The ArtKlick Blog

After 4 months of beta testing a good list of design changes has been created. This summer I hope to get two interns through the Summer of Code program - a graphic designer and a programmer to work on making some big improvements.

Elements I would like to add/improve on the Art Klick include:

- Redesign of the homepage to profile new members, popular and new artwork and prints, tertiary institute profiles, a new footer and header with links to the Art Klick Twitter, Facebook and YouTube profiles.

- Competition page for T-shirt design and artwork competitions

- Art Klick TV - Interviews with artists and collectors, event coverage, arty stuff

- Art Klick Shop - Selling Art Klick T-shirts, magazines and possibly art supplies

- Comments on artwork and profiles

- A forum (Community!)

- A whole redesign on the blog (currently it is just a Wordpress site) into articles and resources.

- Art Klick News - Act as an aggregator for major art news websites like TBI, NZLive, user submitted articles, events, jobs etc

- Possibly adding a rental/leasing service - buyers could request to rent an artwork instead of buy it - we could buy it from the artist and rent it out.

- A smoother checkout process

- Badges and mini gallery widgets

- An affiliates system

- A Facebook Hot or Not application

Prints
- Redesign of the prints section - heading toward the Redbubble.com functionality/interactiveness

- Expanding the prints internationally and increasing printing mediums into photo blocks, framed prints, photo books and calenders.

- Any member will be supplied with a base price which they can order from or add a percentage on top of to earn commission - ie Base Price + 40% means the cost of the print will increase by 40% from the base price and the member will receive it as a credit to their Art Klick account which they can then request to be paid into their New Zealand bank account.

- Event photographers will also be able upload all their photos of gigs, weddings etc and direct their clients to order directly from Art Klick - saving them from needing to take orders, payment, organize printing and shipping etc

Art Klick Tattoo
- After all the hype of The Million Dollar Leg Project I realized there is no website that profiles New Zealand tattooists and their artwork well. As tattooing is an artform a lot of people are passionate about (including myself) I want to create a section for tattooists to submit their artwork, a forum for designs and advice, a “rate my tat” feature and an ability for artists to be commissioned to design tattoo designs.

- I also hope to build the new design for The Million Dollar Leg into the site and re-launch it to publicise Art Klick going international.

Feedback
Any feedback is always greatly appreciated - please feel free to comment on this or any post or send me an email on james@artklick.com
Thanks for stopping by

Day 24

Vera followed me on twitter and I saw she was a writer for The Channel which is a new IT site for NZ. She has moved here from Portugal and has fitted into the scene really quickly. 

Then at 4pm I went and caught up with Simon and Marie Young from iJumP who are the leading Social/New media experts in New Zealand. I love hanging out with these guys as they are so enthuastic and have so many great ideas.

If you are a company that want’s to learn about how to break into this new “social media” thing you have been hearing so much about, Simon and Marie are by far the people you need to talk to.

They are also on Radio New Zealand and you can listen to a great summary of what social media is here.

Gotta jump on a plane - will catch up the last couple of days of the trip tomorrow then I’m changing the blog to a proper art’s blog with artist interviews and guest posts from leaders in the art scene!!! 

ijump

Met Margaret Lewis from The Big Idea which is New Zealand’s largest online community of creatives. They have been working on a new design which sounds realy great and I believe will help move the creative sector into an even more professional space in the online world.

It will be packed full of profiles, job listings, news and resources. As they are a non-profit organisation they rely on paying the bills with advertising and donations from their community. 

This resource is invaluable and takes a lot of hard work which is done for the love. If you are a regular user it would be nice if you could donate some $ towards their new design via the 500 Star Campaign.

Their new artist profiles and galleries will be great as the artist will be able to say where the art is being sold - whether it be a cafe, gallery or on Art Klick.

I am really looking forward to their new site design and look forward to working with TBI in the future.

You can also find a great article about Margaret here.

Get Frank - Rich Henry

On day 16 (Tuesday) I met Rich Henry who is the founder of the rapidly growing online men’s magazine Get Frank when he was talking to Pat. Being one of the guys I had to meet when in Auckland it was very convenient and we lined up a meeting for Thursday (Day 19).

Day 19 - Mint day - go to work in a shirt. Day 19 - 10.45am I go outside to walk up to the Get Frank / Grown Up’s office on Parnel Road - its pouring rain - welcome to Auckland!

Rich started Get Frank three years ago while he was working at PWC. Similar to me he spent most of his money on the website development but was Lucky enough to meet angel investor Shane Bradley (APNfinda) to invest into a new site design during 2007 and launched early 2008.

