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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/16/2014 in all areas
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2 pointsafter spending the past 3 hours on the phone with Google Technical Service, I'll tell you everything I heard while its still fresh in my head. The old ways of meta tags and inserting keywords in the <head> tag of HTML are being phased out and will be dead very, very soon. ( if you don't know what that means, don't worry. you wont need it) There are 3 primary ways to get your website traffic up: 1 - Original, Organic content. If your selling products, write original product descriptions. Add category pages with descriptions about items in that category. write up how-to articles ( if that applies to you ) and so on. Put as much information and be as descriptive as possible. This is the what the bots that crawl the net are looking for. On that subject, add content on a regular basis. When the bots come back and search your site for content and it constantly finds new stuff, you will be bumped up the rankings of Google searches as your site is looked at as an active, changing site. 2 - Backlinks. This is where you have links to your site on other websites. As the bots surf the net and see that there are links on other sites that refer back to yours, that will bump you up the rankings. A good example would be making how-to videos on YouTube, and putting a link to your website in the video description. 3 - PPC Advertising. Pay-Per-Click is exactly as it sounds. You pay money to have your site pop up in search results, and only pay when someone actually clicks on your link. you can do this through Google directly and also on Facebook too. Social media is a great tool as well. I have a few niche markets, one of them being fire & emergency service graphics, decals, and promo products. I pay for likes on facebook, which increases my audience, ( currently a little over 20,000 likes) and when I post pictures of completed jobs, I get plenty of messages asking for me to quote something else. My ROI is fantastic. and every time I increase my advertising budget, I have not been disappointed I recommend setting up a Google AdWords account (PPC Ads) and calling customer service. They have great people and are very willing to help and explain things step by step. When I first started, it all looked like chinese and I really didn't know what I was doing. it took a few months of me being stubborn and wasting money to finally call them and figure out how to use it properly. as far as ecommerce, I use Shopify (shopify.com) The best part of this platform is the open end for software developers to make apps to integrate into the software to make it do exactly what you need to do. My favorite add-on was a product customizer where customers can customize decals and other products and see their item in real-time. once its finished, I can get a high quality render to print off exactly as the customer designed it.
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1 pointThere are a lot of people here asking for insight on how to price particular jobs, so here is a fool-proof way to gauge what you should be charging for a job. This is going to be long-winded, but there is a lot of information to consider. You could ask 20 different members what they would charge for the same sign, and you will most likely get 20 different answers. The reason: OVERHEAD. Everyone has different needs, and they charge accordingly. You need to calculate what it really costs you to make the sign other than materials & time. I was very guilty of this in the beginning. I knew what it cost to make the sign, so I would find out what comparable shops in the area would charge. I would drop my price to get the job, but I also did it because I felt guilty for charging so much, knowing what the materials cost. What I didn't know, is that I was leaving a lot of things out of consideration. EVERY SHOP IS DIFFERENT. You need to figure out what you need to make, to cover expenses and make a profit on each job. Its nice to do things for free or at cost, but you are in business to make money, right? So here we are. You have a customer that wants a nice, big 4' x 4' window graphic. Single color vinyl, and the old graphics need to be removed. Cake job right? These are my bread and butter jobs. Customer says that he wants a proof and an estimate prior to signing off on the job. The proof, a no brainer. But how much am I going to charge? You need to know your shop rate first. How much is my time worth? What bills do I need to cover? Am I paying myself? Am I paying employees? These are all important things to know before you ever give a number to a customer. First off, find out all of your monthly expenses pertaining to your business, MINUS MATERIAL, this is charged seperate. (spreadsheet attached at the bottom) **Home Businesses** - the best way to figure out how much of your home expenses to include in your business expenses, divide the square footage of area in your home devoted to your business, and divide that by the square footage of your home. that will give you a percentage, i.e: 250 sq ft / 1000 sq ft = .25 or 25%. This is not exact when it comes to things like electric and water, but it will get you in the right ballpark. Monthly Overhead: These items should include Rent, utilities, equipment loans, services (accountant, courier, cleaning etc.) Subcontractors, licenses, association dues, equipment servicing, software purchases/subscriptions, vehicle expenses/gas, taxes, insurance, & payroll. Now this is just a short list of major expenses incurred, that most might forget about that aren’t doing this every day to make a living. As an example, mine comes out to $2,415.00 Monthly Gross Wages: If you’re paying yourself too, (which you should) decide an amount you'd like to make per week, add 30% to cover taxes, and multiply that by 4.34 (the average number of weeks per month: 52 divided by 12) and you have your average monthly salary plus taxes. So, I pay myself (relatively cheaply) $500 per week + 30% = $650 x 4.34 = $2821.00 Add that all up, and that is your monthly "nut" that needs to be covered before you ever make a profitable cent. I know I haven’t covered material, but that comes into play later. So I need to cover $2,415 + $2,821 = $5,236 every month before I am profitable. Calculating Your Shop Rate: So now we have a good idea of what I actually have in the way of expenses, and I really need to make more signs to cover all that! Speaking of making signs, how many hours a week would you say you actually devote to actual sign production? These are your actual Billable Hours. this is a vital piece of information in calculating what your shop rate is. With a little bit of time, you can figure out how much time you are actually spending making signs. This isn’t difficult, it just takes a little discipline to jot down the actual time you start and stop while working on signs for a typical week. its not uncommon for a smaller shop (like myself) to have one person doing everything and only spend 15-20 hours a week actually producing signage. Most of us are not as productive as we would like to think we are, especially if you have a home business, all sorts of distractions get in the way. That’s part of life. But be diligent with your time tracking to find out how much time you actually spend producing products. On any given week, I spend 18-22 hours making signage. So we'll use 20 