It depends on what you're doinghvideoMay 16 2007, 04:58:54 UTC
It's really difficult to make meaningful suggestions when I doesn't know if you are looking for $500, $5000 or $50,000. Having at least some idea of the magnitude and the event in question would make it easier. If this is one person who has been in a Barbershop Chorus that won a Regional contest who wants to go to the International Contest (who just needs a plane ticket and living expenses for a couple of days) it can be down at the low end. If the person has been winning local Car Rallye events and now wants to go to Europe for the Rallye of the Acropolis we're at the high end or beyond(figuring many people, many weeks, transport of the car, etc. etc.).
As for the TOS - as others have mentioned, getting a clarification from LJ should be simple once you know what you are trying to do. If you make a post that is friends locked so that only people who have deliberately chosen to receive your posts get them, that should be OK for almost anything from a TOS point of view. (People might well drop you from their Friends list, but that's a separate matter). If you are thinking of going into one of the Community areas to advertise, that may well be prohibited.
Fund Raising likewise will be different at different ends of the spectrum. Selling stuff on ebay could fill the bill at the low end, but you probably need major corporate sponsorship at the high end.
Re: It depends on what you're doingjsloveMay 16 2007, 19:32:14 UTC
Well, that is true. I would prefer to bury specifics here rather than put them up front where it would be more likely to be seen as my soliciting for her.
My daughter has placed well in a model competition, and wants to go to the international of the same competition. We had a brainstorming session to figure out how to pay for it, and she asked whether she could try to recruit sponsors or sell ads using her LJ account. Thus this thread.
The basic dynamic here is not putting ads on LJ, which would obviously be right out, but rather her soliciting program-book ads and/or sponsorship (or other donations) so she can do something she thinks is cool but which she (and her family) can not (or arguably, choose not to) afford. So it's a mendicant sort of situation; the commercial activity is removed by one layer, but it's certainly apparent.
I am only partly interested in the formal determination by LJ, although it would be safer to ask; I am also interested in community norms (by which I don't mean LJ communities, but rather the group of people who are likely to hear about and care about this). I certainly got some opinions; they may not exactly address this situation, but they were pretty strongly stated.
Solicitation in my journal will be no more direct than this thread; if she decides to proceed, she would compose and post any actual plea or sales pitch in her own journal, which (since she is eleven) is mandated to be friends-only, because it's about her raising the money, not my doing it for her.
Her friends list (the only ones who could see it) is much shorter than mine, and none of the explicitly-offended comments are from people on hers, but I figured if I asked here, I'd get some reactions that people might not give to her face, so to speak, and also possibly suggestions that I could pass on or adapt. (She could read them here, of course; this is public.)
Another name for model competition is beauty pageant, which carries some pretty negative baggage for some, including her mother, persis. While I share some of those reservations, from what I have seen, this particular competition isn't too toxic, although it does in part involve bathing suits. Since it's for a suntan lotion manufacturer, that makes sense.
Some may take offense at the whole idea. The reason I am enabling this anyway is that she is so fired up about it, and passion is pretty much where you find it. She has also made some friends this way, and learned a lot, and it seems harmless enough, at least with supervision.
So, what is she doing?jsloveMay 16 2007, 19:33:51 UTC
This is more about her trying to get gigs (child model, ads or dramatic roles) than our thrusting her into the more negative aspects of body-image culture. Appearance discrimination is a fact of life, and can be examined from several sides, without being endorsed outside a limited context. I am not so politicized that I see it as universally evil. Net income from gigs, if any, is designated for her college fund.
The problem is that these competitions are self-financing. They operate on entry fees. Entrants can partly finance their fees out of whatever pockets are available (their own, or their family's), partly by sponsorship(s), and partly by selling ads in a program book for the competition. Ads bought by family members are generally of the attagirl sort (there are boys in this competition, too, but they are in separate categories).