Within this year alone the have managed to increase traffic by 300%  and are now delivering over 35 articles every week to 50,000 unique visitors each month which is very impressive.

Get Frank also recently acquired Big Fella to capture more of the market share and secure it’s place in the online mens market.

Rich had some great advice and ideas and being about a year ahead of where I am with Art Klick it was great to hear what marketing tactics he used to grow his membership so rapidly.

While showing me through the site I noticed the Lifestyle Section didn’t have an art element and suggested I could contribute a weekly article on a Kiwi guys guide to art which he was pretty keen on - (HUGE opportunity!!) 

Writing the pitch to him today so hopefully he’s keen!

Bwagy aka Ben Young

Ben is a 22 year old online marketer and I can easily say he is the most on-to-it guy I have met at his age. With an impressive list of achievements so far and working on secret marketing campaigns with big corporates this is a blog you must follow!

Ben spends more time helping start ups like me out than doing paid work - now that’s cool! 

Things I learned:
- Focus on getting the site tight then expand into other areas (Focus)
- Surround yourself with experienced people to support you (definitely working on that)
- Bootstrap as much as possible - don’t spend more money than you need to
- Partner with the leaders of the industry (Tertiary institutes, art organisations)
- Don’t keep your ideas secret - put them out there - you never know who has tried them before and failed or what advice you can get

I can’t say enough about how cool Ben is - you really just have to meet him.

Looksy

Ben came back at 5pm and picked me up to go to the Looksy Meet-up.

Looksy is a great initiative which is all about Generation C - which is anyone participating in social media such as facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Blogging and online communities that result in transforming the world of entertainment, business, education… everything.

They are doing some cool projects like the “Tell us what your world is like” postcard where they distribute them round cafes and people fill them out and post them back. 

They are also working on organising the making the world’s biggest user-generated documentary, about Generation C, by Generation C. This is an invite to everyone to tell people what their world is like - kind of like guerrilla journalism I guess. It’s a great concept and should take off with a bit of a push.

They also have their own show on Alt TV called Think at 10pm on Mondays - check it out!!

They also organise Flash Mobs which are the coolest things since the invention of the snowboard. 

I put my hand up to run Looksy in Wellington when I move there in November which will be cool bananas!

Lot’s of cool Kiwis kids doing good stuff - that’s just how we roll.

I’m a few days behind so I’m going to keep these posts breif.

Did more research on buyer stats and started putting together a word file of all the info I am collecting.

Then the highlight of the day was meeting the founder of Zillion which is the most popular New Zealand online auction website after TradeMe with over 73,000 members and turning a profit.

After talking to Dylan when I listed the first tattoo for sale on Zillion we have stayed in touch and I was really keen to meet him to get advice and mentoring.

Dylan took me over to the North Shore for lunch which was rad.

The key things I learnt were:
- Focus on your niche and keep things simple
- Once you get the first things right - then expand into other areas
- Make sure you have a good crew dedicated to making the website and business succeed
- Get advice from people who have experience
- Be innovative in your marketing tactics
- Build a loyal community

I came back from meeting him stoked - it’s so cool how all these people who I look up to are making the time to meet with me and give me advice and help.

He is also considering moving to Wellington so that would be cool.

Right it’s Sunday night at 12:20am and I’m three days behind on the posts - will get the rest of them up tomorrow hopefully!

Whitecliffe and Unitec tomorrow !!

Day 17
Got to work to find a reply to the email I sent to the organisers of Rhythm and Vines saying they were pretty keen to do The Free Art Project. 

The Free Art Project Concept:
Get a huge canvas eg 2×5 metres and get as many people as possible to do one brush stroke each, take a photo of them pointing to their brush stroke, get their email and postal address, email them the photo, exhibit it for a month, then cut it into 5,000? (or how many people contribute to it) pieces and post them a piece.

Research on art buyers
Found some interesting stats from the 2006 and 2007 Affordable Art Show and am looking at approaching them as a partner. We could take care of the sales side and we could work together to create an active emerging artists online community. Will try approach them when I get down to Wellington at the end of next week.

Also found a good report by Creative NZ - Portrait of an artist. although its getting a bit old.

The Wellington Fringe Festival
Thinking about doing another Free Art Project at The Fringe Festival in 6 Feb - 1 March 2009 - Should be living there by then so will be good fun I think that’s just going to be my thing for events - that way we build a good database and everyone gets a souviner from their event.

Donate NZ
At 4pm I met Claire Sawyers the owner from DonateNZ to find out more about what she does and her plan for the future.

What does Donate NZ do?
It is a (very well designed and recently launched) website that helps people and companies give things (items, discounts and time) to charities. Apparently there are over 60,000 charities in New Zealand which is insane and most people can only name the top 20 most well known. 

