Welcome to Inkbunny...

To view member-only content, create an account. ( Hide )

Software Update, Lower Shipping, Scraps Feature, Sales

by

One week has gone by since we launched. 4,500+ new members have signed up, 7,000+ new submissions have been posted, and we're still growing.

It may seem like a lot of signups for one week, but it's going to take time to build up a dedicated user base. A lot of people signed up in the first week just out of curiosity, and may not be repeat visitors, so we're realistic about how long it's going to take to really get this site moving.

We want to get a thriving free-content art community going in which artists may sell items when they choose to. This is the ideal!

Even with the relatively small userbase, quite a few sales are being made! Things are going much better than we expected for just the first week since launching. The most popular things selling are comics and portfolios of all genres. While hi-res versions of pinups are occasionally attractive, it's comics, or multiple images sold in packs, that get the most attention for download sales.

Customers are most interested in paying for things that give them more than a simple pinup. If they can see the hard work you put in, the value for money they are getting and content and quality that interests them, then you have the best chance of a sale.

Be sure to price lower than the equivalent hard-copy print versions of comics and portfolios.

Use your accounts on other art sites or systems like Twitter to reach your fans and promote your items for sale on Inkbunny. Relying on passing traffic on this site alone may not be enough!

If you need advice on how to use Inkbunny to sell artwork and how to price it, feel free to contact one of our friendly staff!

Prints are selling too. And we're happy to announce that we've been able to drastically reduce the cost of shipping prints. We heard lots of complaints, so we fixed it! We can now ship up to 15 prints of any size in a single package, for around $6 in the US.

We think that's a pretty good deal! We also ship internationally from the US. International shipping prices start from around $12 for up to 15 items in one package.

I'd like to take a moment to say thank you to our amazing moderator team. Without them we wouldn't have survived launch day, let alone the last week. It's been hectic, to say the least. I think they do a very professional job. All our moderators are unpaid volunteers and they have been putting an incredible amount of time into the job already. If you'd like to show your appreciation, please consider donating to them by clicking the Support link on their userpages.

It will be a long time before our small fraction of income from sales will cover the cost of running the site. If you believe in what we are trying to achieve, and think Inkbunny deserves a helping hand, please consider donating directly to the Inkbunny account. All donations to that account are used to fund site operations and development.

Today we completed the first Inkbunny Software update since launch day. We're now running version Beta 17.

This week we've been dealing with lots of urgent bugs picked up by members, and added a couple of features. There's a HUGE list of things we need to get through, so please be patient.

Updates this week:

    *  Pricing Change - Buying prints is now cheaper. We now offer flat rate shipping for up to 15 prints of any size in the one package. For customers in the USA it's now a fixed rate of about $6.00 for up to 15 prints. Previously the smaller two sizes couldn't be shipped in the same box as the larger two sizes, making shipping costs appear overly expensive for orders of mixed sizes.

    * New feature - Scraps mode which allows artists to mark images as "Scraps". These will not show in an artist's main gallery, and can only be seen when looking at the artist's Scraps gallery.

    * New feature - Live password strength checking. When you create an account or change/reset a password, you are given instant feedback as to whether your password is strong enough. It also tells you what is wrong if it is not strong enough. All without having to submit the form over and over and over!

    * New Feature - The Maintenance Mode screen now automatically checks every 30 seconds to see if the site has come back online, and redirects you back when it's ready.

    * New contact types with icons have been added: SoFurry, SecondLife, Sheezyart, WikiFur, Youtube, Xbox, PlayStation. Add them to your profile!

    * The "Artists" page is now known as "Members".. because we're not all artists!

    * Fixed a really annoying bug that was blanking journal text on new journals if it returned to the Create Journal page with a Twitter username/password error.

    * Fixed a bug that was breaking Twitter autoposting if you had certain characters like "&" in the title. It used to cut off the Tweet right at the bad character.

    * Fixed some layout problems seen on empty Favorites Gallery when in widescreen (expanded) mode.

    * Fixed a bug that was making email checks case-sensitive. Eg: A user with email Fred@Gmail.Com wouldn't be able to get activation or password reset emails sent if they typed their email later as fred@gmail.com (no capitals).

    * UTF-8 characters in file names no longer break uploads. We cheat and replace them, which is safest.

    * Stopped "Buy Digital" link from showing after artist removed the Sales File.

    * Fixed a bug that broke the "tiny" versions of icons after a user deleted their icon but didn't choose another to replace it.

