Yeah, it's going to be fun reading all the posts across the holiday, "giving" season.
Nobody is giving. It's a total fucking illusion. I just figured this one out myself. It's a huge wank fest of supporters.
That's a totally fuckin dry well.
I don't for know sure! But I'm guessing the givers are fucking right off, right around now.
So OP, when your industry community starts to fuckin choke, and you start to wonder why all your jobs disappeared, you can go and try hunting givers all the fuck over again. They are the most morally carefree.
Moral wars. Peace!!!!
For those of you who have NO IDEA what selling out means, it has everything to do with staying true to your spirits. It has NOTHING TO DO WITH MONEY!!!
SO if you're halfway there, there is NO FUCKING TURNING BACK. You had best rinse the mother fucker out.
Anyways, don't get me wrong. OP, you wouldn't have a community of givers and or supporters if people didn't believe in you.
People stop believing when you "sell out".
So... not everyone believes the same thing.
For instance, that 99designs was considered selling out because it fundamentally DESTROYED the graphic designer industry. They gave away 90% of thier jobs for a fist full of non sustainable ones, which were only there to feed a money desperate web and marketing boom. Well that shit levels out. And what jobs are left? Not too fucking many by comparison.
There are absolutely NO easy answers when digital assets are the issue.
Fuck, I even heard macromedia collapsed, and adobe is hanging on by a thread.
My first graphic design and digital media business. We kept our heads barely above water for 3 years, and it took us two years to legally buy copies of photoshop.
That used to be a barrier to entry I guess. Nobody is paying adobe anymore, only my opinion.
ALOT of us just so happen to know what production really costs and where the money is.
Don't get me wrong. 50 years ago a printing press cost a fucking fortune. Now we all have cheap shit disposable ones sitting on our usb hub. Even though they are superior for certain applications, I say cheap shit because the appreciation or value of such things is no longer a barrier to entry.
WTF does after efffects cost anyways? Last I checked it was something like 2,000.00 or something? Maybe it's come down?
How much is flint, smoke, or flame?
What about final cut? How about avid? I think avid is dead and gone.
Anyways... expand your horizons... Think of a career in street art graffiti. Paint and real estate is super fucking expensive and rare.
Look at things this way OP. Whatever you invest, you can write it off as tax breaks on your business. Free computers! Yay!
You want to know what makes me throw up? I mean absolutely. This shit is the craziest shit I have EVER seen.
https://www.fiverr.com/
Fuck Etsy, Fuck whatever else. That's $5.00 of mass dehumnization and ABSOLUTE SELL OUT.
There's your industry OP. $5.00 for a logo that anyone with half a brain could have put a downpayment on a house with a decade ago.
https://www.fiverr.com/categories/graphics-design/creative-logo-design/#layout=auto&page=1
I REPEAT...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat
The term proletariat is used in Marxist theory to name the social class that does not have ownership of the means of production and whose only means of subsistence is to sell their labour power[10] for a wage or salary. Proletarians are wage-workers, while some refer to those who receive salaries as the salariat. For Marx, however, wage labor may involve getting a salary rather than a wage per se. Marxism sees the proletariat and bourgeoisie (capitalist class) as occupying conflicting positions, since workers automatically wish their wages to be as high as possible, while owners and their proxies wish for wages (costs) to be as low as possible.