Update

I am sorry to say that we are going to have to delay the launch. I was hoping to have the site up 3 weeks ago for us to look over and then 2 weeks ago and my web guy keeps promising, but it is not ready. Now, he says it will be up Monday. I am confident it is going to be fantastic and he is doing a good job. I just don't feel comfortable saying I can launch us next Wed, when I have not seen the site yet. I want to be able to walk you all through the site before and make sure we have everything perfect. At this point, I think we should move the date to Monday, August 2 and that would mean we have a couple weeks to hammer out pricing and last minute details. Plus, at this point it makes more sense for us to change the themes at the start of each month. Also, you all wont have the pressure of having to have 3 more paintings in the middle of August. Hope you all understand!! It is going to be great and I appreciate all your patience during the development of this site. I will apply July's payments to August, so the next time you will need to pay is Sept (for those who paid me for July).

There has also been a new suggestion that I think we should all consider and might help us finalize the prices. In addition to the monthly themed paintings, we can have a gallery on the site where you can have different sizes and framed pieces and you can price them yourselves. This is optional, but it will be a way for you to have additional sales and have people view your work that might have taken more time and effort than the themed paintings. I am thinking 3 pieces each if you want to do this. So, we keep the themed paintings affordable and 20% goes to charity for just the themed ones and then we sell the other works in the gallery on the site. They still can go to your blogs and buy too, however you might get more exposure by offering your work on the Collective site. There is going to be quite a bit of accounting on my end for all of this, so we might want to consider a 20% commission for gallery sales.

As for the charities, if our percentage is going to be 20%, then I think we should support a cause for 2 to 3 months to have more bang behind our buck! I will write more on this in a seperate post as this is getting to be a lot to absorb.