Prescott Photographer Rich Charpentier

Talk about a way to raise funds!

Richard Charpentier Airstream, Notes from Rich Leave a Comment

Prescott Photographer Rich Charpentier

Okay, the weekend had more then nothing going on….Another fun photo shoot

Ah, welcome back everyone!  I hope you had a fantastic holiday weekend.  Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year.  And what did I do this year?

Nothing.

Doing nothing is sometimes a great thing.  I left the e-mail turned off, and I didn’t think about work or anything serious at all.  A truly relaxing, but extremely cold, weekend.  I hope you all relaxed as well.

Nothing

Over the weekend I wasn’t the only one doing nothing.  The folks over at “Cards Against Humanity,” did nothing too.  For Black Friday they offered the most unique online sale I’ve ever seen.  They offered “nothing” for sale.  From their site they said the following:

This year we offered our customers the ultimate Black Friday experience – the ability to buy nothing from us for $5. We took our entire store offline, and put up a simple payment form where people could give us $5.

11,248 people gave us $5, and 1,199 people gave us more than $5 by filling out the form more than once. One enthusiastic fan gave us $100. In the end, we made a windfall profit of $71,145.

They seriously offered a sale for “Nothing.”  Just send them $5 and you’d get nothing in return.  And what happened?  $71,000 into their coffers!  Absolutely amazing!

Our Kickstarter fail versus silly successes

Last year we did a Kickstarter campaign to fund a guide to the National Monuments of the Southwest.  We were looking for funds to cover months of time visiting the monuments in the Southwest, putting the guide together in print and e-book, and we offered some cool bonuses to supporters.  Seeing the work Cards Against Humanity did this weekend, I think I know what we did wrong.  A serious project doesn’t get the kind of attention a spoof gets.  Potato Salad one year, nothing the next.

So down the road, if you ever do a campaign online….make it funny.  Don’t offer anything in return.  It seems to be a trend that goes beyond a relaxing weekend.  😉

 

 

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