blogging – Page 5 – Little Fears

Little Fears, Big Future

May 18, 2018 LittleFears88 Comments

Thank you. Thank you for supporting me this last 18 months with the Little Fears. Thank you for supporting me on Patreon. Thank you for buying my books, tees and art prints. Thank you for sharing my posts. Thank you for dropping pennies in the tip jar. Thank you for turning up so often to leave a groan or chuckle. You are all absolutely fabulous.

So I think, after a two years run of bad luck. The loss of my entire life savings. Not seeing my missus in over a year. Much boo-hoo and stress, I may be about to sell my house. For those that have known me since before Fears started, you know what a big deal this is to me. I’m not popping the champagne yet as there’s one teeny hurdle to hop over, but I am now basing the next 3-4 months on being homeless. I may have to stay at my missus mum and dads house in the middle of the Scottish mountains with flaky internet at best with 4G style data caps. In addition to lacking internet, I’ll be sorting her parent’s house out into a liveable state during the time I stay there as it’s currently darn near uninhabitable.

So, without knowing how much time, peace or internet I am planning out the Little Fears website until 22nd of October.

Crime Capers

I grew up watching seventies and eighties cops shows. My dad allowed me to watch the Sweeney. I followed that with The Professionals. Then moved onto murder mysteries. David Suchet is Poirot. I shall not acknowledge any other attempt. I adore both Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie as Marple. I even love the riffs off of sleuths and buddy cop programs. The British fantasy shows, Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes were my idea of TV heaven. Also, who can forget The Detectives with Jasper Carrot and Robert Powell?

The gist here is I love a good crime story. So the next ninety stories on the Little Fears will make up three cops and robbers crime capers. Each story will be thirty tales long and follow DCI Lily and Inspector Sally as they solve crimes.

We will start with a sleuthing tale. Lily and Sally attending a crime scene where a woman’s been killed in a variety of ways with far too many motives. We follow that with a Starsky and Hutch style escapade as the intrepid duo chase down a master thief. The final story sees the pair in hot pursuit of a serial killer who’s also committed the heinous crime of putting pineapple on a pizza.

(I’ll add there, as a vegetarian, I’m pro-pizza-pineapple. Don’t tell Lily that!)

I’ll be posting these stories Monday to Friday as they form a singular narrative. Each story is entirely self-contained but they have a stronger overall story than Grey Moon and Seeking Hydra. If the names Lily and Sally sound familiar, yes, that is the name of my little arsehole Jack Russells.

TellyTube

I’m currently getting ahead on the audio for Lily and Sallys case files. I’ll be doing one more series of videos in the current format. Once I have moved home, I want a chair, with a tartan blanket thrown over it. I will sit in this chair and tell the stories to a camera. Some real Jackanory bedtime stories. With a dog on my lap and another dog at my feet. A cup of tea in one hand. A book in the other hand. Some digestive biscuits in the other hand. My trademark oddness and humour stamped all over the videos. That’s how I see them. It’s just going to be impossible to do that for the next three to four months. Blah. Something to look forward too!

Art

As I’m doing the tales, Monday to Friday, I’ll be moving the Colour Collective portraits to the weekend. I know they don’t get as much of a response as the daily tales, but I love doing the Fears portraits. By keeping the weekly portraits it ensures the Little Fears aren’t purely puns. A lot of bloggers insist you need to stay niche, I disagree. I say stay to a theme. If I niche the Fears as pure puns and nothing else, I think I’d get bored of them.

Speaking of not niching myself to puns…

Ivy - In which a horror arises

Horror

Oh man, what to do about horror. My next set of horror stories was going to be a 90 tale run of Denver going in search of his partner, Malcolm. The problem is I wrote it as a continuous story. I don’t think that’s going to work unless I post them daily like I will be with the Crime Capers storyline.

What would work is a Seeking Hydra style background plot to ninety stories. For those that are new to the Fears, Seeking Hydra was ninety tales mostly puns, that were nearly all separate. But had a theme of Hydra seeking his identity throughout. That would work with a story I’m only going to post once a week. I think I need to do a quick strategy change here on horror. Like the art, it stops me being fully niched into puns and I feel scary stories and weird fiction is now an important part of the Little Fears. I need to figure that out… For now, Denver’s search for Malcolm is on hold.

