Hi,

I recently started an online creative marketplace where talented young artists can sell their creativity. I added a category "Puppeteering" yesterday because I love to watch puppet shows myself and thought it would be a great opportunity for puppeteer masters to make money. I still have a lot of doubts about this category, because I don't know what kind of mini services puppeteer masters can offer.

An example for songwriters:

http://www.streetlance.com/Songwriting/63/compose-a-song-for-you-on-a-topic-of-your-choice-and-send-you-a

If you love the idea of our site and think this will give you a new opportunity to offer your puppet services, upload  a promo puppet video on Youtube and share this on Streetlance. Feel free to join our creative marketplace.

Thanks!

Jeff

Cool idea although it was a bit difficult for me to find what exactly your site was all about. Ok not that hard but I think I would make the "How it works" link a bit more prominent.  The big concern I would have with the service is the following in your TOS.

You SHOULD NOT offer Pitches or accept Pitch payments through any other means except on STREETLANCE. Doing so will get your account blocked permanently. This is to help protect Buyers and Sellers from any potential fraudulent transaction activities from happening outside of STREETLANCE's venue that is totally out of STREETLANCE's control to protect Buyers and Sellers which may give rise to possible misleading negative user reviews about STREETLANCE - thus affecting the integrity and reputation of STREETLANCE.

That reads to me that a person can not sell their services anywhere else. Not sure signing up for an exclusive is too good an idea unless you are actively promoting each service. 

20% of the take also seems high for the limited service you are providing. 

Last but not least, most services that a puppeteer would be offering would be for more then $50.00 and if I read your TOS correctly $50.00 is the limit for pricing. 

Shawn, it's no different than Etsy or Ebay: all it means is they ask that a transaction take place on the website. Ie. you can't sell an item on Ebay, then halfway through the transaction take it 'off site' to complete. It's their way of ensuring that they can earn fees from the transaction and that people don't use the site in a way that means you'd be trying to avoid transaction commitments. This is also the same on other freelancing sites.

My issue with the Streetlance is that it's no different than other freelance sites (and I've looked at a few in the last few days - see my PM), except that people are lowballing their prices a lot. $5 for a project is nowhere near what people should expect to pay for high quality work.

The other immediate thing I noticed is that the info on how the site works is buried in the footer of the page. I wouldn't sign up before reading about how transactions work etc, so I don't know why they're buried at the bottom. ... Oh and the site looks like a Ning board, which isn't necessarily bad, but doesn't make me feel like I'm going to find good pro work that pays well...

I'd be more likely to find puppetry projects on one of our specialised websites.

Welcome neighbour!

Shawn, it's no different than Etsy or Ebay: all it means is they ask that a transaction take place on the website. Ie. you can't sell an item on Ebay, then halfway through the transaction take it 'off site' to complete. It's their way of ensuring that they can earn fees from the transaction and that people don't use the site in a way that means you'd be trying to avoid transaction commitments. This is also the same on other freelancing sites.

My issue with the Streetlance is that it's no different than other freelance sites (and I've looked at a few in the last few days - see my PM), except that people are lowballing their prices a lot. $5 for a project is nowhere near what people should expect to pay for high quality work.

The other immediate thing I noticed is that the info on how the site works is buried in the footer of the page. I wouldn't sign up before reading about how transactions work etc, so I don't know why they're buried at the bottom. ... Oh and the site looks like a Ning board, which isn't necessarily bad, but doesn't make me feel like I'm going to find good pro work that pays well...

I'd be more likely to find puppetry projects on one of our specialised websites.

Thanks Shawn and Na for the contribution and your constructive criticism. The "How it work" link was normally showcased on the header of my homepage but I've changed it due to the promotion of the contest. Since both of you've mentioned it. I will change it back.  Please check.

