How cheap are OA collectors? 2 2

[comix4fun]

5 hours ago, John S. said:

I am always surprised when some real heavy hitters in this hobby, who use CAF to showcase their items, are not Premium members. Considering how much they spend a year on art, surely the $75 for the membership is the least they could do to help support the hobby we all love.

That's true. At one point there was a prominent dealer, touting his multi-million dollar collection and how he'd pay a serious premium for the items he was looking for....all from a free account.

The fees I pay to CAF on an annual basis are fees I would probably not pay for other sites, but I view CAF as the innovator and, frankly, I OWE comicartfans a great deal for the artwork I've been able to find and artwork I've been able to sell that I would not have been able to do as easily or at all in most cases. 

So, to me, it's not about the features I get or don't get, or use or don't use, necessarily. It is all about what CAF has meant and continues to mean to the hobby and the way it altered the landscape irreparably and in such a positive way. 

Lots of people look at the cost/benefit in the micro "what am I getting today?", "what have you done for me lately?", "What am I using or not using?" while I look at it in the macro and in the long term. In doing the real math and in the long term and assessing the realities of comic art collecting before and after CAF it's an east call. CAF has benefitted me so much more than the annual fee will ever be able to repay, so I do my best to repay by being a premium member and above that a loyal and grateful premium member.  

[comix4fun]

1 hour ago, Weird Paper said:

I think CAF should cap comments in non-premium galleries to, say, three (or some relatively small number). People who enjoy that interaction would be more likely to pony up.

ooooh....now you're hitting the "comment junkies" where they live.

[vodou]

17 minutes ago, comix4fun said:

So, to me, it's not about the features I get or don't get, or use or don't use, necessarily. It is all about what CAF has meant and continues to mean to the hobby and the way it altered the landscape irreparably and in such a positive way. 

Lots of people look at the cost/benefit in the micro "what am I getting today?", "what have you done for me lately?", "What am I using or not using?" while I look at it in the macro and in the long term. In doing the real math and in the long term and assessing the realities of comic art collecting before and after CAF it's an east call. CAF has benefitted me so much more than the annual fee will ever be able to repay, so I do my best to repay by being a premium member and above that a loyal and grateful premium member.  

I will also agree with this. While I don't and haven't used anything CAF seriously in at least five years and cannot credit even 1% of my collection past, present, future (probably) to CAF activity (buying or selling), I can honestly say that I don't know what the landscape would be without it and the visibility it's brought to the hobby. I'll never know what art has made it's way public (to non-CAF venues) that I've bought or what the value of my collection would be without the (very hard to quantify) "impact" that CAF has made on the hobby maturation process and growth raw size (number of collectors) and quality (how often/deep they collect and bid the market up). How much of the base of the pyramid can we attribute to CAF? I dunno but the hobby was definitely a lot smaller and disorganized prior to, that is for sure. It's a fair point made. And I like knowing it's there for me, should I ever turn 90 degrees or more an start being a lot more active in ways that CAF can uniquely contribut to my success. That's the given, the assumption, I question. It's only there until it's not, and then you find out how much you really miss it.

[cloud cloddie]

I wish CAF would do something like the cgc registry does, where if a piece is in your collection you can get it removed from someone else's collection. Or even better get it removed from a dealers CAF page. I'd pay double the premium I already pay to not see the same piece in 5 different galleries or inquiring on a piece that sold 10 years ago.

[GreatEscape]

Great suggestions     Here are some other creative (or crazy) ideas for cool Premium member benefits:

(1) Integrated music "theme songs" for your gallery and "ring tones" for select pieces...this would add a totally new dimension to CAF.   Imagine your theme song playing when someone visits your gallery...and your Punisher cover displays with MEGADETH's "Holy Wars… The Punishment Due" as backgournd music!   Baseball players have "intro" songs, why not art collectors?