From obstructions can come creative thinking though. This is the kick that I need to start the horror postcards series. Images of spooky happenings, strange goings on and blood-curdling terrors accompanied by single sentence horror stories. It would be both different and in theme for the Little Fears. Maybe that should be my next thirty horrors.

Collaborations

It’s been forever since I did a collaboration with anyone. I started three since the last one and each time the other party lost interest or wandered off. I have a few good folks looking to do collabs. But I’ll be unable to do audio recording until I get my new house. Not sure what to do there.

If anybody wants to take the lead on a collab that doesn’t require my voice, leave me a comment. I’m brain farting on what to collab on at the moment though.

Movigos

One collaboration I have kept up is the Movigos. We spoke about dropping it from weekly to monthly and making it more an event. Perfect timing for me after this week. I wouldn’t be able to keep up weekly while I’m semi-homeless. Just need to sort something new out with the gang.

If you want to find us on Twitter, hit the hashtag #Movigos. Member list shamelessly ripped from Weird Shit with Alex.

Alex – https://weirdshitwithalex.blog/
Amberley – https://fuckthelemonade.wordpress.com/
Elijah – https://elijahrichard.com/
Eric – https://ericshayhoward.com/
Layne – https://chewing-on-glass.com/
Mel – https://fictioninmyhead.com/
Ward – https://wardclever.wordpress.com/

Patreon

And of course, if you wish to drop a few pennies in the tip jar, Patreon subs are always appreciated. Even just $1 a month contributes to the whole and enables me to continue waking you good people with a smile and a groan. Thank you.

https://www.patreon.com/littlefears

Froggy Spirits

March 23, 2018 LittleFears31 Comments

Do you think when froggy’s die they ascend to a pond in the sky? Looks more like a squid than a frog this gal, but I coloured her for this weeks #Colour_Collective on Twitter and she became a frog spirit. Original doodle in sepia when I got my new pens.

Affiliate links incoming for anyone that would like to snaffle the above gear for themselves.

Faber-Castell PITT artist pens – sepia
Daler Rowney ebony hardback sketchbook

Siamese Kittehs

March 21, 2018 LittleFears33 Comments

Siamese Kittens are the cat spirits of the Little Fears world. It’s debated whether or not these felines are evil on account of them being accused of killing an underground mammal. Personally, I think that’s making a meowtain out of a molehill.

And with that delicious pun, we show off some arts and present some new listings!

Virgo on Threadless from $12.95

Yeah, I went for Virgo. She looks like a bad arse in white.

Siamese Kittehs on Etsy @ £12

For a launch price, Siamese Kittehs are available for £9 per print until 27/3/18. If you’re interested, leave a comment or email me at fears@Gmx.co.uk

Triffids on Etsy @ £12

Still available for £9 a print, but for just 24 more hours! Again, leave a comment or email me if interested.

Chirped on Etsy @ £12

Also, still available for £9 a print, but for just 24 more hours! Again, leave a comment or email me if interested.

Selling on WordPress – Part Two

March 19, 2018 LittleFears29 Comments

Today’s post is more a follow-up blog with some further useful ideas and tips for writers and artists on WordPress. Let’s start with a link to my first post, Selling on WordPress from two weeks ago.

Selling on WordPress – The original blog post

It turns out. I was right on the mark. Selling your own products is something that doesn’t come natively to most of the artists and writers that commented. In fact all of them now I’m reading over them… So, know that you’re not alone with your sales issues.

Affiliate Links

Priyankaspen asked how I embed affiliate links into my posts. I’ve discussed affiliate links before. The income you get from them is woeful. I’m lucky if I see $100 every three months. But I don’t ‘sell’ other peoples products on this website. I occasionally link to pens and paper. That’s about it (click for an example). If anybody clicks an Amazon affiliate link and buys anything from Amazon in that session, you get a few pennies. A word of caution here. We’ve spoken about affiliate links on blogs a few times. Nobody seems to mind odd links, but when you stuff a blog post with them, it’s like flicking a switch that pisses people off. If you stuff a blog post full of links, you might make a few pennies of the post, but you’re guaranteed to lose subscribers.