We shot our wad on the part of the regional's fees that weren't paid for by the ads she sold. Having to sell the ads was definitely a good home-schooling topic. I mentioned in an earlier journal entry that she had an absurdly short period of time to try to sell ads, but she managed to sell 18 in three days, by getting a two-day extension.
Six ads were sold to friends and relatives. Six more were to businesses that I had identified as low-hanging fruit, and served as practice. The final six were sales to places she chose, which I didn't expect would buy, where she closed the sale, with me just in the background, driving and conferring legitimacy. If she'd had more time, I'd have driven less, and she'd have pounded more pavement.
So the bottom line here is that she has less than a month, some of which is now gone, to raise somewhere between $800 and $2,400. If she doesn't hit the minimum, she'll have to give it all back, or if that weren't possible, such money might be held for a future similar opportunity, or otherwise go into her college fund. Any money beyond the minimum would determine whether she can enter optional categories, e.g., tropical wear, formal, best smile, program book cover, photogenic, and so on.
I think she is doomed, but if she can raise enough money, I've told her she can enter.
We are in the middle, but toward the low end. While major corporate sponsorship seems like overkill, I have no idea how to go about soliciting corporate sponsorship. I mean, one can just tilt at the windmill, and learn the hard way, but given a deadline, advice from the cluefull could be a big help.
Selling on eBay might be affected by having only until June 1st to get the application into the mail (postmark deadline), but it's more limited by creativity and resources. Selling anything tangible requires having the asset to sell, after all. There might be interesting wrinkles to this that are not obvious to me. Can one auction services? Sponsorships? And how to get anyone to bid?
"I'll wash your car every week for a year, provided that you live within X miles of here" doesn't seem compelling. If she can auction off donated goods or services, the problem is that the auction has to start PDQ, which doesn't leave much time to solicit donations (other than, say, from me).
The only particularly valuable service I can think to donate, frankly, is 78-rpm record restoration, which means remastering and transferring to CD. I have some really cool software for restoring records, Sonic Solutions NoNoise (significantly better than, say, Bias SoundSoap Pro). This service is worth $100 or more per side, but the market for it is not large.
Perhaps more thought on my part will bring further inspiration, but additional suggestions would be welcomed.
Re: Suggestions so farddaMay 16 2007, 20:43:17 UTC
...is 78-rpm record restoration, which means remastering and transferring to CD.
Does this apply to other than 78s? I have some regular LPs (and some 45s) that I'd like digitized and I suspect I'm not alone. Would that be the same price as the 78s or less?
33/45 restoration/transferjsloveMay 16 2007, 21:21:58 UTC
It's certainly something I do. However, it's a lot less demanding, and so not as valuable.
In this age of CDs, which neither click nor pop nor hiss, standards are high. The worse a recording is, the more listener fatigue it causes, even though it may still be quite enjoyable. And of course, unlike tapes and records, CDs are not degraded by being played, though they are still fragile, and can wear out from being handled or stored poorly.
I can often make a 78-rpm recording sound like it was recorded recently, albeit in mono. In addition to clicks and pops, 78s have a characteristic bacon-frying sound which is actually the fractal distribution of progressively tinier clicks and pops. It is so cool to hear what resynthesis can do to remove that, although it must be applied delicately to avoid also removing percussive elements (e.g., drums) from the recording. Most 78s I have heard have a lot less percussion than more recent recordings, e.g., rock and roll.
Software sufficient to reduce tape hiss or deal with the minor clicks and pops of a vinyl record in good condition is available for a lot less than NoNoise cost me ($8,000 in 1996, a discounted price because it was included with a hardware purchase). If you choose to tolerate the noise I would remove, all you need is a computer with a CD burner, a turntable, and a pre-amp. You can buy stand-alone CD recorders that eliminate the need for the computer.
I used to charge less, but it takes a fair bit of time to do this. As a commercial service, then, I would change $30 per side in perfect condition, which is just a transfer and manually adding track marks, ranging to $50 for a side that needed significant repair work, to $100 per side that needed as much work as a 78 side typically does. That's for an album side, which might be 18-22 minutes long, while a 78 is only 3-5 minutes per side.
