Me & My Soap Opera Friends & Zazzle.com

[ddpool]

I've posted here from time to time about my involvement with soap opera fanbases, and here I go again. Last Friday Guiding Light aired it's last episode. After 72 years on radio and tv it is no more. The Daytime Emmys did a tribute to Guiding Light that ended with the phrase "the light may be extinguished but the afterglow will live on...". That's what inspired me to do this design:

I put the design on a bunch of different items in my Zazzle shop with the white text on black background and with black text on a white background like this:

This design is reminiscent of the Guiding Light logo:

I sold a bunch of t-shirts and mugs with this design. A couple of my mugs made the Top 10 Most Viewed for the Zazzle website on September 1st:

http://www.zazzle.com/pd/awards/pt-168?st=award&awt=daily_top_10%25&day=09%2f01%2f2009%2000%3a00%3a00

Then I was contacted by one of the regional "teams" of the Big Purple Dreams Otalia (Olivia & Natalia) message board. They were planning a special event to watch the last show together and had contacted their local CBS station to get them to cover it. They wanted special t-shirts for the occasion and I was delighted to make up a design for them. They told me they wanted "Goodbye GL" and the date on the front and on the back they wanted "venicetheseries.com" and "Fall 2009" because Crystal Chappell, one of the GL actresses is producing a new webseries called Venice that will start this fall. So here's what I came up with for them:

Here's a picture of everybody with their shirts and the video of the local tv station's story:

http://twitpic.com/ibhya

http://twitpic.com/ibc1u

You'll notice the t-shirts they're wearing have a little extra text above the design. That's their team name. I put the design without the team name up in my Zazzle shop, too, because I knew once others saw it they'd want it, too. I posted the team's design the first week in September. So far, for the month of September I've sold more than ten times what I sold in August. Don't get too excited, that's not how much I get to keep...I only get a percentage! But Zazzle has a volume bonus program that kicks in an extra percentage when you sell $100 worth and a bigger percentage when you sell over $1,000 so that makes it fun!

And because of some button jobs I've done for some of these folks, and the good customer service I provided getting this design the way they wanted, I'm getting inquiries from some others about projects they're doing for their jobs, too.

The thing I like about Zazzle is it doesn't cost me anything to post something for sale and once it's sold I don't have to do anything but sit back and wait for my share to come to me. I don't have to make something up or package it for mailing or anything.

(By the way, when I first joined this particular soap opera message board I was member #78. There are now over 6,000 members.)