ComicArtTracker.com 3 3

[Rick2you2]

3 hours ago, NicoV said:

I'll probably review the whole design of items list soon. But in all cases, a thumbnail is supposed to be quite small (and even if I tried to display it bigger, for a lot of websites it would just be blurry). 

The hover feature is available since yesterday. But if you collect pages with a specific character, why don't you define it as a favorite keyword and let the "favorites" page help you to find relevant art? Ok if you're looking for Spiderman or Batman pages it might be a looong process before having everything sorted between discarded / tracked art. But for instance one of my favorites is Galactus and it works all alone... and will be even better with email notifications later.

I do use the keyword selector, but it only picks up keywords from people who post art which includes the character I am looking for in their description. By looking at a decent-sized thumbnail, I can pretty quickly see if the hat and cloak of the Phantom Stranger character appear. 

[bisquitodoom]

6 hours ago, NicoV said:

You're right, and as far as I know it's a quite recent issue, only on Chrome v61... If you're using another browser please tell me which one, it could help me to fix it.

Yep, Chrome.  You got it.  

[NicoV]

I'm looking for a few testers for email notifications. Basically to ensure that these emails display nicely on the main email readers.

I already tested them on gmail.com and the gmail i¨Phone app, but if you're using another client (such as Outlook, Yahoo!, Apple Mail or AOL Mail for instance - on your computer, a smartphone or a tablet) and you have enough keywords defined in your CAT settings that are likely to match new art on a daily basis, feel free to message me your CAT username so that I activate your notifications. Of course the deal is that you give me your feedback (both on design and content of the emails, or if you receive these emails in your spam folder, or if you don't receive them at all but found new matching art on the CAT favorites page). Probably a first try this evening (Paris time).

I just need 3-4 testers - so first come, first served!

Thanks 

Edited October 19, 2017 by NicoV

[SquareChaos]

@NicoV - I've wondered since you first told us about CAT whether or not you were going to consider making the (de-identified) search data you're gathering available to the community. If enough people start using your site as a portal to original art, you may be able to serve up some interesting analytics 

[NicoV]

On 20/10/2017 at 4:07 AM, SquareChaos said:

@NicoV - I've wondered since you first told us about CAT whether or not you were going to consider making the (de-identified) search data you're gathering available to the community. If enough people start using your site as a portal to original art, you may be able to serve up some interesting analytics 

I don't think so. For several reasons:

1. I don't see any really useful use for this data (except for dealers to increase prices on most wanted keywords?)
2. it's not so easy to aggregate keywords
3. even if it's anonymized, it would probably restrain some users to search for items / add them to their favorites

[Rick2you2]

First, let me say that this a terrific site you have. 

Second, if you are interested in another project, have you considered a "pencil and ink" linker?

A growing number of artists don't sell inked original art (working digitally), and as for me, I generally won't buy pages which consist of just pencils. 

Perhaps there is a way in which the inkers and pencillers can scan in their work to a site and the program automatically links the two pages? It would also automatically combine what each artist wants to be paid into a single price. Then, someone could buy the inked and penciled pages as a unit.

[Twanj]

BTW I made my first purchase this week enabled by CAT. A page I admired on CAF ended up on the CL Exchange. I don't think I would have seen it otherwise.

The seller ended up living a few blocks from me! Crazy!

[NicoV]

3 hours ago, Rick2you2 said:

Second, if you are interested in another project, have you considered a "pencil and ink" linker?

A growing number of artists don't sell inked original art (working digitally), and as for me, I generally won't buy pages which consist of just pencils. 

Perhaps there is a way in which the inkers and pencillers can scan in their work to a site and the program automatically links the two pages? It would also automatically combine what each artist wants to be paid into a single price. Then, someone could buy the inked and penciled pages as a unit.

That's not a market I'm following, so I don't know if it happens often and if there is a strong demand for such a "linker", but for sure it would be technically really difficult to do 

[SquareChaos]

5 hours ago, NicoV said:

I don't think so. For several reasons:

1. I don't see any really useful use for this data (except for dealers to increase prices on most wanted keywords?)
2. it's not so easy to aggregate keywords
3. even if it's anonymized, it would probably restrain some users to search for items / add them to their favorites

These are some of the reasons I posed the question in the first place. You and anyone else that you allow to access the database are obviously the only ones that can make any use of said data, and as long as the code is closed source and the data isn't open and transparent, the question is a natural one. The whole "if you're not paying for the product, then you are part of the product" line of thinking. If you see good adoption - and I don't know why you wouldn't, you've built a great, necessary tool, we love it -  I imagine this project may become expensive to host and I'm wondering what the long term plan is... not that it is any of my business, I've just worked on too many software projects not to think this way.

[malvin]

11 minutes ago, NicoV said:

That's not a market I'm following, so I don't know if it happens often and if there is a strong demand for such a "linker", but for sure it would be technically really difficult to do 

speaking just for myself, I think that is a very niche interest.  If you were a for profit enterprise, you won't make money if you spend money implementing that feature!

