You'd think that a lot of artists would be creating and sending e-cards. It's a suggestion that I've made and one of my readers wants to know how to go about doing it. Darned if I know. I'm just the idea-generator. 🙂
I found some e-postcards on Claudine Hellmuth's site.
Anyone out there making their own e-cards that wants to share how they did it? Or just a link so we can see them?
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14 thoughts on “Creating and sending e-cards”
I did e-cards about 9-10 years ago and think of them as very old fashioned now. I suppose they don’t have to be but I’d be surprised to see them much. Apple still have them, as does Howies (a favourite clothing company of mine). Sometimes I go send one when I’m bored to a far flung friend. But as a word of mouth form of promotion? Not really. The people I send Howies cards will never buy from them (too far away) and I don’t send Apple ones. I do, however, highly promote both brands and their products in many other ways. I’d rather share an rss post, send an entire html page to a friend (you can do this easily in Safari), click a “tell a friend” link, or just Twitter, blog, or chat about it in a forum. The internet is so “live” now, postcards seems static and a bit dead. But there’s no reason they couldn’t reinvented somehow.
On my old website, all images and photographs have a “Send as an eCard” button, for example: http://www.joekaz.net/galleries/2006/html/adirondack_chairs.html (I have yet to implement this on my newer site, http://www.joekaz.com). The eCard system has gotten a lot of use, but has not resulted in any business for me yet, so I’m not sure if I’ll put it on my .com site. The way I did this was to rather heavily modify the Postcard script from Jason’s Scripts so that it integrates into my online gallery. But people could use this script as-is for a less integrated approach, like the demo on that site.
I’ve tried them years ago as well, used Bravenet.net tools and programs and it was not the easiest code/layout to set up plus did not have the features I was looking for, like email capture and usage reports. If you haven’t yet seen Jacqui Lawson’s cards, here’s a link to her site (limited release animated e-cards): http://www.jacquielawson.com
I have an artist friend who sends me a Jacqui Lawson holiday card every year, but other than that I don’t open any e-card attachments, period, even if I know the person. Too much bad stuff gets loaded into them without the sender ever knowing about it. I don’t want my machine to become some hacker’s zombie. I’ve recently gone Mac and am planning to switch to Safari, which has a lot more graphical possibilities than Thunderbird. I’d also rather send an email or get people commenting on my blog. I also don’t send anything to my mailing list with attachments unless it’s by prior arrangement, like an image of a paintings they might be interested in.
My Mother-in-Law loves the Jacqui Lawson cards <http://www.jacquielawson.com/> and sends them to me for most holidays. These cards are very well done from a visual perspective (I wish her website was half as attractive.) I have a dot mac membership, and this allows me to upload my own photos into their card template. I like to send e-cards of my artwork to friends and family. I’ve thought about offering e-cards on my website in the past, but it seems to me to be a lot of work for very little, if any, financial reward.
SendCard is a free php script for adding eCards to your site. <http://www.sendcard.org>. It does require setup and you have to create a database on your server. It can be difficult unless you know what you are doing. I set it up on my cat’s website, and on a friend’s, and it took quite a bit of trial and error work. There is documentation on their website, so if you have had a bit more experience than me, it might be a snap for you. The two sites I set it up on are <http://www.ravenswingstudio.com/sendcard/index.php> and <http://www.earthlightimages.com/sendcard/index.php>.
For some reason, my previous comment had the urls deleted. The free SendCard script is at http://www.sendcard.org Site I used the script on: http://www.ravenswingstudio.com/sendcard/index.php It’s my cat’s website – the world-famous Nora The Piano Catâ„¢.
I’ve created e-cards for of 30 of my images that visitors to my websites can use free of charge. The links to those pages are on both sites at http://www.jerrygeistphotography.com and http://www.wyomingpanorama.com I just did a google search for the code to give to my web designer for creating these cards, uploaded my images and he did the programming. Feel free to visit the site and try them out.
I used to open e-cards and enjoy receiving them. Then spammers and hackers began using them for their own reasons, even to infect our computers with viruses. So there is only one person whose e-cards I’ll open. People do still like to receive cards and notes in the mail. So I spend the postage to send these to customers and special people in my life. I regularly send postcard updates about my business and products to customers and find the results are worthwhile.
I like hallmark e-cards at hallmark.com just type ecards into their onsite search engine XOXO Tara
John Cameron is launching an e-card site that makes it easy to send your art and even include a musical message. Call John Cameron at 386.597.6828 to inquire. http://www.1artcity.com/
I am offering free e-cards on my website (http://www.dorisjoa.com) with images of my own art. People can send them also with music (like Happy birthday and many other songs). I needed the help of a webmaster to do this on my website, but I like to offer them. When people get such an e-card they always are able to see from whom this e-card comes, so they know it is safe to open them.
All: I agree. Jacqui Lawson is exactly who I was thinking of when I wrote about these, but her name wasn’t on the tip of my fingers. Thanks for that. Tina, I think some e-cards are passé, but not if you make it original and about your art–like Jacqui does. Everyone likes to get these. Jerry: Good old Google! Nancy: Cool! Thanks for the link! Doris: I’d like to know how you did this. I couldn’t see them in an obvious place.
Alyson, I would like to share how to build this script for e-cards, but as I mentioned in my post I needed the help of a webmaster. He made the script and he has shown me how I can change the images. I am sorry when I cannot be a better help.