It’s time to get practical. You’re in a box and you can’t get out of the box, at least not for very long.
Just long enough to go shopping or go to the bank to visit what’s left of your money.
There you are in a box. Everybody’s in a box. We’re all in our boxes. We’re totally boxed in. That’s a Given.
Now, under those circumstances, where you can’t have ANY contact with anyone else — I’m in that “78 years old” category myself, and can’t contact anyone for any reason — what can you DO in that box to make a living?
Who will give you money to do that? How much, how often? Any repeat sales?
This guide is also available as a very large wall tapestry and as a king-size bedspread, shower curtain and other home protective gear.
This is an ink-and-wash piece that I did back in the early 70s. She is the Queen of Future Past, and serves as Protector in Dangerous Zones.
If ever there was a Danger Zone, this is it, so I’m bring her back out as a printed poster, wall hanging and more.
They range in price from about $80 up to $3,500 for the big wall hanging, not recommended for tiny houses unless that’s all you want to see when you wake up in the morning.
This is a powerful piece of room magic. It is now once again available at great need. You have only to ask, and I will ship.
This is NOT one of those Barsoomers or the Evil Ones from Planet Barbizon — she is the Queen of Laktia, a small planet on the other side of the galaxy, around the star just to the right of NGC 1138.
As a matter of fact, I did some time there as a mild-mannered reporter, if I remember correctly.
Often the memories get mushed together. Now that I think of it, I believe this is actually a pencil portrait of my ex-wife Zeldan, who ran away with my best friend.
He wasn’t my best friend until he ran away with my wife.
Okay, there’s an example of how you could make comedy work for you to make a living on the internet — put jokes and gags to work for you, build a website, build a business, build other folks’ businesses with humor — use comedy as a work tool.
This print is also available, by the way, as a metal print, canvas print or paper print, your choice. I also print on glass, plastic and weird objects.
Again, you have but to ask, and I ship while you shop!
This is just one of thousands of patterns I’ve developed for embossed jewelry disks and other applications of the embossing art. I just found dozens more, but I’ll save those for the time when you decide to attend an online embossing workshop for only pennies a minute.
Here’s a pattern you can copy for free — it’s an enneagram in Designer Metal, cheap to make and easy to produce by the dozens per hour, when the fit comes upon you to make them.
This is designed to go into a double crystal fitting within a fancy rope .925 sterling silver bezel, handmade in California, one of the last remaining such items.
Of course, I also make the bezels in gold, but that would mean the interior is also gold, for which I flatten out some .9999 fine 24k solid gold.
I take the gold flakes from the gold claim to the refinery, and they turn it into high-karat casting shot, which I melt and roll out into flats, which I then cut into disks.
They are then embossed and set into a solid 14k gold rope bezel, which sells for gold price plus $350, which today would be about $2000 more or less.
Not a bad way to hold gold, both magically and ergo-economically, against the Fall of Rome.
My dad Horace saved this piece that I did over a two-week period in 1949, when I had the measles and needed something to distract me so I wouldn’t scratch, and I didn’t.
What I’m getting at is that this two-week graphite project would never have happened unless I endured a forced two-week break from everything else, including schoolwork.
We didn’t have an internet, and taking books home was fine, but what was the assignment?
You couldn’t just call up the teacher and the school didn’t know, so there I was, with two weeks and nothing to do.
Draw, draw, draw, concentrate, concentrate, concentrate.
When you’re drawing in this technique, you can’t afford to take your attention off the paper for a single second — it’s all about shading, but it’s also all about interlocking shapes.
It’s also about form and substance, about actual MASS inside those forms, which is what I learned from several art teachers, including, believe it or not, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall.
My grandparents on my mother’s side were well-known collectors, the Steins. So that print is also available in a variety of sizes and presentations, my favorite of which is the giant 6-foot wide flowing scarf — I think it sells at $225, but don’t hold me to it, I’m too busy to fact-check that guess.
I’ll paint a full-leathers biker outfit with my gold fabric/leather paint, in the style to which I have become accustomed, the entire outfit sells for only $3,500 and takes a week to paint, a week to dry and another week to ship.
I’ve only made four of these, and am hoping that someone actually orders one.
These jackets are not available — they own them, plus the handpainted hats and belts and other stuff they use for performance gear — but I will make something just for you, the only catch being that I no longer use previously owned clothing, just new stuff from the factory.
I make jackets, coats, pants, slacks, even leggings, and they’re all for sale at reasonable prices.
Oh, don’t worry, I also have some for sale at ridiculous prices — sometimes too high, sometimes too low.
Oh, I even make shoes, runners, hi-tops and sandals with my designs and signature, ranging in price from about $50 to a couple of hundred.
I’m not advocating that you send for clothing I’ve handpainted. What I am trying to suggest is that you can do the same, go thou and do likewise.
You’ll have to paint the items on a dummy, not a person, and you’ll have to adjust everything to accommodate the situation, meaning no contact, all over the internet, and in that case, it’s all about shipping.
The internet is just a way of reaching people, and could just as easily be a magazine, newspaper, television or radio program or a podcast — actually what you’re engaged in is properly called “mail-order” and don’t you forget it.
Remembering that it’s all some form of mail-order makes it easy to master and easier to handle on a daily basis.
It’s all about the shipping. How fast, how safe, how cheap?
