I'm not convinced that Postcards are that big an opportunity, unlike Xmas cards there isn't a tradition of buying charity ones. I'm sure we could do an awesome pack of "seasonal greetings cards" and there is a well developed infrastructure around that for us to get into.
Where there may well be a gap in the market for Postcards is for many local areas with a little bit of tourism but not enough to support Postcard production in the era of high volume printing. So tourists to London can find Postcards of Big Ben and Tower bridge in hundreds of outlets. But the combination of Commons as source of images and the revolution in print economics does give us the opportunity to create a Postcard service. I don't know what the minimum economic run would be for it to be interesting, but I suspect it would be within reach of some individual shops. I'm thinking in terms of a webservice that allows people to say where they are and offers local pictures (from commons) but with a category and search based option that gives access to everything else. This could let people choose a bunch of designs and volumes, and buy by credit card or Paypal with delivery by Post.
The only drawback, and it is a big one, is that anyone could launch a rival service and undercut us. Unlike Xmas cards there is no tradition of choosing charity ones where it comes to Postcards.
Regards
WSC
On 13 September 2011 00:34,
<iain.macdonald@wikinewsie.org> wrote:
Add a 'your pic here' line under the postcard photo?
Might it be possible, also, to arrange people - retailers, say - to order themselves ANY Commons image with that tagline beneath as a postcard? Maybe have images verified first somehow, to prevent copyright abuse. Massive infrastructure and time work, but blue sky and all that.
Iain
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Suggestions for Merchandise
<
wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
I don't know how much use postcards, even Wikimedia postcards, would get, but some of the Commons POTYs would be great for that kind of thing. How we get past "look at the pretty picture" to "upload your own", I'm not sure.
In my (relatively limited) experience, it's not the smallest sizes that are left over! ;) What else makes a good platform for advertising Commons?
Harry
From: Richard Symonds <chasemewiki@gmail.com>
To: 'Harry Mitchell' <hjmitchell@ymail.com>; wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, 12 September 2011, 21:08
Subject: RE: [Wikimediauk-l] Suggestions for Merchandise
Tshirts are good, but you do have to get every size, and invariably there’ll be loads of “extra extra” sizes left over. Something that’d encourage people to upload to commons would be good though – I did get a WM Commons Christmas card last year from Mr Forrester! Postcards would be cheap, easy to make, and we’ve got some wonderful pictures. But would they be good at getting people to upload?
PS – I’m loving these ideas. Flip-flops especially!
How about t-shirts or something that encourage people to upload their images to Commons? I've long thought that more people *would* if they knew about it.
From: George Watson <george.watson@wikinewsie.org>
To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, 12 September 2011, 18:44
Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Suggestions for Merchandise
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 5:00 PM, Richard Symonds <chasemewiki@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > That said, we can worry about the specific legalities later - I don't want
> > to get bogged down in them now.
>
> The idea that there may even be any sort of legal dimension hadn't
> occurred in even the most over-active and alert synapses of my fevered
> brain! So, I don't know how I managed to plant that seed...
>
> No, I was just trying to picture the merchandise, so whether it was
> going to have a UK mention on it or just be plain Wikimedia was about
> picturing it.
>
> > I'm hoping for some blue-sky ideas. If you
> > could hand something to someone in the street - one thing - that would make
> > them edit Wikipedia, what would you like it to be? Something that makes the
> > person go "hmmm..." or "ooh!"...
>
> WereSpiel's ideas of mousemats and mugs are tried and tested but I
> think none the worse for that. If it were within our abilities to
> revolutionise merchandising I suspect we'd be typing our emails on
> solid gold keyboards.
>
> But, OK, blue-sky and would really "make me edit"?
>
> I think the one thing that would most make me want to edit would be to
> see something wrong or that I disagreed with. So it could be a typo.
> You'd have a badge saying "this is a badje [edit]" or "this is a
> quayring [edit]" or "this is a mugg [edit]".
>
> Or, more provocatvely, "Margaret Thatcher was the world's most
> compassionate woman. [edit]" or "Wayne Rooney deserves every penny he
> gets. [edit]". The trick with those, though, is identifying people who
> are likely to disagree.
>
> Some places do promotional USB drives now. I'm trying to think what
> one could pre-load them with, but I'm coming up blank. Maybe it could
> have all of Wikipedia's unusual articles on as seen here...?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WEIRD
>
> Bod
>
> _______________________________________________
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> wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
>
The biggest problem with that is NPOV - something like that implies that
WMUK supports the opposite position (i.e., Thatcher lacked compassion,
Rooney doesn't deserve his money). That perhaps isn't what we want.
It might also be a good idea to look at producing merchandise for other
projects as well - they could do with the exposure more than enWP, I'm
sure.
--
Regards,
George Watson
<http://dendodge.me>
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