Claire had the idea when she was going to throw out some of her appliances and other things and thought “it would be way cooler if I could give this to someone who needed it” and so began the start of DonateNZ. After getting basically ripped off from her first development company her family got a second mortgauge on their house to fund the new design which cost $90,000!! 

Her mother was running a successful flower delivery website which was funding most of the development but at the same time someone hacked her site and destroyed it - ruining cashflow which is not nice when you have no incoming.

They have decided to make the company a not profit organisation so they can get the tax breaks to subsidise the high start up cost. They have also decided to change the revenue model from getting orgaisations to pay a small fee to recieve the goods to getting big corporates such as banks and insurance companies to fund the costs and brand each area as their own.

This is a good idea and gives companies a great opportunity to show corporate responsibility which I believe should be a given for any company turning a decent profit. After talkin to Andrew Hamilton the CEO of The Icehouse breifly he said that a lot of companies are beginning to donate 1% of their profit to charity and 1% of their company resources/time which is great and I think DonateNZ is the ideal platform to do this the most effectively.

As soon as we can afford to I want to be donating 1-2% of company profit to DonateNZ and sponsor an arts charity section and possibly a mental health oganisaton also (having suffered from depression most of my life until the beginning of 2008).

I also introduced her to Pat MacFie from Start-UP Media and he was really impressed whith the conept and design and is going to help Claire meet the right people to get things moving. With Pat’s contacts and credibility and the awesome service DonateNZ provides I think it won’t be long until they get some decent media coverage - which they deserve

Doom and Gloom Media
I personally think there should be a mandatory 5 minute slot on the 6pm news on positive things that New Zealanders are doing for their country instead of the doom and gloom we are always hearing about. The governernment wonders why we have 30,000 people moving to Australia every year - a lof of it is obviously because of the money, but perhaps if there was more coverage of the good things that are being done in NZ people would be more inspired to stay and instil more pride and loyalty? 

It kind of feels like the news is like school - The bad kids get all the attention while the kids actually trying to do something with their lives get neglected. 

If there was a show on after Campbell Live profiling companies and organisations that are all in different levels of growth it would not only be interesting and educational but would help grow those companies. With the 100’s of million’s of dollars that is being invested into our economy through organisations like New Zealand Trade and Enterprise you would think that a show like this would be a smart move to help grow and encourage NZ business.

It has taken people like Pat, Nigel and Tim to put their money on the line to create Start-Up TV for something along these lines.

Don’t get me wrong - I know there is some good news and some great media such as Start-Up, Idealog, Good, Unlimited, Silicon Welly, Looksy and many others but I am talking mainly about prime time news and to an extent, main stream radio. 

I would like to know what you think about some of these questions:
1. Do we the viewers demand the news we get or is it controlled by the media and why?
2. Why do you think so many people are leaving NZ?
3. What needs to be done to encourage and grow NZ business?
4. What other media do you know that cover positive things?
5. Would you like to see a 5 min slot profiling NZ business and a 30-60 min slot weekly at prime time?

***Please note - This is just what I have been thinking for a while but is obviously by no means comprehensive. If anyone can point me to blog posts talking about a similar thing please drop the link on the comments and let me know what you think.
 
 

Day 15.

I’ll be honest - I was tired man - I spent the day chilling at the Point Chevilar pad doing stuff - duno what it was but I was doing it. Thats all.

Day 16

Up at 7.30am to catch a ride with my friend Tim Ruth to town (chur homie - I don’t like driving in Auckland). A bit of a walk down The Strand and I was at The Icehouse.

The Icehouse is packed with talented people doing innovative and interesting things which results in a motivating and stimulating environment to work in. Patrick and Nigel had a spare desk next to them so I was allowed to use that which is pretty cool considering you usually pay $150 a week (I think) - so thanks Icehouse, much appreciated

Pat spent some time with me and asked me about who my buyers were, what do they do, what is the demographic of people who buy emerging artists artwork.

I’m embarassed to say I couldn’t give him a good answer - it’s always been the thing I havn’t known how to do and avoided.

In my defence I do have some pretty good stats from the Statistics New Zealand report - A Measure of Culture but I need more info - so the research began.

Key lesson of the day: Focus on Art Klick and what is needed to make it succeed. (I have so many ideas but I need to assess them and see what ones are the most important).

This is basically my dairy of what I am learning as I go - so any feedback is greatly appreciated and I am amazed at the amount of people who I look up to who have given me advice and helped me out. The NZ web scene has to be one of the coolest and encouraging industries to be in by far - I love it.