As for the TOS, I will adjust it asap so there will be no misunderstanding. Na have already mentioned it: the transaction should eventually take place on Streetlance, when the artist is approached by a buyer through Streetlance. This doesn't mean that you cannot offer the same services on other websites like ebay or Etsy.  
And yes we do earn fee from the transaction. But remember that we are also protecting the seller and the buyer from each other, because we work with an escrow payment. The buyer pays upfront, but the payment will only be released to the seller 2 weeks after they have delivered their work as promised. If the seller doesn't deliver the work, then the buyer gets his money back. This will give buyers a protection against scam and sellers that don't complete their jobs properly.
I think this is a win- win situation, as it will also attract more buyers for artists, because buyers now feel much 'safer', knowing that their money only goes to the seller when they received what they ordered.

I understand $1 out of $5 seems like a huge fee from our side. But, consider the fact that we would bring lots of traffic and actively promote your pitch through other websites, but also socially like twitter and facebook. And as mentioned before, we offer buyer protection.
Another reason for the fee is that we offer artists to upload videos, because video postings are much more personal so therefore more appealing to potential buyers. Artists can upload it on youtube now and post the video in their pitch on Streetlance. But we are planning to host our own video postings on Streetlance soon and hosting also cost money.

About the lay out of the site. I get what you mean, but I do my best with the site's lay out with the money I have :P. I would surely change my lay out in the future if I can. :P

Shawn I appreciate you love this idea. Maybe I should clarify my concept a bit more. This website is not meant to lower the prices of the professional puppeteering services you're offering right now but to give you an extra opportunity to market yourself to the consumers and "low-end" business market (website owners, retailers etc). For example, you can start a pitch on streetlance and let's say: "I can say anything you want with my puppet for 20 seconds and send you the video for $10". A very specific microjob which you can finish in a short amount of time right?

A normal person would never pay $100 for a 20 secs personalized puppeteering happy bday wish. However if you can offer it for this price, it will be a very cool present for lots of people on valentine's or mother's day. If you see it as a way of promotion you can cancel the pitch anytime you want, if you for example sold 20 pitches, and get 2 returning clients who want to pay your regular price.

I personally think posting on Streetlance is a great way for startups to kick start themselves, gain experience, build up a portfolio while making money. Like the restaurants owners who participate to a Groupon campaign, it's all about promotion and your creative approach how to make your business continuous and attract new clients.

A normal person would never pay $100 for a 20 secs personalized puppeteering happy bday wish. However if you can offer it for this price, it will be a very cool present for lots of people on valentine's or mother's day. If you see it as a way of promotion you can cancel the pitch anytime you want, if you for example sold 20 pitches, and get 2 returning clients who want to pay your regular price.

And there's your problem. I just finished doing a short video for myself for something on my website. I spent $100 for materials/items, several hours cleaning up my work space and setting it up, I have to pay for the camera and digital card and tripod (assuming that you don't have these things already), about an hour shooting, and I haven't even gotten to editing or uploading to the net... All for probably 10 minutes of video. This idea that you can just whip out a camera and make a good quality video is highly naive.

$100 is a lot for an average person yes, but the customer is not always right. They usually have incredibly impractical ideas of what it takes to make good, professional art. $5 for a few hours of my time? No thanks. $100 would be about right for the time I spend making a short personalised video, and it wouldn't even cover costs of building the puppet or other things.

Also, there's already a website set up that does personalised video puppetry e-cards. Why would I become a member of a freelancer site to gain minimal at best exposure (face it, sites like these aren't unique and there are more well-known ones out there) for less than minimum wage or a price that wouldn't cover my costs?

Please note, I'm not arguing against the idea and I think more exposure is good. But expect to find more people who are beginners/just making a little cash for fun on your site if people are only willing to pay $5 per finished project.

I happen to be looking at freelance sites to earn some more money, and I know my strategy will be to only apply for jobs that have a reasonable hourly rate ($20) or a fee that will reasonably cover costs/time respective of the required task.

I also don't mind the site taking a percentage of the money: running websites is costly and I've worked on enough of them to know that money has to be made somehow for the admins.

