Ron Lindeboom
2
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Michael Palmer] “To Ron’s comment, my creative input was only for the images and I must say this song didn’t drive me nuts like most do at the end of the day. I think Kate is extremely talented and it was a pleasure to work with her and her management.”
Now, Michael, I didn’t say that working with her wouldn’t be a pleasure. ;o)
As I said, your camera work and lighting were quite nice. I am just a guy with over 10,000 albums in my collection over a lifetime and I have heard so many songs and hooks that I can spot a lifted hook a mile away and where it comes from.
Kathlyn and I were once touring with a band that included the drummer from Stealers Wheel (Stuck In the Middle With You) and when I met him I asked him how he felt when he first heard Sheryl Crow’s big album. He smiled and said, “Wow, you spotted that, too, eh?” (Her “All I Wanna Do” is a total knock-off of Stealers Wheel, right down to the arrangements, instrumentation, hooks, ambiance and feel.) Many songwriters do this, which is understandable I guess, as rock is now over 50 years old and many of the hooks are tried and true.
While I loved your work, I will admit to be a bit hard on music and can be a sometimes crank when it comes to great wine and great music.
I hope you know that I was in no way insulting your work. As I said, your images are quite nice, Michael, and you should justifiably be proud of your work.
Also, music is so subjective that what is boring to one is noteworthy to another. That’s a good thing as it leaves room for most anyone — even me. ;o)
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
РAntoine de Saint Exup̩ry -
Tony,
You really are a whiney little one, aren’t you?
Anyone that doesn’t agree with you is instantly mocked and branded as an idiot or whatever other vitriolic pronouncement you wish to spew?
Well, let’s just say that your spewing days are over as you must pass the COW’s minimum age-level requirement to post here and you clearly are below it.
Goodbye.
Ron Lindeboom
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You win the award for being the 1,000th person to suggest a FAQ and who didn’t bother to look and see that there is already one.
We gave up on FAQs long ago. In fact, the leaders that used to update it so diligently have now stopped doing it as they kept referring people to it and people just kept ignoring it.
It is that human nature thingie. You know, the thingie about you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
Congratulations on your prize, Tony.
And in the spirit of Billy Mays, you get two prizes for the price of one for being so insulting to other users as well.
And you get bonus points for this one, too. Oh, and then there’s this one. And when you get called on things, you are oh so mature as in this post.
As the guy in that thread asked you: do you get paid to insult people on this forum or is it just a hobby?
Ron Lindeboom
PS: for those that think this whole response came out of nowhere and is an over-reaction to what was said in this post, I have removed a bunch of others that are simply not in keeping with our policies and have left this one as a warning to those that want to act like Tony. We do not tolerate people like this at the COW. They have a short lifespan here at the COW. Follow the links I have left. You will get the point.
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Why people are not giving you an easy answer, David, is because there is none.
There is no standard anymore.
Your job lay-off is proof of that, as experience is no longer as valuable as it once was.
The easy money — that is, the jobs that are gained by posting a price for the price shoppers — is gained by newbs just out of school or the kid down the street armed with a pirated copy of Final Cut and his Sharp DV camcorder.
The real money takes a strategy and a gameplan and the rate at that point is open to whatever you can get.
As Grinner told you, the base rate could be between $500 to $1000 a day — if you can get it. If you can’t, you can advertise those rates all day and they will not do anything.
Gone are the days when in all of Sydney there were a few real production and post production facilities and the market paid their advertised rate and got in line and awaited their scheduling.
That has given way to the school systems instructing class after class of those who want to be the next Spielberg and they have now glutted the market.
Your experience is an asset. Build a gameplan around it and sell that. If you make it about price, you are already out of business and just don’t know it yet.
Sorry to be hard on you but that is reality.
The real price is in your story and your ability to sell it within the context of a real relationship buyer’s need and how your experience is going to fix their problem.
Short of that, plan on advertising $30 an hour so you can compete against the 600 new students that graduated this year from the local high school who all fancy themselves filmmakers because there is no real industry left to give them jobs in the fields that fed their fathers and grandfathers.
