Hey everyone. I hope all is well.

I have a very quick request from all of you who read here.

Many of you are very successful present or former business owners and a lot of you have helped me with the direction I wish to take the site. I think of Charlie (a true creative genius), Dave (my go to when I want to be totally and utterly overwhelmed with ideas man), My Aunt Pam and Uncle Gary, my cousin Chad and so on.

I have been doing a LOT of thinking as of late about how to increase our passive revenue.

The site provider I use is Squarespace. I like the company and I want to keep the platform…for now.

They provide a number of options for ways in which I can develop my offerings further.

For about 2 years, I have been using Printique as the mechanism from which I can sell prints. They are what is called a “print on demand” option. In other words, I print nothing and hold no inventory. When a customer orders, it’s simply printed with them and shipped directly.

I have sold $0 through this method. As such, I am going to unplug it and pull it down soon. I have been offering everything from simple paper prints to large scale Acrylics.

It’s one more thing to manage that is not proving fruitful.

It seems that no one is interested in purchasing hard copy prints on any medium in today’s world. Instead, it seems as though the digital age of photography has devalued expensive prints and instead has pushed the public to, if they are going buy a print, purchase high resolution image files (cheaply) to then have them printed at, say, Walgreens (not understanding the seriously poor quality issues in so doing).

Enter my request.

Squarespace has added the ability to have a Members Only area to the site along with selling digital products. I am linking to their page here which allows you to read about the various options in this regard.

In this area I have been thinking of a few things I could begin offering. More importantly what I could offer people for which they would be willing to pay a membership fee. Examples could include;

• Both Low resolution and High resolution files of my work. The former for use as screen savers and desktops. The latter for prints as large as you’d like to have printed.

• Video courses. Courses I could begin to produce talking about photography and lessons to become a better photographer or drone video/photography user. Perhaps access to recommended hikes and more.

• Motion Background videos. These would be 60 second to 2 minute videos (typically drone) which could be downloaded by churches for use during their worship song sets

For a long time, I had tried through a 3rd party site to sell Motion Background video. There are a few major hitters that sell these type of videos (through memberships) to churches. Penetrating that market seems tough. I sold none, though vast efforts had been put into setting it up, organizing it, and attempting to distribute.

With all of these new site options, there are 4 levels from which I can manage the “digital” and membership content. To do so will require a significant investment to upgrade the site in order to do so.

I’d like to hear from you through the comments section of this post (if you’re willing) to perhaps gain insight from your ideas and start a discussion based on your thoughts as to what you think would make sense or what you may like to see available for purchase.

Your input and time would be most helpful and of significant value to me on this matter.

Remember, you can see the Squarespace site references here.

rob out