Support your local starving artist!

*clears throat and shamelessly plugs*

For those of you who are squawking (and rightly so) about CafePress, do drop me a line; I am happy to set up an on-demand printing service with you individually, and I do have access to products that I don't list. Just ask. My prices are here, and I think you'll find they're competitive. I won't run a shopping cart for you, but most of you probably already have PayPal accounts and can do that on your own anyway.

I don't have any minimum sales per year clauses. I never will. I'm not going to charge anyone for something that doesn't sell; you collect the payment and then send some of it to me to get the products mailed. I'm not a big impersonal corporation that is too important to listen to you. And I don't require any of that copyright legal mumbo-jumbo because I'm not accepting money from a third party, I'm paid to print for you, the artist, and shipping to the customer, not printing your work for the customer directly. It's a subtle difference, but important.

And for heavens sake, they've always been a ripoff. You know how much blank mousepads cost? $0.99. Less than a dollar. (They do double in cost for me because of shipping to Alaska, but I *know* that CafePress does enough business to get better rates that I do on everything, so their markups must be absolutely ridiculous.) Transfers are $.67. Ink runs about $.50 for mousepad needs. I have to make a special trip into town to get them pressed, which costs me lots of time and money, but CafePress must have a press in-house. My price on mousepads is still cheaper than theirs.

If you have any reservations about quality because I'm such a teensy business, I invite you to talk to any of my customers. I have a complete satisfaction guarantee, and I haven't ever had an order, or any part of an order, returned in the ten years (come October) that I've been in business.

Email me at ellen @ ellenmilliongraphics.com if you have any questions I can answer for you.

End plug.

I have zebra-striped tights! And I drank waaaay too much coffee this morning.

(no subject)

Anyone else have problems with their guestbooks being spammed? I've had to delete about six posts this week with links to 'my webcam' and 'my money-making scheme.' Plus a bunch of questionable 'See you soon, love so-and-so-I've-never-heard-of' just to get their webpage linked in the comment. Nothing at *all* actually about my site. *grumbles* Wondering if it's worth keeping for the few *good* responses I get there. Need to make up my mind before I get these darned webchanges made. Which I have made excellent progress on.

Okay, mediocre progress.

Took an EMG detour figuring out the thrice-damned overseas taxes and handling fee crap. Need to post a disclaimer about it; so far it appears to be limited to Sweden and Canada, but I need to cross-check some order values. Damn, I wish my database were out of beta testing already. Must prod helpful father. Ten years shipping overseas and I'm just *now* running into this?! *bangs head on keyboard.* Goes to show you never stop learning, I guess. I don't have a good solution to this; I don't really have the luxury of lying about value or merchandise/gift status. Not if I enclose an invoice and customs can open the package. Were any of you overseas people I've sent gifts to charged tax or handling fees when you picked up my packages?

Far behind with new artists.

Further behind on catalog requests.

Much further behind on admin stuff.

Stupid dayjob. Maybe I can take a whole week off sometime in June and just WORK. Before Jennie gets here, preferably, because everything is nightmareishly unorganized right now. I wasn't honestly expecting to be in my parent's basement still, and now it's looking like I'll be there for-frickin-ever. *Grumble*

*stumbles off in search of food.* When I'm grumpy, I'm usually hungry...