As a fixed-price deal, i.e., if I couldn't charge by the condition of the record, I'd say $50 per side, and if the record were in very bad shape, I'd do the best I could in an hour of restoration work (which can be extremely tedious).
A 45, would be even less. $5 per side in perfect condition, ranging to more depending on how much work it needed. If I had to do it fixed price, though, I'd say $15 per side, expecting it to have been played a lot but not near destruction.
These one-off prices are outrageous compared to simply buying a new recording on a mass-produced CD, if it were available. I get these prices for items you can't find on CD, usually of high sentimental value. In the 1940s, there was one-off 78-rpm technology which you could use to send audio postcards or make personal recordings. What I usually get are those, of deceased relatives. I have also been asked to transfer albums that will never get to CD, such as recordings of college a cappella groups from the 1960s.
Re: 33/45 restoration/transferddaMay 16 2007, 22:35:33 UTC
I get these prices for items you can't find on CD, usually of high sentimental value.
The albums and 12" 45s I would consider paying to have digitized are indeed ones not available through any other means that I've found; for some of these recordings I've looked pretty hard, too. I do have some cheap digitization equipment but it would include getting my turntable reconditioned (or buying a new one) and then spending the time to record everything. If I can get this music on CD as well as help out friends, that might well be worth it.
Note that most, if not all, of my records are in very good shape and I don't have that many I would need converted.
Re: Suggestions so farteddywolfMay 16 2007, 22:09:23 UTC
I think talking to the marketing departments of some of those corporations might yield some fruit, or at least food for thought. If they don't have the latitude for something like this, they should at least know who in the company would be the person to talk with.
Re: Suggestions so farjsloveMay 16 2007, 23:27:12 UTC
That certainly makes sense, but...
This may seem utterly lame, but before you can talk to the marketing departments of corporations, you have to know which corporations. I'm stuck there at the moment.
When selling ads, you walk in and talk to whomever is walking point dealing with the public. They will hand you off to an appropriate person more often than telling you to take a hike.
Should I take it you suggest initially picking corporations at random and perhaps relying on them for suggestions of more suitable corporations or at least the attributes of same?
Re: Suggestions so farteddywolfMay 17 2007, 04:11:13 UTC
I would make two suggestions: first, think of corporations whose products and services you use, like and respect. Those corporations will at the very least be companies you wouldn't mind being affiliated with, and if they make a good product then they know some of the power of advertising via word of mouth. Don't approach them with a "You Owe Me" attitude; approach with, "I like and respect what you make and do; I would like your sponsorship now and hope to represent you further in the future." Second, if you run out of corporations whose products you like and respect from personal use, look for companies that have a reputation you like. Companies like knowing when people look at them fondly even if they aren't customers (yet). They will respect that this is the reason you are approaching them for help as opposed to those crumb-bums down the street at, say, Puzzler Tower. 2.5) if you are doing this beauty show for products associated with a beach, other companies that make products and services that are also beach related might be good - anything from clothing stores travel agencies to CarpaCoca Cola.
Once you have those lists, winnow them down a little by proximity and by size. Remember that a smaller shop may have less money available, but is also more likely to be able to make a quick decision.
Re: Suggestions so farteddywolfMay 17 2007, 04:12:04 UTC
And yes, always be willing to ask them for a suggestion or a reference. Learning good. If they wish you well but can't suggest anybody else, at least thank them for their well-wishes.
As for the TOS - as others have mentioned, getting a clarification from LJ should be simple once you know what you are trying to do. If you make a post that is friends locked so that only people who have deliberately chosen to receive your posts get them, that should be OK for almost anything from a TOS point of view. (People might well drop you from their Friends list, but that's a separate matter). If you are thinking of going into one of the Community areas to advertise, that may well be prohibited.
Fund Raising likewise will be different at different ends of the spectrum. Selling stuff on ebay could fill the bill at the low end, but you probably need major corporate sponsorship at the high end.