I can’t make it any straighter than that, and I tell you that for your sake, not to hurt you.
If you think that the market cares one twit about people who open a door and hang a sign based on a hourly rate, you have been in isolation within the news realm for far too long, I fear.
I will leave it to others to be more diplomatic than me.
Ron Lindeboom
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Your work was nice Michael, but about three minutes into the song I had heard the chorus so many times already that the last minute made me want to reach for the scissors and cut the tape and edit a short version. Girls in nice underwear wriggling (to quote Gollum) for the camera do not make up for a repetitious song that needs to be two minutes, not four.
Your work? Very nice.
The song? Underwear didn’t make up for its limitations, I am afraid.
Nice lighting, by the way.
Oh, and for those that want to flame me for my opinion, I slipped on my asbestos undies — and oh, I don’t wriggle.
😉
Ron Lindeboom
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As Grinner points out, this question is so open-ended that it could be from nothing to infinity.
Nick Griffin over the years has pointed out the value in knowing who you are going to pitch and building your case for your rates around what you are going to bring to a specific need they have.
Don’t know what they need?
Than you haven’t done your homework and you cannot expect a passing grade — or to get the job — if you don’t do your homework.
The market is getting tougher and tougher.
There are two kinds of buyers: transactional buyers and relationship buyers.
Transactional buyers buy the lowest price when they need something and once they find a lower price than yours, they are gone without a word.
You do not waste much homework and study on transactional buyers. They simply are not worth the effort.
It is the relationship buyers that you want. They do not change suppliers like changing their daily uns.
Relationship buyers are worth the time it takes to learn about them and problems they may have which you can solve and make them look good. If you really can, you just may have a client for a long time.
To return to Grinner’s point: the transactional buyers are more the ones towards the “nothing” side, while the relationship buyers, as you may guess, are the ones closer to the “infinity” side of the equation.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
РAntoine de Saint Exup̩ry -
Thank you, Jeff.
One of the smartest men on the planet is Alan Greenspan (that doesn’t mean that I always agree with his politics or his worldview, because I am not one of the smartest men on the planet and so I reserve a little stupidity for myself), and he calls these times “The Age of Turbulence.” I like that description. It really captures the essence of the times we face.
Another name that is being kicked around is “The New Normal” — when describing the chaotic near-dizzying sense of hyper-competition that we are facing thanks to the internet.
Thomas Friedman, author of The World Is Flat (highly recommended), says that there are two kinds of countries: fast countries, and slow countries. He cites those that try to get involved in the new order of things vs those who try to use protectionism to protect themselves in the face of hyper-connectedness and hyper-competition.
As I read these kind of ideas, I come away from it all with the belief that too many of our kids got fed the Self-Esteem Kool-Aid and they drank every drop. But many of the kids from around the world were fed no such thing. The world doesn’t owe them anything other than what they can take from it. They are motivated. They are hyper-competitive because they want to earn a place on the world stage.
Too many Americans still think they have a God-given place on the world stage. To that, all I can say, is that even the Good Book says that you must “take the book.” It isn’t given to anyone.
The future is going to be a rough place for those who think that life is fair and that they are entitled to their place in it.
Like Alice down the rabbit hole, things keep getting curiouser and curiouser.
If only they’d stop shaking…
Ron Lindeboom
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[Mick Haensler] “With so many things going on I’m sure it’s hard to prioritize.”
Yes, so I just make ’em all, damned important. Simplifies things that way.
We would have had the magazine out on time but at the same time as getting all the artwork done for discmakers, and needing to build both the artist and label websites — along with getting the articles and magazine formatted to go online — we had to have server issues pop up that required Abraham to completely rebuild one of our banks of drives supporting some of our servers. It’s been nuts.
Thankfully, because it is all prioritized as “Most Important,” at least it’s been simple. ;o)
Ron Lindeboom
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Uh, might I suggest a site you may be aware of? This one.