This

Day 6

Spent most of the day chilling at Wade’s making robot art to fund the trip - got about three done which was pretty productive (they take longer to make than you would think!)

Went for a drive with Wade up Mt Victoria which was cool and then dropped in at his friend “The Scientist’s” place on the way home. This is where I met the new programmer for Art Klick, Scotti. As I hope to be moving to Wellington soon I thought it would be cool to find a new programmer who is keen to help me develop Art Klick further and Scotti seems like the man to do it. Scott works for Marketing Impact and also does website development in his spare time to help people out which is really cool.

Day 7

Emailed up a storm in the morning, made some more robot’s and then Scotti came round at 2ish to talk about ideas for improvements on the new design, the logistics of it and marketing. Then he gave me a ride into town to buy a web cam to do interviews with, we left it a bit late and Dick Smith had a pretty average selection so we bailed. He dropped me home and I made (you guessed it) robot art for the rest of the night.

Day 8 (Monday)

Met with Ruth McDavit from Grow Wellington which was really cool - she is passionate about helping to grow Wellington’s economy and keen for me to move to Welly to develop Art Klick further. Grow Wellington runs a programme called Activate which has had some really successful graduates so I might go for in the next round. They also run free courses to educate business owners and there is one on the 18th September on Guerrilla Marketing so I am definitely going to get back to Welly in time for that!! Another exciting option is the FRST TIF programme which is a grant to pay an intern for 40 hours a week for 10 weeks which would be so cool, so I’m applying for that - fingers crossed.

Then I cruzed home and got packed up and headed into town to try sell some robot art - I chilled on Cuba St for about 45 min’s and lots of people checked them out and thought they were cool but it was raining and I’m not really the hard core salesman so I gave up and will put them on Art Klick soon - at $140 I reckon they are cheap! If anyone want’s a cool piece of art for their wall and wants to help me out please buy one - I’m almost out of money already!!! I can deliver!

After that interesting experience I dropped back into the Silicon Welly office and interviewed Tim Norton about Silicon Welly, Start-up TV and PlanHQ - after really interesting 30 minute interview we checked and the live YouTube recording software haddn’t worked and we got 2 seconds of sped up footage! It was slightly annoying but pretty funny - what can ya do!

By then it was about 6.30pm and I made my way in the dark to Petone to see Amie and Paul McCarron which was fun - Amie showed me how she does her new encaustic wax art which is really interesting. I was supposed to video how she does it and put it on YouTube but when I went to grab it from the camper I couldn’t find it - must have left it at Silicon Welly office!!!

Exhibition: If you are in Wellington this Friday go along to her exhibition and check it out - free wine and cool people - how can you say no to that?!

Then I drove down to the park and slept in my Escape Camper which was mint!

Day 9

Drove back into Welly to grab my camera then headed for Palmerston North. On the way I remembered my cousin Ben and his girlfriend Julia lived there so I gave him a call and it was sorted. We caught up for a bit then went to quiz night at the pub which was fun. Got home about 10pm and I hit the computer to catch up on emails, coming across this awesome post on Start-up by Patrick Macfie which made my night. If you have a yahoo! account can you do me a favour and click on the buzz button at the bottom - I want to see how much clicks it needs to get to the front page of the lifestyle section.

Day 10

Emailed all the new members of Art Klick in the morning, did some article reading and video watching then headed into Massy to try meet Rachel Rakena who is the HOD for the Maori arts, but she wasn’t there! I was lucky enough meet one of the Masters students who showed me round and said he would spread the word which was awesome. After coming out of there and seeing the cool culture that we have as our countries heritage I really want that to be a far bigger factor of Art Klick and in the new design I want it to be clearly New Zealand with a section dedicated to cultural arts - broken into different ethnicities. I also read a report by Creative New Zealand that the Asian arts is a huge sector that is overlooked so I think we should incorporate an element of that into the site too.

Then I called WITT to organise an appointment for tomorrow and University of Waikato and Waikato Polytec to arange meetings on Friday. With all that sorted I headed for New Plymouth at about 5pm. I was so impressed by the beauty of the country and the amount of cool towns I passed through, getting a bit sleepy I started looking to a place to park up the camper. After a couple of side roads that I explored but wasn’t too keen on I saw one that looked ideal, slowing down quickly the laptop with the T-Stick still in it slid off the seat and landed on the floor - T-Stick first! It didn’t sound good so I pulled up to the spot and had a look - sure enough the T-Stick was at an 80 degree angle sticking out of the USB port!!! Grrr! Not very impressed with the spot that caused me to break my communication with the world I kept driving until I got to this cool town called Patea, saw a beach sign so I headed down there and sure enough there is a big car park right next to the beach - and that’s where I am sitting now writing all this on a Notepad file. So that’s me so far - I’ve had such an awesome time so far and met some great people, and i still have three weeks ahead of me!