Reply
My daughter has placed well in a model competition, and wants to go to the international of the same competition. We had a brainstorming session to figure out how to pay for it, and she asked whether she could try to recruit sponsors or sell ads using her LJ account. Thus this thread.
The basic dynamic here is not putting ads on LJ, which would obviously be right out, but rather her soliciting program-book ads and/or sponsorship (or other donations) so she can do something she thinks is cool but which she (and her family) can not (or arguably, choose not to) afford. So it's a mendicant sort of situation; the commercial activity is removed by one layer, but it's certainly apparent.
I am only partly interested in the formal determination by LJ, although it would be safer to ask; I am also interested in community norms (by which I don't mean LJ communities, but rather the group of people who are likely to hear about and care about this). I certainly got some opinions; they may not exactly address this situation, but they were pretty strongly stated.
Solicitation in my journal will be no more direct than this thread; if she decides to proceed, she would compose and post any actual plea or sales pitch in her own journal, which (since she is eleven) is mandated to be friends-only, because it's about her raising the money, not my doing it for her.
Her friends list (the only ones who could see it) is much shorter than mine, and none of the explicitly-offended comments are from people on hers, but I figured if I asked here, I'd get some reactions that people might not give to her face, so to speak, and also possibly suggestions that I could pass on or adapt. (She could read them here, of course; this is public.)
Another name for model competition is beauty pageant, which carries some pretty negative baggage for some, including her mother, persis. While I share some of those reservations, from what I have seen, this particular competition isn't too toxic, although it does in part involve bathing suits. Since it's for a suntan lotion manufacturer, that makes sense.
Some may take offense at the whole idea. The reason I am enabling this anyway is that she is so fired up about it, and passion is pretty much where you find it. She has also made some friends this way, and learned a lot, and it seems harmless enough, at least with supervision.
Reply
The problem is that these competitions are self-financing. They operate on entry fees. Entrants can partly finance their fees out of whatever pockets are available (their own, or their family's), partly by sponsorship(s), and partly by selling ads in a program book for the competition. Ads bought by family members are generally of the attagirl sort (there are boys in this competition, too, but they are in separate categories).
We shot our wad on the part of the regional's fees that weren't paid for by the ads she sold. Having to sell the ads was definitely a good home-schooling topic. I mentioned in an earlier journal entry that she had an absurdly short period of time to try to sell ads, but she managed to sell 18 in three days, by getting a two-day extension.
Six ads were sold to friends and relatives. Six more were to businesses that I had identified as low-hanging fruit, and served as practice. The final six were sales to places she chose, which I didn't expect would buy, where she closed the sale, with me just in the background, driving and conferring legitimacy. If she'd had more time, I'd have driven less, and she'd have pounded more pavement.
So the bottom line here is that she has less than a month, some of which is now gone, to raise somewhere between $800 and $2,400. If she doesn't hit the minimum, she'll have to give it all back, or if that weren't possible, such money might be held for a future similar opportunity, or otherwise go into her college fund. Any money beyond the minimum would determine whether she can enter optional categories, e.g., tropical wear, formal, best smile, program book cover, photogenic, and so on.
I think she is doomed, but if she can raise enough money, I've told her she can enter.
Reply
Selling on eBay might be affected by having only until June 1st to get the application into the mail (postmark deadline), but it's more limited by creativity and resources. Selling anything tangible requires having the asset to sell, after all. There might be interesting wrinkles to this that are not obvious to me. Can one auction services? Sponsorships? And how to get anyone to bid?
"I'll wash your car every week for a year, provided that you live within X miles of here" doesn't seem compelling. If she can auction off donated goods or services, the problem is that the auction has to start PDQ, which doesn't leave much time to solicit donations (other than, say, from me).
The only particularly valuable service I can think to donate, frankly, is 78-rpm record restoration, which means remastering and transferring to CD. I have some really cool software for restoring records, Sonic Solutions NoNoise (significantly better than, say, Bias SoundSoap Pro). This service is worth $100 or more per side, but the market for it is not large.