(2) Each year, Premium members get a free photobook to document/showcase their additions with descriptions, comments, likes, etc.  CAF gets a photobook sponsor/partner to print standardized photobooks and/or allow members to design them-- Premium would get basic 25-page 11x17 book free (Groupon has them ~$15-20) but can upgrade with larger size (twice up), more pages, etc.   Like having your personal Artist Edition as a memorial of your year in collecting.  Non-Premium members would pay ala carte (making it attractive to sponsor).    Sponsor would enjoy captive market with upgrades and non-Premium purchaeses.  Would also givePremium members more incentive to post more art.

(3) Artist giveaways....Spotlight artists (along with a sampling of CAF pieces the artists has worked on) would provide pages/commissions as giveaways to randomly selected Premium members.  Artists and reps would enjoy the added exposure for new talent and Premium members get art freebies!

(4) Integrated auction tracking.  Premium members can have thumbnails with current bid, own max bid, # bids, etc. that are archived after the auction (for valuable reference).  Can click thumbnails to see larger scan or click heading to link to the auction. Would leverage existing CAF gallery format.  If CAF can assist with actual bidding or sniping, even better!

(5) integrated "Trade offer" mechanism similar to fantasy football leagues.  Quick, Iterative mix and match pieces on both sides (or with third party) to make a trade work, with "accept" "deny" or "
counters"    Maybe Trade announcements on the CAF home page:  "Bobby Smith trades A and B with Sally Jones for C" showing thumbnails of the pieces involved.  Would be very fun and engaging for those who enjoy trading and deal-making.  Premium members can turn-off feature if they want.

My

[vodou]

Here's a suggestion I made to Bill years ago: require moderator approval for new artist db additions and standardize all db artist names for single usage with recommendations at user entry. This way you only have "Mike Zeck", not that and endless iterations like "[blank] Zeck" "M Zeck" "Michael J Zeck" "Michael J. Zeck" etc. This would have been much easier to implement and backfill many years ago

That and a number of other innovations, including a more robust eBay affiliate program (all swiped from my experience on expressobeans.com) was my suggestion. For whatever reason the conversation went nowhere.

[ESeffinga]

13 minutes ago, GreatEscape said:

(1) Integrated music "theme songs" for your gallery and "ring tones" for select pieces...this would add a totally new dimension to CAF.   Imagine your theme song playing when someone visits your gallery...and your Punisher cover displays with MEGADETH's "Holy Wars… The Punishment Due" as backgournd music!   Baseball players have "intro" songs, why not art collectors?

I'd pay double to NOT have that be a feature. 

[SquareChaos]

A lot of the requested features in here sound like some serious heavy lifting and data migration to my ears; lots of behind the scenes work for features that may or may not be what a majority of users actually want. If they don't already do so, what they should do, is create a list of very active users and engage with them on these items. You don't want users directly creating your road map but you do want to make sure you're engaging them and putting the features with the most ROI / least investment at the top of the queue.

[Pete Marino]

31 minutes ago, ESeffinga said:

I'd pay double to NOT have that be a feature. 

Don't you miss that MySpace experience?

[Skizz]

I am one of the the titular "cheap" collectors here.  I'm at an early stage of my career and whilst things are much better financially than when I was a student, the disposable income I have is somewhat  limited.  So I unfortunately have to be very picky with any recreational purchases and do a cost benefit analysis. 

I just cannot see what benefit a premium membership would have to me. I'm not looking to sell, most of the things I buy are from dealers or artists directly or from eBay, and I not looking to pry any pieces loose from old anyone CAF collection. Whilst I appreciate intellectually that CAF has helped the hobby to mature and it makes for a nice virtually museum, I just don't feel that I get much out of it.

This CGC message board on the other hand (and The Felix Comic Art Podcast), I do get an incredible amount of education from and would be inclined to pay if it gave access to more extra information and content.