Malvin

[NicoV]

1 hour ago, SquareChaos said:

These are some of the reasons I posed the question in the first place. You and anyone else that you allow to access the database are obviously the only ones that can make any use of said data, and as long as the code is closed source and the data isn't open and transparent, the question is a natural one. The whole "if you're not paying for the product, then you are part of the product" line of thinking. If you see good adoption - and I don't know why you wouldn't, you've built a great, necessary tool, we love it -  I imagine this project may become expensive to host and I'm wondering what the long term plan is... not that it is any of my business, I've just worked on too many software projects not to think this way.

In a way it *is* your business because, as you stated, as a user you're part of the product. There is no product if there is no user. I can give you some hindsight on how i see this project but please keep in mind that my English is probably not good / accurate enough to say exactly what I have in mind. I hope it will make sense.

• I started this project because  1) I'm a collector and I was often frustrated when looking at auction houses and dealers websites / services and 2) I'm a software engineer and this kind of frustration became a challenge to me and I thought it could be fun to build something for a personal use. 
• Initially this project was just about being able to track a few auction websites without having to keep tons of tabs open. Then I added new websites, started to consider also adding dealers (and I thought there were maybe 30-40 of them, never considered counting them before)... the wobblier the website the more fun I have trying to find a way to index it! The result (or at least what it became, as I'm far from finished) is WAAAAAY bigger than what I planned initially. And my "to do" list is also WAAAAAY bigger than what you see on CAT today.  So there is no "long term plan" first because I did not foresee what ComicArtTracker would become, and second because what it is now does not require a "long term plan" yet.
• I don't think I'll ever get rich and be able to stop working with CAT :-D Or I would never have started this project (I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours working on CAT, there's no way it can pay me what I would have earned as a consultant). But I'm convinced that it will increase my network (friends, business, who knows?) and could offer opportunities. It already did. I also love to discuss and work with end users to enrich and develop my products. That's the way I work for 20 years. So as long as it does not cost me (too much) money and I have fun working on it, it's all good.
• I know that, eventually, I'll have to monetize CAT to pay for hosting. But I don't want this monetization to distort what the product could or should be. I want to focus on the product, on the value. If the value is there, I'll monetize CAT.  If not, I'll lose some money but I will have learned a lot. That's ok.
• As a French guy I might also have a cultural problem with the idea of earning money on a personal project :-D
• Last but not least: as long as nobody pays for ComicArtTracker, I can stop it anytime. I don't do it for a living, I do it for fun. If there's no fun anymore...

My two cents.

Edited October 21, 2017 by NicoV

[SquareChaos]

2 hours ago, NicoV said:

In a way it *is* your business because, as you stated, as a user you're part of the product. There is no product if there is no user. I can give you some hindsight on how i see this project but please keep in mind that my English is probably not good / accurate enough to say exactly what I have in mind. I hope it will make sense.

• I started this project because  1) I'm a collector and I was often frustrated when looking at auction houses and dealers websites / services and 2) I'm a software engineer and this kind of frustration became a challenge to me and I thought it could be fun to build something for a personal use. 
• Initially this project was just about being able to track a few auction websites without having to keep tons of tabs open. Then I added new websites, started to consider also adding dealers (and I thought there were maybe 30-40 of them, never considered counting them before)... the wobblier the website the more fun I have trying to find a way to index it! The result (or at least what it became, as I'm far from finished) is WAAAAAY bigger than what I planned initially. And my "to do" list is also WAAAAAY bigger than what you see on CAT today.  So there is no "long term plan" first because I did not foresee what ComicArtTracker would become, and second because what it is now does not require a "long term plan" yet.
• I don't think I'll ever get rich and be able to stop working with CAT :-D Or I would never have started this project (I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours working on CAT, there's no way it can pay me what I would have earned as a consultant). But I'm convinced that it will increase my network (friends, business, who knows?) and could offer opportunities. It already did. I also love to discuss and work with end users to enrich and develop my products. That's the way I work for 20 years. So as long as it does not cost me (too much) money and I have fun working on it, it's all good.
• I know that, eventually, I'll have to monetize CAT to pay for hosting. But I don't want this monetization to distort what the product could or should be. I want to focus on the product, on the value. If the value is there, I'll monetize CAT.  If not, I'll lose some money but I will have learned a lot. That's ok.
• As a French guy I might also have a cultural problem with the idea of earning money on a personal project :-D
• Last but not least: as long as nobody pays for ComicArtTracker, I can stop it anytime. I don't do it for a living, I do it for fun. If there's no fun anymore...

My two cents.

I imagine as you build more features and people use it more and more, people wouldn't mind if you added a donate link to help with the costs, and if feature requests & enhancements become too big for one person, you could always open source the code on github or some similar repository. It seems like we have a surprising number of software people in the hobby.