For me though, I have a well-known website, post regularly here and elsewhere and know how to make use of social networking. I can't see myself signing up to your site where I'd turn down every opportunity because I would waste my own time/money on completing a project: especially when people who contact me via my own site already turn me down based on my reasonable expectation of being paid properly for my skills.

More to the point: is there really a marketplace for people who are seeking cheap highly specialised puppets that can't be found via other means? People looking for cheap puppets to buy google - and there's plenty of online shops and info out there to find puppet makers. People looking for cheap puppet performances, for whatever reason, aren't likely to visit a very unknown website.

I don't disagree that the idea has some use... but it would only interest me if it kicked up the level of professionalism expected by and from the skilled artists. Price yourself so low (compose music for $5? Really?) and I wonder at the quality of the community and the impression people would get about your work no matter how good it is. Price yourself reasonably and you're the only one doing it and people think you're full of yourself and go with the cheaper option. None of the pricing of pitches or needs seemed reasonable knowing the likelihood of time going into a well-produced project, which makes me think that it definitely would "lower the prices of the professional puppeteering services".

Marketing to the "low-end business market" as you put it, does not change the fact that materials and time would need to be accounted for. Those prices don't change dependent on who you're marketing to, only the quality would change. See content farm websites for an example. You reduce the amount you get paid for per project and you suddenly are churning out heaps of bad quality projects just to cover costs.

As an example, I am a writer () and I could easily do 3 reviews of beauty products as advertised on Streetlance. I would not however, do it for $5, when I have been a paid writer for $20 p/hour. I could do those 3 reviews in about 1 hr depending on how thorough I'd need to be on product research so I'd expect to get no less than $20 for that particular job if you want it to be good quality.

You might want to spend some time on the net reading opinions (especially by web designers) who complain about contests and spec work and various freelancing sites, because there's quite a lot of info out there about how artists end up lowballing because of either low expectations from clients or lower bids by newbies.

The person who wants a T-shirt logo for $5 will get interest by those new to graphic design but would be scoffed at by any professional artist. And I recently had a graphic designer tell me exactly that when discussing people not willing to pay for our skills. I might have once gotten excited about the opportunity to market myself and make some extra dough, but after years of running into the red on under-budgeted projects I would rather spend my time on something a bit more worthwhile. (I recently volunteered myself and my puppets for a film shoot: but not for some homemade birthday card but for a well-known musical act. I took a gamble out of boredom, but more to the point in this case the opportunity for publicity far outweighed the loss of time/money)

I think your idea of "low end business" and mine is different. It seems from your site to be a number of projects for regular folk (ie. not for business but for home personal use). I don't consider retailers or website owners to be "low end".

... My other thoughts now that I've actually spent more time on the site:
I don't know about other people, but when I sign up to a service like this I like to know who is behind it (contact info, or a bio, something), but I didn't see any. In particular I looked for this because I was trying to figure out whether you're a website designer/developer, or an artist trying to create a community. Neither is bad, but it does influence my opinion of your ideas discussed above.
I find it odd that you allow offsite links (like to Youtube) but not Skype. I understand that you want to keep the transaction/discussion on the site, but someone can just as easily contact you via Youtube as Skype or your own website address.
Returning from a point above, your blog mentions the number of hits you got in your first month: I do about 4 times as much *every day*. Obviously for a new site numbers can't compare, but it doesn't make me think that Streetlance would provide more marketing opportunities for me at the moment.
As Shawn pointed out, a limit of $50 is at the low end of what people might provide. I would investigate how much people might charge for a custom puppet build for instance, and then consider how puppeteers might find your site useful.



My $2. A good idea, just perhaps not well implemented.

Welcome to Puppets and Stuff.

Jeffery,  I hope we are not discouraging you.  We are just trying to give some feedback. Also I realize in your first post you mentioned you had your doubts about puppetry...  Maybe we need to think about the services that a puppeteer could do within the $5.00 to %50.00 range that would worth their time.  I am always pushing members to get out there and and using other services.

I agree with Na about some background on the company.  Actually my first post was to try and draw you out and see if you would come back. I had my doubts about the site and services.  There is just so many scams and get rich quick stuff out there now a days.