I <3 New Zealand!

Day 11

Drove to New Plymouth and met with Robin Flattery who is the Marketing and Promotions Officer for Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki. I showed him through the site and told him about ideas for the future, then he showed me round the campus and we met the HOD for the arts, Jed. Had a good chat and they are really keen to work together to help promote their students and thier instutute which is great - things are coming together well!

Right, time to make tracks for Hamilton !

Ps New Plymoth is very nice - Im sitting next to the beach - and by the way, I bent the T-stick back into place and it works fine! Go Telecom!

Another beautiful day in Wellington began by hanging out with Amie McCarron from ArtList.co.nz. We had coffee (of course), then checked out some local galleries. Apparently they aren’t hurting too bad from the “economic downturn” which is encouraging to hear. Amie is fun and knows a lot about local artists and taught me a few names I should know. Thanks Amie!!

Then I met with Teriu Lemon who is the programme director for digital media at Wellington Institute of Technology, one word - Wow! He is so passionate about helping WelTec’s graduates get into jobs related to the subjects they studied in. Although WelTec isn’t very well known it is a great institute and he believes the best way to market it is by producing top quality students that become advocates. He is also working on a great initiative to promote their best artists by putting together an international art exhibition tour to slingshot the artists onto the international stage!

But wait, it gets better…. Not only is Teriu keen to help promote Art Klick to his students but he also has a good relationship with Grow Wellington which is a business development resource for local Wellington based businesses. Grow Wellington also has a intensive four month programme for business start-ups and entrepreneurs called Activate which is a four month course designed to help develop ideas into business plans and strategies!

After a call from Teriu to Ruth McDavitt the Economic Development Manager for Grow Wellington we lined up a meeting for Monday! This is a HUGE opportunity which would be amazing, but I better not get my hopes up - fingers crossed!

After walking out of Wel Tec grinning ear to ear I met Matthew aka Olaf Quintessa who showed me round Second Life which was really interesting. Second life has a growing presence of real world companies taking advantage of the unique virtual world that is Second Life. After a tour around some galleries and seeing how things worked I definitely think there is potential for Art Klick to create a SL gallery where people could check out NZ art, and potentially even buy it with Lindon dollars to decorate their SL homes. They would also know that they could order prints from Art Klick in real life (when we expand the prints internationally) - and hopefully this would result in sales. The coverage we would get as an online gallery going into a virtual world would likely be reasonable also so it is something to keep in mind for the future of Art Klick. Thanks Olaf!

Then back home to make robot art all night (again) - it takes for ever! I will post up some pics soon.

Better get to bed, big day tomorrow - Unlimited Investment Challenge! Can’t wait!

PS Thanks for the comments - it’s cool to know people are actually reading this

Day 3. Met with Jaysell Gopal a fourth year design student from Massey University at 10.30am. She showed me round the campus and we posted lots of Art Klick flyers up on the notice boards!!!

Jaysell had some good ideas about how we could help graphic designers more including a job board, internships, events and obviously they can profile on Art Klick too.

It as been really inspiring to meet with the people involved at all these cool tertiary institutes and see the amazing things their students are creating. These students are the future of New Zealand design, arts and IT - I want to do everything I can to help them get into their industry…… I have an idea brewing but it needs some more thought and planning before I talk about it! But it’s cool - that’s all I can say for now

Then Wade, Jacks and I cruzed down to the waterfront for a coffee (apparently Wellington has the highest amount of coffee shops per capita - I believe it!).

Into Silicon Welly Office at 12pm, fired off some more emails and calls to organise tomorrows meetings then had a meeting with Campbell Bevan from InventNZ which is a great new design company that does everything from prototypes to clothing. He is interested in selling their artwork through Art Klick too which is great! I highly recommend you check out their site to find out more about what they do + it has an awesome design!

Then Gaye Matheson from Capital Times and Art Zone came in for a chat about what I’m doing with Art Klick and she’s hopefully going to get me an article in Capital Times which would be amazing!

I love the people in the NZ art scene - everyone is so encouraging and cool and doing it for the love.

Then I hung out with my friend Sarah Young who works for Fulton Hogan part time while studying and doing a bit of freelance journalism. She has some rad ideas and it’s so cool to meet other people that are motivated to do cool things and help people. She’s hoping to write an article about Art Klick and The Million Dollar Leg Project for a new zine coming out next year called Etch - this is their blurb off the facebook group (join it so you can get a message when they publish their first issue!)