When you sign up to Amazon or any other affiliate network, you get short links to products. On Amazon.com when you’re signed in to affiliates, you get a bar across the top of each page. I always aim for a text link and embed the link in my post.

Copy the short link off of Amazon, highlight the text and right click, then copy. Go to your WordPress post and highlight the text you want to turn into a link. Click the link icon above. Paste the link into the empty box. That’s it, all done.

Icons

Janowrite asked about the icon set at the bottom of my posts. I create the icons myself in GIMP (free image editing software). I then embed the pictures the same way you would any image. Add content, Media, select an image, insert.

Then we add links the same we did with affiliate links. Select the image in the post, click insert link, copy paste in the link you want the image to go too. Handy if you want a book banner you’ve made yourself to link directly to your Amazon author page for example.

Ko-Fi

Forrest asked me about Patreon and tip-jars. Patreon is not for everyone. My tip jar is just a PayPal business link. Setting up a PayPal tip jar is frankly a pain in the arse and far more effort than it should have been.

One thing I do want to change too, though haven’t had time to look at yet is Ko-Fi. It’s a website you set up so people can support you for one-off tips to buy you coffee. Smart idea. Worth a look if you want a tip jar yourself.

https://ko-fi.com

Sales Post

Donna from DMStrachan.co.uk suggested that instead of adding sales announcements to weekly posts, I dedicate a post to new products. So that’s what I did… I’m still adding it to a weekly post… Doh.

Villains & Birdsong

But the focus of the post was far more into the new products. The result is, I had a few email enquiries and I sold three prints right off the bat. So I had some success. A dedicated sales post is better than burying new products. Sounds obvious, but we’re creators, writers and artists. We do have funny ideas about selling our own gear. I’ll get the new art prints on Etsy at full price this week. If anyone still wants a copy at £9 a print, please do drop me a message or email to fears@gmx.co.uk

Another follow up

I will be writing another follow-up blog post on this subject to discuss and link to ideas people had about real-world selling. Until then, looky, icons!

Villains & Birdsong

March 16, 2018 LittleFears65 Comments

Holy crap does she look like a villain! She’s gotta be the leading big bad in the third Little Fears horror anthology. She has no name yet, though it’d be nice to associate her with an astrological sign. I’m not sure which yet. Maybe Libra? Capricorn and Aries are already taken. Also takes the shade for this weeks #Colour_Collective.

In this week, we have further art. I have learned in the past, Etsy sales fail and people whine about price increases if they notice. So I have three new art prints for sale, introductory offer until Thursday 22nd of March, they will be £9 each rather than the usual £12. If you’d like a print, on our trademark (not trademarked) sexy canvas paper, message me in comments or drop me an email to fears@gmx.co.uk

Click an image to blow it up.

Villain

Chirped

Triffids

Some serious seventies shades there. If you’d like any of the above in different colour schemes, we can do that too.

Also, we have another submission to Scribblers Cove, the theme of party. Not for sale, but I likes it, so I’m posting it.

If you fancy any of my older art prints, please do visit my Etsy store.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/LittleFears

Selling on WordPress

March 5, 2018 LittleFears158 Comments

A wee post about my experience here. I figure I’ve done some experimenting now, so allow me to pass on some experience.

Earning as a blogger, writer or artist is hard darned work. Look at how many blogs and websites litter the internet and then count how many famous bloggers you know who’ve made it big. How many fingers and or toes did you count? So for most of us, the best we can hope for is getting by. Maybe reach a minimum wage. To me, that’s not depressing. It just shows that I need to do more than a website to earn a living. Such as selling prints at local markets (more on alternative earning later).

You all know what I sell by now. Art prints on Etsy. Art prints and Tees on Threadless. Books on Amazon.

The Beginning

Back in the early days of the blog when I first started selling I had a signature in my posts like this:

Patreon | Etsy | Kindle | Skillshare| Threadless

I quite liked that. It was subtle. I had maybe a 1%-2% per view click rate. That’s pretty high. I’d say there was a 1% rate of purchase from that though. Ouch, right? That’s not good when you’re only making £1 a sale.

The Middle Bit

At some point, I switched over to a series of icons at the bottom of each post.

