Ｄｉｇｉｔａｌｌｙ Ｄｉｓｔｉｎｃｔ: Signature Tutorial Thread

[ryan ross]

hello guiyz

i really need a little bit of help.
what i am trying to say is that i
have been told several times that
i should start up a signature shop.
well, right now i don't have one and
i am very tempted from all the
suggestions i have been gaining.

for the people who run signature
shops, how does it work out for
you? is it burdening or stressful?
is it okay judging from my coding
style to not accept payments at all?
if not, then how would you know
how much a signature is worth in
cs currency/pets?

[Sanster]

Personally i don't own a shop myself but i would usually price it on how complicated the signature and how much you have to fit into it. Judging by how much work you have to do to get it done from possible Resizing, trying to find pictures of what the customer/buyer may want.

[Goostarion]

hello guiyz

i really need a little bit of help.
what i am trying to say is that i
have been told several times that
i should start up a signature shop.
well, right now i don't have one and
i am very tempted from all the
suggestions i have been gaining.

for the people who run signature
shops, how does it work out for
you? is it burdening or stressful?
is it okay judging from my coding
style to not accept payments at all?
if not, then how would you know
how much a signature is worth in
cs currency/pets?

Personally i don't own a shop myself but i would usually price it on how complicated the signature and how much you have to fit into it. Judging by how much work you have to do to get it done from possible Resizing, trying to find pictures of what the customer/buyer may want.

For me, it is somewhat stressful to run, because I am one of those kind of people that make sure absolutely everything is perfect before giving it out. I love doing it however, do not get me wrong. I absolutely love to make signatures; though sometimes it does bring additional stress when I am trying to be initiative and create some new, interesting layout.
Since you have been told to start a shop up, My recommendation would be to browse through other people's shops just to get the feel of what you will be putting yourself up to do. I fricked it up when I opened it up the first time because the demand was high (Especially for free signatures.) and overworked myself; along with fiancial difficulties of losing my laptop and also loosing Photoshop. (Just for the record, I did a Graphic Design course, so I have experience in this kind of field.

I started off my "Signature Career" by doing signatures for free, so I would recommend as a start off point to make free signatures to develop your skills and once you get a little advance, then go for asking for payment. (That is up to you how you choose to begin, though I find it a lot easier for you to do this as a start since if there are any troubles, you can back out of making someone a signature because you have the freedom to.) I started doing one image signatures and made them for other people for free. I still have that option in my signature shop if people cannot afford signatures, because that can help me develop or try something out or test a thing and get someone else's appreciation of it.


I was really proud of this one for a long time because of it. I made this and then made many more of these kind of manipulations. I got more creative and began to expand the box signatures were made in, literally.


And then I got better with each signature, and eventually I got to be able to make a signature a day with ease. I began to explore my options at this time and it was then I decided to try and code.



(Sorry for the image spam.)
And I have been doing this kind of thing ever since. Some of the newer ones look vastly different compared to the older ones, but am improving daily, and I am pleased to see people happy at the end of the day after all.

I am where I am because of that chance to commission to others for free. I needed that experience to get the confidence to do this in the first place, to further develop my skills and for some reason, people now regard me as an advanced coder. I don't even know why, it just happened.

But I digress. It is stressful to run depending on how much business you get; but in the end it is worth it if you have a dedication towards it and you are interested firmly in the topic.

Of course, this is just my two cents worth.

Also, I would agree with LevixHanji above with the pricing. I was just in a conversation asking a master of the coding and signatures advice on the pricing. I am an amature as well in this field.

[Candied Snow]

hello guiyz

i really need a little bit of help.
what i am trying to say is that i
have been told several times that
i should start up a signature shop.
well, right now i don't have one and
i am very tempted from all the
suggestions i have been gaining.

for the people who run signature
shops, how does it work out for
you? is it burdening or stressful?
is it okay judging from my coding
style to not accept payments at all?
if not, then how would you know
how much a signature is worth in
cs currency/pets?