Perhaps more thought on my part will bring further inspiration, but additional suggestions would be welcomed.
Reply
Does this apply to other than 78s? I have some regular LPs (and some 45s) that I'd like digitized and I suspect I'm not alone. Would that be the same price as the 78s or less?
Reply
In this age of CDs, which neither click nor pop nor hiss, standards are high. The worse a recording is, the more listener fatigue it causes, even though it may still be quite enjoyable. And of course, unlike tapes and records, CDs are not degraded by being played, though they are still fragile, and can wear out from being handled or stored poorly.
I can often make a 78-rpm recording sound like it was recorded recently, albeit in mono. In addition to clicks and pops, 78s have a characteristic bacon-frying sound which is actually the fractal distribution of progressively tinier clicks and pops. It is so cool to hear what resynthesis can do to remove that, although it must be applied delicately to avoid also removing percussive elements (e.g., drums) from the recording. Most 78s I have heard have a lot less percussion than more recent recordings, e.g., rock and roll.
Software sufficient to reduce tape hiss or deal with the minor clicks and pops of a vinyl record in good condition is available for a lot less than NoNoise cost me ($8,000 in 1996, a discounted price because it was included with a hardware purchase). If you choose to tolerate the noise I would remove, all you need is a computer with a CD burner, a turntable, and a pre-amp. You can buy stand-alone CD recorders that eliminate the need for the computer.
I used to charge less, but it takes a fair bit of time to do this. As a commercial service, then, I would change $30 per side in perfect condition, which is just a transfer and manually adding track marks, ranging to $50 for a side that needed significant repair work, to $100 per side that needed as much work as a 78 side typically does. That's for an album side, which might be 18-22 minutes long, while a 78 is only 3-5 minutes per side.
As a fixed-price deal, i.e., if I couldn't charge by the condition of the record, I'd say $50 per side, and if the record were in very bad shape, I'd do the best I could in an hour of restoration work (which can be extremely tedious).
A 45, would be even less. $5 per side in perfect condition, ranging to more depending on how much work it needed. If I had to do it fixed price, though, I'd say $15 per side, expecting it to have been played a lot but not near destruction.
These one-off prices are outrageous compared to simply buying a new recording on a mass-produced CD, if it were available. I get these prices for items you can't find on CD, usually of high sentimental value. In the 1940s, there was one-off 78-rpm technology which you could use to send audio postcards or make personal recordings. What I usually get are those, of deceased relatives. I have also been asked to transfer albums that will never get to CD, such as recordings of college a cappella groups from the 1960s.
Reply
The albums and 12" 45s I would consider paying to have digitized are indeed ones not available through any other means that I've found; for some of these recordings I've looked pretty hard, too. I do have some cheap digitization equipment but it would include getting my turntable reconditioned (or buying a new one) and then spending the time to record everything. If I can get this music on CD as well as help out friends, that might well be worth it.
Note that most, if not all, of my records are in very good shape and I don't have that many I would need converted.
Reply
Reply
This may seem utterly lame, but before you can talk to the marketing departments of corporations, you have to know which corporations. I'm stuck there at the moment.
When selling ads, you walk in and talk to whomever is walking point dealing with the public. They will hand you off to an appropriate person more often than telling you to take a hike.
Should I take it you suggest initially picking corporations at random and perhaps relying on them for suggestions of more suitable corporations or at least the attributes of same?
Reply
Second, if you run out of corporations whose products you like and respect from personal use, look for companies that have a reputation you like. Companies like knowing when people look at them fondly even if they aren't customers (yet). They will respect that this is the reason you are approaching them for help as opposed to those crumb-bums down the street at, say, Puzzler Tower.
2.5) if you are doing this beauty show for products associated with a beach, other companies that make products and services that are also beach related might be good - anything from clothing stores travel agencies to CarpaCoca Cola.
Once you have those lists, winnow them down a little by proximity and by size. Remember that a smaller shop may have less money available, but is also more likely to be able to make a quick decision.
Reply
Reply
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