They looked a bit more visually appealing and fitted nicely at the bottom of the posts. They looked awful in WordPress reader though. They enjoyed a 2%-3% views to click rate and had about 6% sales from that 2%-3%. By this my point my blog was over 20,000 subscribers and it was turning into £100 a month or more.

The Recent Bit

I removed everything from the bottom of my posts and left the links at the top of my screen the only links to my wares. The click-through plummeted and died a death. I’m into the less than 1% view to click through here.

What happened? Well, most of my readership on site is WordPress bloggers. Most bloggers use WordPress reader to view websites. So advertising in sidebars, header banners or menus is never going to be seen, let alone clicked. If the adverts aren’t in the post, WordPress bloggers will never click them.

Sales links in blog posts hurt Google ranks

It really does. Google isn’t stupid. If you include the same links in every post you make, Google, Yahoo, Bing and the other search engines assume you’re an advert/bot farm website. They then actively push you down the search rankings. So what can you do?

Make a sale posts

Uuuuruurururuhghgh! Arreeghghgghgh! Nooooooooooooooo!

But they work…

An experiment follows with my recent books. Grey Moon and Seeking Hydra. When I released Hydra, I posted here daily about it being free for five days to readers. Asking people, please leave me a review. Hundreds of copies were taken for free. 10-20 copies paid for. Then I had a roll for a month or two where I sold one or two a day. It picked up 20 Amazon reviews (UK, USA and other) and did OK on Good Reads.

Contrast that with Grey Moon. I posted about it twice before and twice during the first five days of it being free. I gave away maybe 50 copies. Sold 8 copies. Then it died a death immediately after. I think I’ve sold 5 copies since. It has four reviews on Amazon.com and 3 on Amazon.co.uk. For all the effort I put into Grey Moon, it tanked.

(Click here to see Amazon.com review figures)

To follow that up, when I advertise a new Threadless tee, I get the most sales off the post I make about it. The has been shown with Walker and Terror-Dactyl.

So, yes, sales posts do work and are needed, even with freebies. The drawback? If you do a sales post every day, you’re gonna piss your readers off. The flip side of that is that when I have mentioned sales posts here before, the response is always “if you don’t tell us about your products, we don’t know they exist.”

Two more Fears Fears…

I have two other problems I need to address myself with sales. First, I don’t push products past the initial release. Like seriously, I launch a product, then never mention it again. What the crap?

My other issue is that I’m a terrible artist. I write awful. My spelling and grammar are poor. How can I possibly ask people to give me money for my rubbish?… What did you say? Imposter syndrome? Me? Well, I don’t think so mis…. Oh… Crap… Yes, you may be right…

I need to address both of those points, don’t I?

What will I do?

I will be giving more focus to other platforms and not be spending all my time on WordPress. Bluntly, there’s only so much marketing you can do on a blog. Post too many sales posts and you’ll annoy everyone, yourself included. Twitter and Instagram have a bit more leeway there. Even Tumblr you can post more frequently than WordPress. I’ve said I was going to spread myself out more a thousand times and I never do. Now, after my six-month long house sale has fallen through, I need the income. I need to sell. Twitter and Instagram, here I come. Though don’t talk to me about Facebook…

I will also try and do a weekly sales post on the blog. An entire post a week dedicated to something I am selling. Maybe explain or show the process of what I did to create the product. It doesn’t have to be all sell, sell, sell right? But it needs to be something. Posts dedicated to products work.

The Alternative

The other thing to do is find alternative incomes in the real world. I adore the internet in all its messy, troll-filled, poorly spelt and grammarededy ways. But I’ve always felt I need real-world incomes too.

A market stall with my art prints on for example. This time I want to take books with me too. I recall seeing Emily with a pile of self-published books behind her sofa. A quick search only shows cats on her sofa, but imagine that sofa with a pile of books behind it. That’s what I need to do. Get a small print run of the Little Fears books and take them with me to a craft market along with my art prints. You get the idea.

What do you do?

Ooo, look at that. Ending a post on a question. How very professional blogger of me. So how do you feel about marketing on a WordPress blog? Have you tried different methods? Let me know in comments.

Dryad

March 2, 2018 LittleFears16 Comments

A very art-centric Friday post this week. The lady at the top is Dryad. I used to have a thing for doodling nature creatures. With ivy arms and tree trunk legs. They all used to have flowers for heads or something similar to this. Dryad’s my submission for #Colour_Collective this week.