Edited October 30, 2017 by Skizz

[PhilipB2k17]

I'm not a premium member, and frankly don't go there as much as I used to because I am concerned about the security of the site. It should be upgraded to Https, for one thing. That's just basic in this day and age. I can't even access the site from my home wifi network anymore, and I haven't figured out the reason why. There's something about the site that is buggy.

 

Edited October 31, 2017 by PhilipB2k17

[comix4fun]

14 minutes ago, PhilipB2k17 said:

I'm not a premium member, and frankly don't go there as much as I used to because I am concerned about the security of the site. It should be upgraded to Https, for one thing. That's just basic in this day an age. I can't even access the site from my home wifi network anymore, and I haven't figured out the reason why. There's something about the site that is buggy.

 

Really? I've never had a problem accessing the site from my home or office wifi and we have serious overkill wifi security at my office. Maybe it's in your wifi setting and not the site?

 

[SquareChaos]

18 minutes ago, PhilipB2k17 said:

I'm not a premium member, and frankly don't go there as much as I used to because I am concerned about the security of the site. It should be upgraded to Https, for one thing. That's just basic in this day an age. I can't even access the site from my home wifi network anymore, and I haven't figured out the reason why. There's something about the site that is buggy.

 

It looks like the main page itself is secure, but that it depends on resources that are not. I'm not sure if that means there are insecure scripts executing I'm reasonably certain no insecure scripting is involved. I always run my browser with ScriptBlock - regardless of the page - just to be safe.

 

Edit:  I need to learn to say what I mean on the first try.

Edited October 30, 2017 by SquareChaos
Clarity

[Brian Peck]

22 minutes ago, PhilipB2k17 said:

I'm not a premium member, and frankly don't go there as much as I used to because I am concerned about the security of the site. It should be upgraded to Https, for one thing. That's just basic in this day an age. I can't even access the site from my home wifi network anymore, and I haven't figured out the reason why. There's something about the site that is buggy.

 

Would you pay $10 year to use caf? If all are required to pay which inludes the premium features

[eewwnuk]

unfortunately social media is eating up a lot of the airtime at least for me that caf used to get.  its much easier and quicker to post art onto instagram and fb and lately for me its garnered more interaction and views than caf has.   caf is a great tool, but there are so many other free and easy outlets out there that you will probably have people leave and not return if it was paid for site. 

[SquareChaos]

1 minute ago, Brian Peck said:

Would you pay $10 year to use caf? If all are required to pay which inludes the premium features

$10 would probably see a lot of people sign up... and maybe they'd start using the site more actively, and uploading more images, and generally increasing the cost to host... while likely reducing gross income. Unless they somehow increased their number of subscribers by greater than 7x.

[zhamlau]

10 items , no comments allowed on your posts, no PM's for free account.

Unlimited items, unlimited comments, PM's allowed on for 10 dollars a year.

Rest stays same.

[vodou]

20 minutes ago, zhamlau said:

10 items , no comments allowed on your posts, no PM's for free account.

This would create, I think, a most interesting and unintended consequence: many folks that have no intention of selling would post their 'best 10' causing mass salivation with no way to contact those NFS owners

[zhamlau]

40 minutes ago, vodou said:

This would create, I think, a most interesting and unintended consequence: many folks that have no intention of selling would post their 'best 10' causing mass salivation with no way to contact those NFS owners

And chances are if you aren't looking to sell just show off, you would be happy to not get the message. ALSO how about if you pay for premium you have ability to turn messages off and on? That wouldn't be that hard I would assume programing wise. Can even have a note on your gallery"This user has elected to turn messages off". Its sort of like how people now make a gallery then delete everything from it. They can send messages out but you cant really contact them otherwise (far as I can tell).

[PhilipB2k17]

3 hours ago, comix4fun said:

Really? I've never had a problem accessing the site from my home or office wifi and we have serious overkill wifi security at my office. Maybe it's in your wifi setting and not the site?

 

Believe me, I’ve tried just about everything. I think the problem is that CAF also ties in with so many dealer sites.