Okay, everybody you know is broke, so how about selling to the Very Rich? I sold this painting to a very rich person who gave it to two of the richest people in the world.
Rich people don’t quibble about price — well, that’s not entirely true. They quibble, they gripe and they bitch, but they pay.
A really rich person is willing to pay ANYTHING for what they want. The secret is making them want what you’re selling.
With that little secret, you could make a living.
I will reveal the secret of how to sell art to the Very Rich at my “Sell Your Art to the Very Rich” workshop.
If you miss the workshop, you can get a DVD copy of the video archive for the price of the workshop, $225.
Now, once you know the SECRET, there’s no reason why YOU couldn’t also run such a workshop.
I have done the math. If only 138,967 people take your workshop for full retail, you can retire in about a week and a half.
If you’re having trouble with reception or you think the internet might go down, you could invest in a little Collins R-392 24 volt DC receiver like this one, that gets every signal known to man and with the right antenna, can pick up a walkie-talkie on the moon.
I’m not saying the internet will go down, I’m just saying the internet MIGHT go down, and I don’t want to be without a radio when that happens, and that includes a little hand-held shortwave radio with an energizer crank instead of a battery, and it’s also solar powered.
You gotta be thinking ten steps ahead, like with food. You want food? I grow food, I store food, I will now, under the present crisis, ship food to our work circle members at need.
Okay, so that means PLAN AHEAd.
You need to send money to make raised beds for growing, lights for seedlings, culture rooms for mushrooms and fans for greenhouses, which need new plastic covers in order to work.
We can grow food the year around, if we have some financial help doing it, and we can get that food to you unless there is no shipping, which could happen.
We always made a practice of visiting our local museums, and it was an event that I would have sorely missed.
Today, no museum can be open, no crowd can form a line to see a new exhibit, no masses of people can cram themselves into a stellar dome to see a star show.
This can be remedied.
I have made many virtual museums. What I’m thinking here is that I could create a museum for you which you could then work to generate visitors, from whom you might make a small donation per visit, or sell something out of your in-game Second Life marketplace shop, but there are other potentials.
For instance, how about a guided tour?
This could be a group tour, which makes socializing possible, a necessary remedy for the mental health and well-being of people denied personal contact with anyone around them including family and friends.
This is tough for a social creature like humans to take.
I can hang out with my friends, because they aren’t subject to human illnesses — well, maybe a little, as you’ll see in “War of the Worlds”, but in general they’re pretty immune.
Naturally, they don’t and can’t visit all that often, usually once or twice a millenium, but we stay in touch through other means, mostly via the Akashic Records, of which I’ve filed several dozen.
Try to keep up. I do require you to think every so often.
You can’t run a store anymore, and it’s risky to bring things in through importers and expediters, so forget about actual samovars and hookahs, they just can’t be had and you wouldn’t want to handle them if you could get them.
But — what about a copper shop in Second Life?
Got nothing to do? How about a floatation tank, complete with inductions and guides and all sorts of stuff like that?
It’s gonna run around $14,000 to get the whole setup I have in mind, are you game?
Delivery is no problem and setup is easy for one person, with the new design. No engineer will visit, no salesman will call.
If you need a floatation tank, get in touch with me NOW, while there’s still time.
These Greek vases are available at only $1,500 apiece, and cannot be authenticated for less than $1,000 each, so I didn’t do it.
I have no idea why you’d want a Greek vase at this time, unless you’re very very rich, in which case, I want to talk to you about your investment portfolio.
Aren’t you glad you don’t own a food service shop right now?
Well, maybe you’re the owner of a Triage Center, in which case, you’ll be looking for masks — I have dozens, but they’re all dance and theater masks, do they count?
If you’re not rich your own self, maybe you know some rich people. I can offer a percentage if you turn them on to a sale of mine.
In short, I pay for new customers, and you should, too. Never be afraid to give it away — it comes back to you, which is another way of saying, “What goes around, comes around”, a favorite saying of my friend Mac Rebbenack, known as “‘Dr. John the Night Tripper”.
I’m selling off a lot of my autographed collectibles, things I’ve had around for years — there’s only so much of it I can show, and the rest is just gathering dust.
It used to be that you could wear the ammies in public and sell them right off your body, but these days, you’d be ill-advised to take these public, so I recommend you photo them and sell them online in whatever venues you think will work for you, including shopify, amazon, ebay, etsy and other sales venues.
It’s all about getting the parts of these things, so I’m not eager to toss them out there by the millions — we can barely get parts as it is.
Still, you might find it easier to sell ammies than ever before, due to the emergency — once someone puts one of these on, they’re not likely to take it off.
It is a powerful magical tool, and it will immediately command respect.
This Victorian photo could be part of a design for a Christmas card that you could make an sell in some form, maybe as a card, maybe something else.
The idea here is to L@@K for things like this. Make sure they’re out of copyright and clear, and then USE them to create things for sale.
Notably, the unique items require photography each and every time. The multiples don’t. Any time you can’t get the money for a unique, make it into a multiple, and get the amount from the total sales.
Sometimes, that’s the only way.
If you can’t get the money for a painting, print it and sell the prints for far, far less each one, with a total the same as if you’d sold the original for a fair price.
Like I said, sometimes it’s the only way.
Okay, time to wind this chapter up, I’ll meet ya in the very next chapter.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby