsit for other people. In my day jobs I have both a huge tech and print publishing (separate experiences) background and am looking for my next job. It’s been tough. I think it’s tough because I’m older now (wink), and also because I have my own site on my resume and people really don’t understand why I would want another job.

What’s the last travel book you read?
I don’t read travel books. I do read novels and non-fiction that give a strong sense of place. I’ve started Ross King’s Judgment of Paris.

Where do you come down on Eat Pray Love?
Absolute garbage. It might make an ok movie, but I’m not holding my breath.

Do you think blogging and writing are the same thing?
I like to think so, but it isn’t. Everyone can string words together but not everyone can do it well.

But I will say that a blog is defined by it’s owner, so if you want to write narrative in it, then why not? That was the intention of artist-at-large.com when I started it – it was going to be all narrative, creative non-fiction, with a sense of place mixed in with needed travel information. Now though, with the feeling of trying to keep up, I write narrative when I can and write blog posts when I have to. I’m doing that all over the site, but specifically in the Tuscany blog right now. I’ve been writing down my memories there.

Why are you blogging?
My friend K. in Paris asked me that once when I was visiting. Actually she asked me why I write – which I actually equate with my online stuff because that’s where I put everything.

I told her I write because no one ever listens to me.

I also come from a family of storytellers, so it just seemed like the next logical step to put my stories online.

Who have you met at TBEX that surprised you and why? [TBD]
Since I haven’t been to TBEX yet, I haven’t met anyone. But I have met a few travel bloggers here in the Bay Area. I can’t say that anyone really has surprised me in any way. Maybe it’s a bit surprising that none of them are as jaded as I am …

What have you learned while at TBEX? [TBD]

I’m not getting to go to TBEX this year. Someday I will be in the same town at the same time as the conference, but it didn’t happen this year.