It really depends on your own view of things, I'd closed mine a long time ago, but it was honestly a fun experience, I started the shop as a way to just pass time and met a lot interesting people.
And if you love coding you'll like owning a shop, sometimes there are unreasonable orders that can be annoying (like those which don't give you a theme or anything to work around and those that give you a horrible color scheme to work around) but you learn to overcome them and get better.
So yeah I think a shop would be a good idea.
And some of my tips would be to start with only a few slots (3-5) and start them for free, which you can use as examples and advertising.
If there's a lot of demand then start charging a small fee for them, if the demand still continues to be high then keep increasing or another way to do it is, let them make an offer for the coding, and if you think the offer is fair or like the theme of it accept the order.
Just don't take too many and overburden yourself.

[Falls]

@( ): I can't see much on my phone, but I do believe you meant "breath" the noun and not "breathe" the verb.

...

As for sig shops, they are only as stressful as you let them be. They key to a great sig shop experience is to be 100% honest with your customers. Are you running a little behind on your orders? Tell them that. Are you unsure about what the heck your customer just asked you for? Tell them that.

Another important thing is to make sure you have a system of control on your customer intake if you're getting paid for sigs. When I had a shop, everything was free, so I had an attitude of "they can't whine about me being slow if they're not even paying diddly squat for it." So I never felt rushed and I could take in many customers without stressing. With a shop where people are paying for quality and speed, use a slot system so that you only have so many customers waiting for you at a time. If for some reason you get backed up on orders anyway, close the shop and finish the ones that you have. That way you can work without getting more orders coming in.

I'd address the price thing, but I agree with what others are saying. Start out with free sigs to get a feel of your own skills and then start charging when you feel ready.

[Dylan Klebold]

Gah, I found the perfect gif set to signature out of ;u;

anyone up for a j.m?

[kae.]

hello guiyz

i really need a little bit of help.
what i am trying to say is that i
have been told several times that
i should start up a signature shop.
well, right now i don't have one and
i am very tempted from all the
suggestions i have been gaining.

for the people who run signature
shops, how does it work out for
you? is it burdening or stressful?
is it okay judging from my coding
style to not accept payments at all?
if not, then how would you know
how much a signature is worth in
cs currency/pets?

That all depends on the person really. Depending on your coding skills you might want to do them for free at first like others were saying but normally the better the signature the harder and longer it takes thus price changes. I use to either work or own multiple shops and through them I found that small slot spots are better and having other workers is a total saint in my book. My first signature shop I was doing ok at but this was before people thought about resizing images transparency and editing overall. It was mostly based on pure coding skills so my early example is this one here and once I got better and started using snipping tool to do images I got better and better. This one here was with snipping tool and mind you signatures and all that around the time I joined were no where near as fancy as the ones we have now (bak in yee old days). So I would say lower prices at first (hoard pets probably or missing pets) small slot spaces and workers. Over time your can up prices and all that until you feel like you have the perfect fit. its a bit stressful trying to come up with new stuff, but otherwise its pretty fun~ and if your like me and have to have your fingures typing and coding 24/7 and chang your siggy every time you blink its a great vent :3

[life overseas]

Hhh. I just switched back to my average signature. I had it all Christmas-y and I had to change it. ;;v;; Comments? Suggests? Critiques?

[Dylan Klebold]

Mmm, I really like how you got it organized.

--

How about mine? quq

[fable;]

@omn, I neglect my signature shop because I don't like the feeling I get when I give it to them. I feel like it's not good enough, etc. however, your signature is beautiful so here's what I think- it's only stressful if you let it be. if you're okay with the stress and the final results make you happy, you'll be fine. to avoid stress, make a calendar or some other way to make dates for each of the signatures you are working on so you get it done on time.

also, your signature looks like this to me:

chrome is my web browser.