hours as the benchmark. Now, I don’t know about you, but I like my time off with family and friends. That needs to be accounted for. I take about 3 weeks off combined thorough the year for holidays, birthdays, and vacations. That Gives me 49 production weeks per year. 20 x 49 = 980 Annual Billable Hours. We're almost there! Its all a "simple" math equation now! Monthly overhead: $5,236.00 x 12 months = Annual Overhead $62,832.00 Divide your Annual Overhead: $62,832.00 / by your Annual Billable hours: 980 = Hourly Rate Before Profit $64.11 Add your profit percentage: 25% (you decide what you should add on) to your hourly rate: $64.11 = $80.14 - Hourly Shop Rate Now you know what each hour you are making signs should cost. Don’t sell yourself short, this is a service you are providing, and most of your price is going to be time, not materials. Back to the Customer Sign: Time: So, 4' x 4' single color vinyl sign with removal of existing and new installation. Simple logo and text design, time - 30 min No revisions, customer gives ok Set up cutter & time to complete cut - 20 min Weed & Mask - 20 min Travel to & from worksite - 15 minutes to, 15 minutes from Time to remove existing graphics & clean window - 60 min Set up and install new graphic - 30 min So The total time on this sign is 3 hours and 10 minutes x Shop Rate of $80.14 = $253.78 in labor Materials: ORACAL 951 - $1.27 Per Sq Ft x 16 Sq Ft = $20.32 in vinyl RTape ApliTape 4075 - $0.12 per Sq Ft x 16 = $1.92 in transfer tape Total material cost - $22.24 Just about done! Now you don’t want to just move material through your shop, and break even. You have to account for waste, so you mark up the material. I normally markup higher on small jobs and less on larger jobs. This one I'll do 3x material cost $22.24 x 3 = $66.72 Material cost to customer Add your time and materials $66.72 + $253.78 = $320.50 You now have an accurate price that takes into account all of your expenses, the time it took to make it, and the time it took to install it. When I first started I would look at this and say to myself "How can I justify over $300 when I know that it only cost me $20 in materials?" That was the un-educated, younger version of myself. There's more than just material in the price of the sign. Find your shop rate and don't be afraid to price accordingly. Your time is valuable. If a customer can't appreciate that, move on to the next customer. DON'T SELL YOURSELF SHORT! Dont forget to get the spreadsheet below Shop Rate Calculator.zip
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1 pointI was using some newspaper to pack an item today, it just happened to have the class of 2014 centerfold. So I glanced at it, then looked at it. 103 graduates, 13 boys had camo shirts on, 5 full camo, 2 face paints. 6 girls with camo shirts, 2 full camo, 1 face paint. Makes ya proud to be from the south.
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1 point48x96 is what I saw.
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1 pointWelcome from Mississippi.
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1 pointnot stealing dakotas thunder, but if hes busy and cant get to it, I can help you out too.
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1 pointWelcome from Washington State.
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1 pointThanks Folks, John Banner I have a friend that lives pretty close to you in Mountain City, Tenn. Mz Skeeter you have me beat by a few I guess which is ok by me Doug I can Imagine a lot of Companies do not like that. Wheel Horse Tractors are no longer made, the last one rolled off the Line 10 miles up the road from me across the line in South Bend, Indiana in 1999 or there bouts. Toro purchased the company in 1986 and owns the name but could care less as they dropped the name Wheel Horse years ago. Memorabilia and decals are made out the Ying, Yang. People have contacted WH and from what I have heard they say they could care less because they no longer support the tractor. I figure it is pretty nice of them to let people reproduce their stuff. Thanks ~Duke
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1 pointI've used dakotagrafx several times and his work is top notch. PM him and see what he says.
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1 pointWelcome
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1 pointWelcome from Southwest Florida
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1 pointwelcome from Indiana, and I'm probably older than you ....
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1 pointwelcome from another old timer!
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1 point<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote'data-author="HDN" data-cid="365080" data-time="1405474827"><p> I gotta move</p></blockquote> You'll love it other than the 110 heat index in the summer. God, guns and came what more could you ask for
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1 pointI gotta move
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1 pointThis thread made me $. THANK YOU mac6986
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1 pointSounds like my future customer base
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1 pointMy work and methods speak for themselves... I see no need to be limited by one software or one method. Where can we see some examples of your vector-rendering, mopar? edit: Sorry wf2ste, we jacked your thread.
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1 pointThe carriage is tight. I also noticed that there are little nubs/tails on all the corners of the text also they do go away with -2 offset but at that off set the text does not look correct. I will be calling them when I get home from work this afternoon. One of the techs still has me ruling out a few things that could be computer issues. I honestly doubt it is a computer software/hardware issue at this point.
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1 pointHaven't tried on water repellent but all the aprons I do are stain resistant and so far no failures.
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1 pointmy Homedepot get 110.00 for 10 sheets delivered. Uscutter gets 189.00 plus delivery.
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1 pointGet a Deposit FIRST! That'll eliminate many that had plans to short ya.
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1 pointI do it before cutting. It bothers me to layer something and be able see the lines of the back image through the top layer. I stroke the front image, copy it and expand the stroke (now there are two of the top image...new one being larger) and remove that new image from the back image with my pathfinder tool. I cut and layer with registration marks so the two layers blend perfect with each other. I am using Illustrator so terms may be different than other software but I will be happy to post a quick tutorial if anyone is interested.
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1 pointIf you want to match the swoosh, just take a good hi-res photo of it when you get it then do a trace with your program of choice. You'll have to clean it up some but shouldn't be too much work. Or here's some random stripes I found on the forums and pulled into a single file. Side Stripes.svg
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1 pointreal tree repeats ever ft or two - I like the bushwolf camo much better
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