Our REELS section supports up to 900 pixel wide (including 720p HD) files, up to 100MB in weight. No bandwidth limits, and it’s free.
Visit reels.creativecow.net for more details.
Ron Lindeboom
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[Jay Soriano] “I will use the Cow as an example so hopefully you can chime in Ron. =) I live in California(if that helps) and would like to build a website w/ a forum.”
Good luck with it, many many people have tried this over the years and most all of them have failed. We have now spent well over $3 million dollars building what you see here and have devoted over 14 years of our lives to this. We work all day long, for years it was 7 days a week, and a short day is 12 hours. Most of the days we put in over the years were 15 to 18 hour days. This isn’t easy and between the security attacks and server issues, bandwidth charges — which over the years have run as high as approaching $6,000 a month for just the traffic support alone (forget the admin, security and other costs) — this is not a cheap business to run.
People think it is but they are wrong. Kathlyn and I make less than everyone else that works for our company. You better get ready for that if you succeed, as to get and retain good people, you are going to have to pay them.
[Jay Soriano] “First off, would an LLC or incorporation be necessary? Currently I am one person but may possibly hire a few people if it draws enough traffic. If so, which one?”
We are an LLC that is recognized by the Federal Government as a corporate entity. That required a secondary filing, following the registration of the LLC.
[Jay Soriano] “Would I need to have 3 seperate trademarks for my name, logo, and slogan? I notice the Cow image has a trademark symbol. Is that just for the Cow image or does that include your name, and slogan?”
We have two marks, the “word mark” of the words Creative Cow — which is a federally registered ® trademark, as well as a federally registered trademark of the “Bessie mark” which is the orange cow. (Although we registered it in shades of gray as that legally covers all variants of color we would chose to use, whereas if we had registered it in color, the mark would have covered those colors only.)
More bad news for you, Jay: We have spent over $130,000 protecting the use of the cow marks in this industry over the last two years alone. A sure sign of your success is that people will want to steal your marks. You will have to protect them or lose them. An unprotected mark is as good as no trademark at all. If you do not have a record of protecting your marks, the courts will refuse to recognize your marks as legally binding.
[Jay Soriano] “If I had a name for example, Sony.tv would that be copyright/trademark infringement?”
As pointed out here, “cyber-squatting” laws have been enacted that will take you to the cleaners and kick your legal butt all over the playing field if you try this.
Oh, and if your new forums include a cow, be prepared to see how quickly you meet our legal team — who by the way, in our latest case defended and won 14 out of 15 contested points in our last case. It cost us, but Bessie is worth protecting in our opinion. I am sure that Sony feels the same way about their trademarks — and their lawyers are bigger and badder still.
[Jay Soriano] “Is an IRS EIN# required?”
By the time you get to the level where you will need this, you will have found out that it takes years to get anyone to sponsor you and give you anything remotely resembling any money enough to hire anyone.
Setting yourself up as a corporation coming out of the gate is just plain stupid in my opinion, as you will be paying a lot of costs that are not needed up front while you figure out that you are likely going to be one of the many many who try this because it looks easy and they think they can make a lot of money at it — and are dead wrong.
Sorry to have taken so long to address this but Kathlyn and I have been fighting internet access issues for the last few days and Abraham had to run up to the servers to fix a few issues we were having — again. It has been really busy here and that is why the magazine hasn’t been posted yet, even though it’s been done for a couple of weeks now.
If you think this is going to be easy, let me tell you straight: plan to spend HUGE amounts of time and money to try to do something that many have tried and failed to do. If it was easy, most of our competitors — which happen to be international publishing conglomerates wherein the small ones are approaching the billion dollar level while many are multi-billion dollar companies — would have buried us long ago. They haven’t, but the field is full of those who try and who have to give away their ads just to compete.
Be ready to find out what the word “commitment” really means. And tell your wife that she better get ready to work 15 to 18 hour days for nothing for years before you can guarantee that she’ll see a dime.
Now THAT is the reality of what you are really asking.
Have fun,
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
РAntoine de Saint Exup̩ry