    * Fixed a bug with Creating Streams that meant they showed the available start times in the wrong timezone.

    * Some fixes for problems accessing Account Settings page using Safari.

   * Moderators now get autoassigned any unassigned tickets they look at. Previously we had to look at new tickets, then assign them to ourselves before acting on them, which was annoying.

All updates to the site are permanently documented on the Revisions page.

Please keep sending us the bug reports and ideas! Inkbunny has a long way to go, and a lot of growing to do yet, but we're off to a fantastic start.

Thanks everyone!

Starling

Edit: Thanks to [iconname]Kashidom[/iconname] for providing the awesome icon additions to the contact types!

Viewed:	123 times
Added:	13 years, 10 months ago 20 Jun 2010 16:49 CEST
Site News Item:	yes
Commenting Locked

16 Comments on this Journal

Leave a Comment...

MaxCoyote

13 years, 10 months ago

link

Love the scraps feature! Thanks!

No Steam ID for Contact Details? :P

Praeceptor

13 years, 10 months ago

link

Yeah I know this is an art site but some art is not visual, any plans on introducing any other art types to the site. Animation, Stories and say Music.

Just that not every furry or anthro artist can draw, some of us write, compose and animate.

Zeikcied

13 years, 10 months ago

link

Edited 13 years, 10 months ago by Owner

@ Praeceptor

You can already upload stories and music. I've seen a few users upload music files, and I have a story in my gallery.

There aren't individual submission upload pages for each submission type, but it does list the available file types.

From the upload page:

"	Uploaded files must be filetype PNG, JPEG (jpeg or jpg), GIF, Shockwave Flash (SWF), FLV Video, MP3, DOC, RTF or TXT

That covers art, Flash animations, music, stories, and even video.

TwoTails

13 years, 10 months ago

link

Dunno if it's just me, but the site wasn't letting me add thumbnails to pics I posted.

I've been plugging the hell out of this site, so I'm finally getting a bit of attention here XD

GreenReaper

13 years, 10 months ago

link

Edited 13 years, 10 months ago by Owner

@ TwoTails

Hmm. Did you perhaps click "Show original thumbnails" at the top right of a gallery? That toggle sticks, so custom thumbnails won't show up even if you go to another page - including your user page, which doesn't show the toggle link (usability bug!).

TwoTails

13 years, 10 months ago

link

@ GreenReaper

It was set correctly, the problem is it wont let me change or add a thumbnail to an existing submission, it'll upload but then ignore it, and yes they were in the 200 pixel size limit.

GreenReaper

13 years, 10 months ago

link

@ TwoTails

Hmm. Yeah, that seems to be broken! I'll file a ticket. :-)

GreenReaper

13 years, 10 months ago

link

Edited 13 years, 10 months ago by Owner

@ TwoTails

OK, so this wasn't technically broken, but you were probably entering a thumbnail into the initial form and clicking "Submit", which won't work. To replace an existing thumb you have to go further down to the thumbnail of the page and click the "Replace" button, then use the form that appears.

This is a usability issue that is now on the list to fix. :-)

Shokuji

13 years, 10 months ago

link

Killer job on the updates! =D I'm not used to so much activity. o.O;

GreenReaper

13 years, 10 months ago

link

Edited 13 years, 10 months ago by Owner

@ Shokuji

And these are mostly just the little things that could be fixed right away. More to come!

artdecade

13 years, 10 months ago

link

you guys are really kicking ass so far

cursedscythe

13 years, 10 months ago

link

Great update, indeed!
The only thing I'm not so happy about... is the font in the "Members" button. It seems a bit off~ ^^;

HerrAardy

13 years, 10 months ago

link

I noticed that when I tag an image with many tags a lot of the time it'll trim off several tags from my image once I upload it... is there a maximum amount of tags that I'm not noticing? A lot of my tags that get left off are probably less common tags, but I feel are very descriptive for my image.

Alfador

13 years, 10 months ago

link

Feature request: Batch unhiding with notifications turned off. Right now, you can unhide individual submissions with or without notification, but the batch unhiding with the checkboxes from the gallery can only do so WITH notifications.

Since the primary purpose of unhiding without notification is for large batch uploads without spam, batch unhiding is a pretty necessary feature...

saintajax33RENAMED

13 years, 10 months ago

link

I have a question, can you are have you thought about making a feature that allows writers to sell there works like artists can?

like digital story down loads and print copies sent through the mail.