Making my own Sketch Card set

[cmixer]

Has anyone made their own sketch card set with any success?

I'm thinking about a venture. I would love any and all feedback ...

https://sketchcard.wordpress.com/2019/05/29/sketchcard-idea-part1/

[bpack14]

These are just my opinions, obviously this would be your set so you could run it any way you would like, per your blog:

#1, are you not going to have standards on the cards you accept? what if artists don't follow guidelines or some cards are too lewd or the quality of the sketch is too low? I think it's important to have standards

#2, "no collector can buy more than 20 packs", I would limit it to 10, give it a time frame and if it doens't sell out open it up to a max of 20, with 20 pack max you're looking at reseller dealers to swipe them up and you would only need 10 dealers to buy your entire stock, which leaves true collector's with nothing to buy.

#3, $5 to artist + $5 per packacking + $2 other = $12 pack * 200 packs = $2400 + $600 base art = $3,000. With the price you want to sell your packs at I don't think there's any room to make money or donate to charity. You could just do a test run with your first set and run it as a charity set, Island Dreams does this and gets some pretty neat artists and cards in his sets.

I think the better artists are going to want to get paid a bit more money, you should pay yourself a little for your time and than if you want to donate the remaining to charity that is up to you.

I would pay for a book written by the Pernas (the Perna Process) on the entire start to finish of how they put together a set, I would love to know every little detail from the printing process to creating base cards to rejecting artists/cards to when to allocate payments and how they deal with taxes, ect. It would be neat to learn about all the obstacles they've overcome from these sets and tips they could provide anyone is who interested in making a set.

Anyway I'd be interested in seeing your process and following your journey, I would love to put together a set in the future as well. Good Luck

[webjon]

I think this is interesting. . .

I'd immediately look to cut your costs. . .

For example -- instead of paying $600 for base card art you could simply print 15 of the submitted sketch cards as your base.

Also "$5.00 per pack in packaging, base cards, and promo cards" seems high. I have no idea what it costs to print cards so maybe I'm way off base. My favorite packaging I've seen was done with some of Marty's sets -- super simple and seemingly inexpensive. A small envelope like what is used for thank you notes sealed with a card sized sticker. I liked these because they were small, easy to open, and impossible to see what sketch was in the pack without actually opening the pack.

I also agree with bpack14 regarding the limit on the number of packs sold. . . In order for a set to be really successful -- I'm not just talking about selling out, but having a sustained interest in the cards I think the number of individual buyers should be as large as possible. Here is what I would do -- and I know it's kind of a pain in the ass. . . Set a period of say 24 hours during which you collect names of interested buyers. Divide the number of available packs by the number of interested buyers and email out saying this is the max number of packs, how many do you want? If you have any left after that initial wave send out a second wave to everyone who bought the max in wave 1. Repeat until all packs are sold. Like I said I realize this is a bit of a pain, but it allows everyone to buy in a way that isn't stressful and maximizes the number of buyers.

I hope you go for it -- seems interesting and the world could use more sketch cards sets!

Good luck!

[triplefrog]

I think you have to ask yourself if you really want base cards. They are an expensive and time consuming part of production ( think of how long it's going to take you to collate and package the sets and how much extra postage you will have to charge ) and buyers usually end up binning or giving away surplus sets.

For me as someone not based in the USA postage costs are a major factor in what I buy and base sets really ramp up that cost.

[cmixer]

Okay, here’s the suggested updates so far. NextStep is generating an actual Budget.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7v37usXsAEEAxl.jpg

[Spider-Fan]

Im totally down with a base set, but i dont want 5 base sets and 5 sketches. Maybe 1 sketch and 3 base cards so every 5 packs makes a base set.

I like that the pernas often do packs and sets so people who only want one or 2 can get a full base set, but people who want 20 dont have 19 base sets they toss.

I think most of the artists will do it for $5/card if they want to contribute. If they dont, i cant imagine $10/card is going to change thier mind.

