There’s no Epic Interrogation this week. Instead, I’ve got an announcement. A lot of people write to me saying they’d love to hire someone like me to work on their site, but they don’t think they’ve got the budget. I don’t like advertising my rates, but I’ve been thinking of creating some special writing packages especially for creative wonders like you, just to show you how affordable it is.

The four packages, with graphics designed by the amazing Vail of FutureNoir, are the Tentacle, the Epic Etsy, the Blog-Shoggoth and The Great Cthulhu. You’ll find them all under the Copywriting Packages tab of the Grymm & Epic shop.

Custom packages are available and, if you want to get started but can’t afford right now, I do offer payment plans. Just email me at steff AT steffmetal DOT com and we’ll suss something out.

Be prepared for an onslaught of lovecraftian, multi-tentacled writing packages of DOOM!

Love, lust and puddling crust
Steff

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La Carmina says it best: ” I love every aspect of my work; it feels like play, so I don’t mind the long hours … For example, Sebastiano and I are going to Hong Kong, where we’ll be having “fun” at a Macau hotel-resort opening, cute cooking lessons, and an art fair. But the trip and apartment are sponsored, and these activities are material for paid AOL Travel articles, my blog, and other projects.”

If I could be so bold (what? Me? Bold?) I’d say personality branding is probably the biggest marketing innovation brought on by the internet – and, in particular, Web 2.0. Many bloggers have built full-time businesses by embracing the concept of personality branding.

So what is personality branding? Basically, it’s creating a caricature of yourself that’s saleable. This means, you put yourself “out there” as a particular type of person, you attract readers/viewers/customers who WANT to be the same type of person, and you sell them things that will help them become that type of person. They might be things you’ve made yourself, or they might be things from companies who see

La Carmina, this week’s Epic Interrogation victim, is one of the best examples of personality branding I’ve ever seen. The La Carmina we see through her blog and her other projects is outgoing, fun, quirky, upbeat, stylish, and an advocate for alternative subcultures the world over. She sells herself and her lifestyle through her TV work, collaborations with companies and her books. But what she’s really selling is her lifestyle (and personal style). Thats why she can make money with adverts on her site.

The real-life La Carmina is much more complex. She probably has grumpy days, and walks around the house in her pyjamas, and yells when her boyfriend eats all the peanut butter. She’s probably interested in things that have nothing to do with gothic subculture or Japan.

But you won’t see her writing about any of these things. Why? Because she knows her blog isn’t a personal diary – its business, and insanely fun business, at that. But even though her readers probably don’t realise it, the La Carmina they see on the blog has been filtered with a selective eye. What works with her personal brand is put up – what doesn’t work, is kept to herself. We see the cumulative effect of all her efforts, and we fall in love.

Read On…

In this week’s epic interview, I talked to burlesque beauty Leda Petit about the dance business. Leda says one of the best business decisions she ever made was to ask for more money.

Wow, now that’s a scary thought.

As creatives, the thought of asking for more money can be terrifying. You’ve only just got your little business going, and now you want to turn away all your clients / customers by putting prices up? It seems ridiculous. Bear with me, and I’ll explain why asking for more money or raising your prices won’t drive your customers away, but may set you up for real success.

Are you paying yourself a fair wage?

You have as much right to earn a decent wage as anyone, and there is absolutely no point being in business if you’re going to run yourself ragged for pennies – you’d be better off working part time and doing you art for fun.

It’s time you sat down and worked out exactly how much you’re earning per hour. If it takes you three hours to paint a picture, and you sell that picture for $100, and you minus off $10 for materials, you’re earning $30 an hour, which sounds pretty decent, actually … but is it?

Read On…

I hope you’ve all had a gander at Monday’s EPIC INTERROGATION with Laura Simms, creative coach and artistic inspiration mistress. Laura has a lot of great tips for anyone interested in getting into coaching and consulting with our kind of people (those are creatively awesome people, by the way).

When I asked her if she was a workaholic, Laura had this to say:

No. I think that word gets bandied around a lot amongst online business people without much regard for what it really means. Do I work a lot? Yeah. Do I enjoy it? Almost all of it. Do I sacrifice other activities in order to work? Yes. Is my allegiance to my work detrimental to my health and relationships? No. I’m not a workaholic.

Laura’s comment about not being a Workaholic inspired today’s post. First, let’s do a little semantics on the word “Workaholic”.

The word consists of a root – work (defined in the noun as “Activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result”), with the -holic suffix. When applied to words, -holic ususally denotes a negative condition, a person having an abnormal desire or dependence on something – an addiction, usually. Holic denotes an inability to stop oneself from indulging in their chosen vice.

Read On…

Another installment of Epic Interrogations, slightly later than I intended because I spent most of yesterday recovering from the Alestorm gig and pirate partying of this weekend (You know this isn’t a typical business blog when I will shamelessly link to a bunch of photos of me drinking mead, dressed as a wench and singing onstage at a pirate metal show). But I have an amazingly awesome lady to introduce to you, and I didn’t want to wait a minute longer.

Laura Simms runs the awesome blog and creative business at Create as Folk. Laura is one of those people that was BORN to be creative and an inspiration to others. She shares my love of archaeology, but went into acting instead of digging up the dead things, which honestly probably paid more. Now she’s an amazing creative coach and blogger – simply reading her blog gets me psyched about my art. It’s no surprise she works as a creative consultant, helping her clients form their creative careers from their sometimes chaotic lives (she knows our type well, you see). I won’t hog the stage a moment longer – bring it on, Laura!

Firstly, we just want to know who you are, and what you do:

I’m Laura Simms, and I coach creatives at Create as Folk. My work with clients is at intersection of where creative career strategy meets quality of life coaching.

Read On…