This is what I heard in my head while reading Na's post. I really wanted to wave a little flag too.

Jeffery,  I hope we are not discouraging you.  We are just trying to give some feedback. Also I realize in your first post you mentioned you had your doubts about puppetry...  Maybe we need to think about the services that a puppeteer could do within the $5.00 to %50.00 range that would worth their time.  I am always pushing members to get out there and and using other services.

I agree with Na about some background on the company.  Actually my first post was to try and draw you out and see if you would come back. I had my doubts about the site and services.  There is just so many scams and get rich quick stuff out there now a days.

Hey Shawn, thanks for your reply and your feedback. I really appreciate it. Streetlance is still in a beta version since the launch 2 months ago. So I hope you will forgive me about the placement of the "how it work" link in the footer and the confusion in the TOS. I will try to adjust it asap so it won't discourage you to signup as member and create your first pitch on Streetlance.

As I mentioned before I have doubts about adding this category on Streetlance. But I’m also sure about the potential of added value Streetlance could offer to a puppeteering service provider and her buyers. Honestly I don’t know how to convince the "old-way-thinkers" in puppeerting industry for this new approach. In my opinion this narrow minded way of thinking will destroy the future of puppeteering industry in due course. We are living in a very dynamic environment. In the view of fact that the demand is low and the competitiveness in the puppeteering industry is still growing, we must adapt in order to survive. That means puppeteering masters will have to create their own market instead of being a victim of this static market. Doing so will open the market and let people getting familiar with puppeteering. Ok, it's just my point of view as advocate of capitalism, not just a get rich quick stuff or scam what you have mentioned Maybe a little bit of topic, but please be rational.
 
Anyway, maybe Na misunderstood me or I formulated incorrectly in my last posting. My sincere apology for this. However the comparison for his 10 minutes of video is totally irrelevant to my given example of a 20 second video. I fully understand that offering puppeteering services should be cost effective. That's the point Na mentioned repeatedly in his response. And that's also why Na misunderstood me or don't want to understand. Let me clarify this:

IF you offer professional puppeteering services, it means you already have a camera, memory card and most important lots of puppets. The whole idea of Streetlance is not to wait and bid for a new project like other freelancers websites but to promote yourself proactively with the stuff you already have, which means you only have to invest time and not money. Remember that you are the one who make the pitch and decide what you want and can do for a small price. See it as a new opportunity for puppeteering. You don't have to work on demands of your clients but on your own demands and sell it with creativity. Consider it like you broaden your assortments in your shop. There are always high end consumers and low end consumers. According to Na this will be at the expense of the professionalism for the puppeerting industry. But I don’t see why a 20 sec video instead of a 10 minutes video would cost your professionalism since you are already skilled and a professional? Maybe because of the same puppets you are using in every video? I doubt it. Being a professional you should know you are able to shoot this video faster and use your time more efficient than a newbie.

A concrete example:

If you create a pitch on Streetlance, it means you have to pitch yourself instead of waiting for a new client. Amaze people with a video posting on Streetlance with a cool puppeteer show for 20 sec to attract buyers. Create a pitch like this: “I can record you a video like this up to 20 sec saying everything you want for $10”. Use the same puppets, which you already have, for every customer. There is no need to invest money and time to make a new puppet. The only time you need is the time you need to shoot the video. As for the script, buyers will provide you, because you will not write it yourself for this price. If you think offering a 20 sec video for $10 is below the current market price you can sell it for $20 on Streetlance. It doesn't matter which price you maintain, it will certainly be more profitable for a new puppeteering master in this industry than sitting on his chair and waiting for his first assignment. And besides, small orders lead to big orders right?? At the end of the day you're happy making money by selling your customized puppet videos and buyers are happy too with the quality of puppet video they pay for.

I can give you lots of advantages by doing microjobs with puppeteering services on Streetlance. But at the end it is you who must accept this new way of thinking first. I really hope this day will come.