Buddy World

v3rd3
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Re: Buddy World

Post by v3rd3 »

You need to get the buddyworldbooks content into the eyeballs of the customers. Your main customers are parents and grandparents that buy gifts for kids in the age group I believe fit the books.

Since you are a startup the closest source of promotion is friends and family. Next colleagues at work.

Assuming you have a limited promotion budget your best bet are self funding promotional items.

Off the top of my head.... your main page could have a link to 1 or 2 character images for visitors to print a "free" bookmark... if you recall our earlier discussion regarding launch I would not hesitate to print some bookmarks and leave them at the library or local cafes. The bookmarks should have a recognizable character with a copyright notice and the web address in easy to read lettering...

Next... select a merchandising provider like Cafe Press.... a few choice images will give your friends an opportunity to financially contribute by means other than subscription. If they buy the clothing and wear it, or have some kids wear it you have a billboard on legs.... The artwork should also have the web address on it.

Find a new business local to you that prints T-Shirts, coffee mugs etc and suggest (or have a friend suggest) that they might get some more business if they had wonderful partners like yourself, to joint venture on some product. They provide the shirts and the ink, you provide a piece of art.

Look for other local businesses that might partner/promote with you.

Start a small greeting card line using your characters. Find a local printer and negotiate a volume pricing deal where you get incrementally lower costs the more you print. Perhaps they could demonstrate their production standards with a small run of a couple of hundred cards at cost ...

Deluxe subscription.... all the rights of regular subscription plus .... an exclusive T-Shirt, mug ..... customers like to feel special... if they can feel a little more special than your other customers they will pay a little more for it.

Get your friends to contact parenting and seniors magazines to tell them of your wonderful books..... these magazines are usually looking for quick clips of interesting news and by their nature also assert good quality product from their readers view.

When you have the budget flyers or calendars with your characters will make wonderful gifts to day care centres in your area.

More ideas as I think of them.... good hunting.
splinters
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Re: Buddy World

Post by splinters »

Great ideas; all of them... :D

I already have a cafepress section but these tend to be more of the pepe movie spoofs; I need one dedicated to the 'kid' side of things really.

Calendar I have done (again, using the pepe stuff) and I am looking into postcards.

Some great ideas here though and I will run with a few of them. I particularly like the T shirt one and getting a few printed free for some artwork.... :worship:
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Steve
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Re: Buddy World

Post by Steve »

I'm sort of glancing over this so I'm not sure if anyones mentioned it before

I know they're e-books, but have you considered printing some sample books off and requesting if you could place them in say....the kids sections of shops, libraries, book stores and so on

Granted you'd probably need better materials than just plain paper...but you're a DT teacher right? There may be materials available?
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Re: Buddy World

Post by splinters »

I already have three of the books in print and I am adding at least one more this week.
They are on lulu.com and amazon.com

Search for 'Harold Paul Woodward' or Little Cloud and you should see them. Nice to see that a few forum users have left feedback... :worship:

I have around 10 of each at home which I use for promo purposes and I do sell the odd one on demand.
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Re: Buddy World

Post by splinters »

Hope this will do for now Prodigy... :D
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Prodigy
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Re: Buddy World

Post by Prodigy »

Is on Line :)

Good luck!
๑۩۞۩๑ prodigy ๑۩۞۩๑
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Finis
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Re: Buddy World

Post by Finis »

Good looking banner. Professional and fun.

I think that the various merchandise like T-shirts and post cards would sell better if you used your characters in scenes specifically designed to sell those items. Use the characters in funny cartoons and such appropriate and appealing to Buddy World's age group plus parents. Make them funny or interesting with no knowledge of Buddy World. Links, flyers, etc. distributed on or with the items, including Pepe, would promote Buddy World or Envision.

How about a card game like Gathering or Yu-gi-oh with Buddy World characters, style, and education. I'm not sure about the names but you know the games I mean. Lots of possibilities there for publicity, education, and earning money. A few thoughts:
- Use the scheme of those games, the baseball card scheme, where some cards are rare ... possibly expensive.
- Interactive play-online solo or multi-player (difficult I'd expect) for Buddy World members. Best way to control distribution of the rare cards and get money (feature helps sell subscriptions).
- Effective but fun educational ability would help sell it to schools.
- You can always invent new cards. Some only for the game and some from new stories and characters in Buddy World. That creates perpetual interest in the game.
- Physical merchandise. Real printed decks and T-shirts etc. specifically related to the games.
- The cards could have fun powers based on related characters and stories.
- The cards would have links or text to promote the site and merchandise.
- Pepe could have his own game. Maybe some copyright or trademark problems but generic movie themes could fix that. ("... I play my Sneaky Spy card which combined with Action Hero makes Pepe invincible! Bwahahaha ...")
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tahnoak
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Re: Buddy World

Post by tahnoak »

i've got a 6 year old, a 5 year old, and 2 year old twins. They can certainly be your walking billboards :-) and if there are other kids like them, they never forget a website address so put the website address on the shirt as well.
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Re: Buddy World

Post by splinters »

Have you managed to look at the site with your kids Tahnoak? Would be interesting to see what they think... :D
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Re: Buddy World

Post by splinters »

I got to thinking that the index page of my site (the first anyone sees) is a bit formal and doesn't really show what you might be getting. Looking at many kids sites they are really colourful and in your face, which I personally don't like too much but business is business!
So I am making the index page more like an advert to encourage visitors to take a further look.
Whadaya think of this? The text in the centre grows when you move over it but I need this page to be quite small so people don't leave while it loads.
Any suggestions? Do you think it does the trick?
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