Adventures in Marketing

I have this graphic design/photo editing program that rivals Photoshop. It's called "PhotoImpact X3. Seriously, I think it might even be better than Photoshop. Some of its features are probably a little more manual than Photoshop's automation, but it does the job. The learning curve is a bit steep--it took me literally ten years to figure it out*--but I managed. And now I'm going nuts with it. Here are a couple of my ads:





Neat, huh? I know they're not perfect, but hey--it's my first attempt. I have a whole line of political and comic book-style ads in my head. Now that it doesn't take FOUR HOURS to figure out how to revert the font back to plain, flat, black, normal Times New Roman, I can crank 'em out pretty quickly. I just wrap the links to these ads in some HTML code and stick 'em on Craigslist. Works pretty well, although somebody should probably declare martial law on CL. You have to post every ten minutes just to compete with the bastards on there who flagrantly violate the no-multiple-posts rule.

Regular paper flyers in coffee shops have been a great means of getting the word out. However, putting them out is a real pain in the ass, and if I'm out there pinning my flyers under those advertising for massages and dog-walking services, I'm not actually helping people move. So, I'm outsourcing!

Last night I put an ad on CL around midnight seeking flyer distributors. I've gotten about 20 responses so far, and one guy even called me at 7:00 in the morning--twice! I like that kind of go-getter, can-do attitude, but dude, call me at 7:00 one more time and nobody will ever find your body. Seriously.

I wonder if this is a sign of our tough economic times--the spread of people is QUITE interesting. I've had one aspiring model/actress/singer send me a horrible resume and headshot that may or may not have been taken at K-mart. One interesting chick has a name very similar to my wife, went to GW, was a dog-walker and is now a private investigator. (My wife was a "homicide reporter," tried her hand at dog walking, and would be a P.I. in a heartbeat, probably). Another dude seems to make his career out of distributing flyers, and another wants to do business with me by putting my ads on coffee sleeves.

Heh. America, gotta love it.

Tonight I'm having dinner with the Franchise Dude I met at 7/Eleven a few months back. This is extremely welcome because I'm rapidly approaching the peak of my shit-schlepping career. Once I get a solid, reliable marketing system on auto-pilot, I'm going to need to branch out and bring on new dudes with trucks. I enjoy the physical labor, but let's face it, the guys making the real money aren't the ones at the bottom of the totem pole. Hopefully Franchise Dude will help me crystallize where I need to go next.



* Well, no, not exactly. But the first version of PhotoImpact I got was 4.2. I used it to clean up the occasional photo, but the arcane tools along the side of the screen were indecipherable to me. I knew NOTHING about graphic design. Earlier this year I got version X3 (13) and have been spending a ton of time figuring the how's and why's and I'm finally getting it.