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Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

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Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#111

Post by gm-conspiracy »

chrischen wrote: post #80
googletazer wrote: post #45

Great business, congratulations! Could you elaborate on how your shipping pipeline works from China to US/worldwide? Also if there were any problems shipping works of art, e.g. if I upload a picture of Starry Night, an artist paints that and it is shipped to me, would that cause a problem at the border?

In the early days, we used a startup called BoxC (now defunct I think) and took a more hands-on approach to shipping. They would drop off at or ship their their completed products to BoxC shipping locations which then handles fulfillment. The site actually functions as a marketplace now, and the independent sellers handle their own shipping methods.

What is the largest size possible (that can be shipped without an ordeal)?

Lynn Boggess, paints on large canvases (some over 4 ft x 4 ft) using cement trowels:

http://www.lynnboggess.com/

Obviously, that is probably unrealistic for shipping from China.

Also, I was interested in having some abstract paintings "copied", using some of the images from:

https://open_nsfw.gitlab.io/

The images are only 224pxx224px.

Would that be possible? The image resolution is not that big, but I would like something like 2 or 3 feet in length/width.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#112

Post by tim333 »

chrischen wrote: post #35
TekMol wrote: post #31

When the 2048 game came out, I quickly hacked up a 2 player version and placed it under the Instapainting.com domain for SEO purposes. Does this really work? Does Google think you are a better site for ordering paintings because you host a game? I tend to think Google is smarter by now. In fact, I would expect that Google almost exclusively relies on real user behaviour these days.

I'm fairly certain it worked. It's more like the page gets lots of link, thus lots of clout, and I link to Instapainting from that page, which means I transfer some of that clout. And Google can't classify Instapainting.com as a "photo to painting" site. It just knows it's a site that contains some content. Since Yahoo.com would get better rankings even with disparate topics under the domain.

>Google can't classify Instapainting.com as a "photo to painting" site

I was at a talk yesterday where the speaker from Google was saying that while pagerank is the number one input they use for search results, AI style machine learning algorithms are now number 3 so don't be so sure they don't pick up on that.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#113

Post by chrischen »

dkrich wrote: post #94

The hardest part was actually conveying that it wasn't just some print or photo filter, and this is something I still have difficulty with today. Curious about whether people care about this. As somebody who takes a lot of pictures, if somebody could produce one of my photos as a painting using Photoshop that was indistinguishable (or close to it) from a person, I really don't think I'd care. From a business perspect…

I can confirm there is a market for people who want real paintings, with textures, and not just digital pictures :).

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#114

Post by dkrich »

alexbeloi wrote: post #109
dkrich wrote: post #94

The hardest part was actually conveying that it wasn't just some print or photo filter, and this is something I still have difficulty with today. Curious about whether people care about this. As somebody who takes a lot of pictures, if somebody could produce one of my photos as a painting using Photoshop that was indistinguishable (or close to it) from a person, I really don't think I'd care. From a business perspect…

You can get photos printed on canvas very easily already, most online photo printing services will offer this option. The hand-made one-of-a-kind aspect is pretty much the sole distinguishing feature and selling point of instapainter.

Photos on canvas, sure. But to actually transform a photo into a picture that looks like an oil or watercolor or comic strip or what have you requires some manual use of software like Photoshop.

I'll just address the real reason- printing a high-quality print (like what you'd see on sale at an art fair) is far more expensive than exploiting cheap overseas labor. If you could produce a high quality digital print for less than $160, there would be a larger market.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#116

Post by niccolop »

dkrich wrote: post #94

The hardest part was actually conveying that it wasn't just some print or photo filter, and this is something I still have difficulty with today. Curious about whether people care about this. As somebody who takes a lot of pictures, if somebody could produce one of my photos as a painting using Photoshop that was indistinguishable (or close to it) from a person, I really don't think I'd care. From a business perspect…

The market would seem to be confirmed by the existence of the startup. Also as others may have mentioned the difference between an oil painting and a digital reproduction is quite large.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#117

Post by jeremybeckham »

I had actually been to your site for the 2x2048 campaign, but never went to the homepage. Seeing this and having just been on vacation with the family made me decide to order a painting for my wife of our children in front of a water fountain that we took last week. Good timing.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#118

Post by teh_klev »

dkrich wrote: post #103
gm-conspiracy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever seen an oil painting up close? There was an article awhile ago about using a 3d printer and scanner to make a "copy" of an oil painting. http://www.designboom.com/art/oce-3d-printer-creates-identic... Until Photoshop filters output STL files and color 3d printers come down in price, humans win.

No, never. I just asked about it because I heard the term once a long time ago, but to be honest I'm note even sure what an oil painting is. Is it like the same thing they put in engines to make them run smoothly? This was actually a question for the OP, since he has experience in it, but I'll bite. If you use high quality paper and printing, you can make extremely high quality prints that imitate all kinds of effect…

Oil [0] (and acrylic) paintings aren't just flat things like you get off of your high quality printer. They have a 3D texture which you can visibly discern and run your fingers over (but probably shouldn't) and feel the brush or palette knife strokes laid by the artist.

You really should get yourself to some decent art galleries; you'll then, I hope, discover there's no comparison between a hand painted or drawn picture to that produced by printer. Once you've viewed artwork produced by the human hand, prints produced by all those fancy effects and fancy papers become pale imitations.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_painting

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#119

Post by dkrich »

niccolop wrote: post #116
dkrich wrote: post #94

The hardest part was actually conveying that it wasn't just some print or photo filter, and this is something I still have difficulty with today. Curious about whether people care about this. As somebody who takes a lot of pictures, if somebody could produce one of my photos as a painting using Photoshop that was indistinguishable (or close to it) from a person, I really don't think I'd care. From a business perspect…

The market would seem to be confirmed by the existence of the startup. Also as others may have mentioned the difference between an oil painting and a digital reproduction is quite large.

For some reason people who have responded can't grasp that a question of why an alternative service doesn't exist does not necessarily attempt to imply that there is not a market for the existing service.

i.e., asking Apple circa 2006 why they only make desktop and laptop computers and not phones would not imply that there was not a market for desktop and laptop computers.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#120

Post by OJFord »

What's going on with the shipping pricing?

    > Standard delivery (approx 3 weeks)
    > Guaranteed (+$15)
    > Within 25 days (+$20)
    > Within 15 days (+$20)
3 weeks is 21 days, so assuming "guaranteed" just removes the "approx", why would I ever pay more for "within 25"?

Further, why would I ever pay for "within 25" when "within 15" is the same price?

Surely this can be condensed to:

    > Standard delivery (approx 3 weeks)
    > Guaranteed within 3 weeks (+$15)
    > Guaranteed within 15 days (+$20)
without changing the effective pricing; while making the options clearer.
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