[cmixer]

Plenty of cost options.
I guess it makes the most sense to actually make 195 sets; and only include 1 base card per pack?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7-luCjX4AgIJ9W.jpg

[ViceroyCards]

One thing to add to your budget is your cost to ship sketches both ways to artists.

Your plan calls for 200 sketches, no artist can do more than 10 sketches. Optimum result is 20 artists, 10 sketches each.

That means your cost in sketch payment for each of the 20 artists is $50 ($5 per sketch, 10 sketches).

If you use all US artists, and ship USPS First Class Package rates, at 12oz or less for that amount of cards, you can send them for $3.85 to $5.15 a package each way assuming you provide the return label as well. That's also assuming the artists don't lose your prepaid labels, or ignore them and send them back $8 priority, etc.

So let's say everything goes perfectly and you live in the middle of the US, which cuts down on the higher shipping bracket of $5 each way, meaning you can get $4 each way for a total of $8 per artist. That means you're paying closer to $6 per sketch instead of $5.

Now, those number will jump up even more when you sign artists up to do 5 instead of 10, as some might only be willing to do 5.

An artist doing 5 sketches, $4 shipping both ways, costs you nearly $7 per sketch.

If you sign up any artists overseas, you're looking at minimum $13 shipping each way, usually more. A 10 card overseas artist bumps the per card rate to almost $8 per card. 5 card overseas artist costs you $10 per card minimum, before anything else is factored in.

And all of those numbers are the best case scenarios. Artist's lose labels. They ignore return shipping instructions. We've had artists send 5 cards back via overnight mail to meet a deadline, costing $25, immediately doubling the cost of having them on the set in the first place. Do you refuse to reimburse their overnight cost, paying them only the $25 for the 5 sketches completed, meaning they produced the sketches for effectively zero pay? :doh:

The safest thing to do when budgeting for sketch pay is immediately add $1 per card to the pay rate, as a sort of buffer. This will help you when things go wrong, such as lost shipments and many other things.

[cmixer]

Incredible feedback, thanks!

One thing to add to your budget is your cost to ship sketches both ways to artists.

Your plan calls for 200 sketches, no artist can do more than 10 sketches. Optimum result is 20 artists, 10 sketches each.

That means your cost in sketch payment for each of the 20 artists is $50 ($5 per sketch, 10 sketches).

If you use all US artists, and ship USPS First Class Package rates, at 12oz or less for that amount of cards, you can send them for $3.85 to $5.15 a package each way assuming you provide the return label as well. That's also assuming the artists don't lose your prepaid labels, or ignore them and send them back $8 priority, etc.

So let's say everything goes perfectly and you live in the middle of the US, which cuts down on the higher shipping bracket of $5 each way, meaning you can get $4 each way for a total of $8 per artist. That means you're paying closer to $6 per sketch instead of $5.

Now, those number will jump up even more when you sign artists up to do 5 instead of 10, as some might only be willing to do 5.

An artist doing 5 sketches, $4 shipping both ways, costs you nearly $7 per sketch.

If you sign up any artists overseas, you're looking at minimum $13 shipping each way, usually more. A 10 card overseas artist bumps the per card rate to almost $8 per card. 5 card overseas artist costs you $10 per card minimum, before anything else is factored in.

And all of those numbers are the best case scenarios. Artist's lose labels. They ignore return shipping instructions. We've had artists send 5 cards back via overnight mail to meet a deadline, costing $25, immediately doubling the cost of having them on the set in the first place. Do you refuse to reimburse their overnight cost, paying them only the $25 for the 5 sketches completed, meaning they produced the sketches for effectively zero pay? :doh:

The safest thing to do when budgeting for sketch pay is immediately add $1 per card to the pay rate, as a sort of buffer. This will help you when things go wrong, such as lost shipments and many other things.

[drestudios]

your printing costs are really high, these seem to be retail - you should be able to get much better rates