Texture is sexy

Click the image to expand. I get asked if I can supply larger prints of my story images quite often. Unfortunately, the answer is no. I draw 6 panels to an A4 page. That doesn’t scale up well. But I have been debating taking commisions. I had a go with printing a photo onto a canvas texture paper and doodling straight on top. I do love the effect it gives. Fancy something specific? Want to commision an image of your favourite Fears? Drop me a message.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Shoe

Not a fear, but my submission to Scribblers Cove. Inspired by Daniel Cantus scribbly style.

Little Fears, Big Update: Screech

February 23, 2018 LittleFears15 Comments

Holy crud-muffins we are nearly into March!

Screech
Etsy
Movigos

Screech

The eponymous dame returns as the lead lady for this weeks #Colour_Collective. Some link dropping here. You can see the original doodle of Screech in this post and I have a course on how to turn simple doodles into digital graphics assets, here.

Etsy

My Etsy store has re-opened. I haven’t sorted out an on-site shop yet, it’s on the to-do list. As you know, slightly strapped for cash right now so I have spent a few days this week doing in-house work for companies I used to work for and doing a fair bit of job hunting. Have a nosey at my currently, sparse but growing, Etsy store.

Shop link: etsy.com/uk/shop/LittleFears

Movigos

Clickety Click - A #LittleFears horror story in which something enters the room...

We’re back again this week, and Mel has chosen The Eye, a Korean film on YouTube for us to watch. Expect scary Asian ghosts and silliness. Come join us on Twitter for some fun, 9 pm UK time Saturday as we watch and tweet it. Hit me with an @ if you want to be added to the conversation.

For a read up on who the Movigos here, Alex made a Movigos post this week.

You can see my post from two weeks ago to see how we roll, here.

Come join us, it’s a bit of a laugh!

Little Fears, Big Update: Flowers

February 16, 2018 LittleFears20 Comments

It’s been a while!

Flowers
Art Prints
Movigos
Patreon

Flowers

#Colour_Collective has returned to Twitter and the Fears are here for it! This week the colour is Boto Pink and conveniently, this week’s Scribblers Cove theme is flowers. Two birds with one doodle right there!

Art Prints

My art prints will return to the site this coming week and just look at that paper! My word is that canvas texture sexy. Something I haven’t sold for a long time. The prints are sized UK A4 and will cost £12 each (£3 shipping to the USA). I’ll have a shop page finished this weekend. If there’s an item you’ve seen doodled before or that’s on my Threadless store and you want to buy the canvas print version, please do let me know. I’ll make it a priority for the shop. Also. LOOK AT THAT TEXTURE!

Mmmmm, forbidden texture… Drools

Movigos

We’re back again this week, and Alex has chosen Spooky, a film on YouTube for us to watch. Expect cheap monsters and silliness. Come join us on Twitter for some fun, 9 pm UK time Saturday as we watch and tweet it. Hit me with an @ if you want to be added to the conversation.

Linky for details: weirdshitwithalex.blog

Patreon

Did ya see her? Blue Bugly was given away to my patrons this week. Something I have been meaning to do for ages. Monthly monsters, given out to paying patrons. Interested in receiving monsters monthly and helping to pay for Hydras feed bill? Head over to our page and support the Little Fears for as little as $1 a month.

Clicky linky: https://www.patreon.com/posts/16974999

Bugly – Free download for the Patreons

February 13, 2018 LittleFearsLeave a comment

I’ve wanted to offer Patrons something for a while. Always unsure of what. I’m trapped between houses/homeless/aimless wanderings for the foreseeable future. So I figure digital goods are best for now, with physical gifts for patrons at a later date.

A February gift for you in thanks for your continued support, Blue Bugly. She weighs in at 5,000 px by 5,000 px, 300 dpi, and is available for you to use in any non-commercial projects you have going on. Use her as an avatar, stick her on a t-shirt, a postcard or sticker for your turtle’s shell. Or create a unique wrapping paper out of her. Whatever you fancy.

If you do use her, let me know, would be great to give you a shout out on the blog and social media. She’s available to download now for everyone sponsoring me for $1 a month or more.

Clicky linky: https://www.patreon.com/posts/16974999