[NicoV]

Hello CAT people!

Some of you may have noticed the "blocked" thumbnail that appeared on some dealer listings 1-2 weeks ago. These are dealers who have their sites hosted with Bill Cox at ComicArtFans.

Bill and I have been discussing possible solutions to unblock ComicArtTracker's access to these dealers, but Bill has decided that does not fit into his business model. As you may imagine, I'm quite disappointed with this decision. But it's Bill's decision and I'll respect it. It means that ComicArtTracker is not allowed to index these websites anymore and I'll have to remove them from CAT - today if I can. So don't be surprised if you don't see any art listed on the following websites:

Albert Moy, Anthony's Comic Book Art, Artdroids, Big Wow Art, BritComicsArt, Comic Art Source, Comic Book Art Gallery, Cool Lines Art, Dave Karlen, Fanfare, Felix Comic Art, Golden Age Collectibles, Got Super Powers?, Koch Comic Art, Kwan Chang, NSNart, Nick Katradis, Romitaman, Scott Eder, Splash Page, TDArt, Will's Comic Art Page.

I would ask any dealers who have sites hosted with Bill to email or PM me and we can discuss your participation with ComicArtTracker.

ComicArtTracker.com aims to provide exposure to your art for sale. That means more traffic driven to your site. And not just any traffic, but enthusiastic collectors looking to buy. So please take a moment to think about it.

To end on a positive note, I'm happy to tell you that email notifications should be ready soon. You'll have the opportunity to receive a notification (once a day) when new art is listed matching your favorite keywords, and a reminder in the 24 hours before an auction you're tracking starts. For all websites except... well, you know.

I look forward to hearing everyone's comments!

Best,
Nico

Edited October 27, 2017 by NicoV
(I forgot a word...)

[vodou]

1 hour ago, NicoV said:

Some of you may have noticed the "blocked" thumbnail that appeared on some dealer listings 1-2 weeks ago. These are dealers who have their sites hosted with Bill Cox at ComicArtFans.

I noticed that and had a feeling this was the backstory, my hope was a more community-oriented solution would emerge organically. Oh well. I can't speak for anybody else but since CAT hit the scene...I rarely visit CAF now, as I'm in a buying mindset of late and CAT search capture is much better at scratching that itch. Surely and eventually I'll be back to more regular CAF visits when my interest swings back to viewing NFS collections. Hopefully the dealers hosted by Bill can figure out something with NicoV or strongly encourage Bill to re-evaluate his position because...at least in my case...at least two eyeballs aren't hitting those sites anymore.

[Twanj]

That is a shame. CAF backing out hurts CAF & the dealers more than you.

[Pete Marino]

Wow, that's disappointing for sure!

This tool really gives a lot of art exposure, if they don't participate it only hurts them.

[Panelfan1]

5 hours ago, NicoV said:

 

Albert Moy, Anthony's Comic Book Art, Artdroids, Big Wow Art, BritComicsArt, Comic Art Source, Comic Book Art Gallery, Cool Lines Art, Dave Karlen, Fanfare, Felix Comic Art, Golden Age Collectibles, Got Super Powers?, Koch Comic Art, Kwan Chang, NSNart, Nick Katradis, Romitaman, Scott Eder, Splash Page, TDArt, Will's Comic Art Page.

 

Attn: vendors.

 

If you are one of the dealers above - you need to consider comicarttracker - as a way better model.  Its kind of what uber is to cabs.  It is more efficient.  It doesnt add any work to you - but allows folks to buy from you.  

As a collector that has bought from a bunch of you dealers - I want you to know if you read this that I use CAT daily to see what is new. It saves me time.  It will lead to more sales.  Think about it. 

For Bill: I still support CAF as a premium member. Visit the site daily. Click on the links.  you are not helpful to your members by blocking a new system that promotes comic art, created by a fan.

Edited October 27, 2017 by Panelfan1

[JadeGiant]

21 minutes ago, Panelfan1 said:

Attn: vendors.

 

If you are one of the dealers above - you need to consider comicarttracker - as a way better model.  Its kind of what uber is to cabs.  It is more efficient.  It doesnt add any work to you - but allows folks to buy from you.  

As a collector that has bought from a bunch of you dealers - I want you to know if you read this that I use CAT daily to see what is new. It saves me time.  It will lead to more sales.  Think about it. 

For Bill: I still support CAF as a premium member. Visit the site daily. Click on the links.  you are not helpful to your members by blocking a new system that promotes comic art, created by a fan.

I was going to type a post but this sums up my thoughts - ditto this. 

 

Also, I have a Yahoo email account if you still need a tester

[SquareChaos]

I'm not even remotely surprised by this. I'm pretty certain CAT is viewed as competition.

[JadeGiant]

2 hours ago, SquareChaos said:

I'm not even remotely surprised by this. I'm pretty certain CAT is viewed as competition.

How so?