Topics of the Month: Selling Posters, Creating Infographics, and WordPress Alternatives

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

This month I focused on selling posters; creating new infographics for the Income Guide and looking for a replacement for my current WordPress blog.

So far I have sold 12 posters, a few orders still come in each week even a month after the initial launch of the online store. I printed a 100 posters but I hoped to sell at least 50 before September (then perhaps a back-to-school sale if my inventory is still high). It looks like CPAs and financial advisors are the main customers right now which makes sense given the poster is about tax rates. The longer-term question is how to market to them beyond my blog and Google Ads?

I am currently planing a redesign of my website to support the launch of my new Income Guide. I am sketching out ideas and looking at other site for examples of what I like. I have used Wordpress since first launching my blog in 2006 but I want to customize the design in ways Wordpress is not designed for. While I know HTML/CSS, I also know that to create a new theme for the blog would require a lot of work on my part or else I would need to hire a developer. I want to be able to maintain and make changes to it in the future which would be difficult if I simply outsource the development. For that reason I have be thinking about moving out of Wordpress altogether and am currently looking at SquareSpace as a possible alternative.

Finally, I have started to finalize the graphics for the Guide there are over 100 pages and while I need to complete a few more I hope to lock down the scope of the Guide soon and focus on writing the text to accompanying the graphics.

Post-SxSW, Adventures in E-Commerce

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

I returned from SxSW on the 13th, tired but glad I had a chance to see this conference for myself after hearing about it for so many years. It is so large that it would more accurately be called several conferences in one. I spent most of my time in the Journalism and Online Content tract where I got to listen to a panel with David Carr and others talk about curation, and another panel about funding news startups and discussions about how to hire data visualization designer and programmers (Answer: you must go to them because they don't see themselves as "journalists" - something I can relate to). I attended a 2-hour “unconference” about data-driven journalism at the Texas Tribune where I met people interested in building data tools that support data sharing and discussed best practices. I finally made it to a data-visualization panel in the Convention Center on my fourth day, which included academics and designers talking through their experiences. Overall, it was a good experience but overwhelming and I was glad to return home.

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The Final Stretch

Wednesday, February 08, 2012

While I am making a final sprint to finish the Income Guide, I wanted to try a beta test to see how difficult it would be to print copies of my data graphics and sell my work though my website. In the past I have tried Cafepress for printing and selling the large posters that I created for my Master Thesis but with very little success. These were large 2' x 3' posters and the digital print-on-demand was not a high quality. This time I will be selling a popular graph on Tax Rates that I recently updated for 2011. This tax graph is topical and has been reposted by many blogs and has been requested by financial advisors. It will be a small tabloid-sized poster on high quality paper but with digital printing so I can do short runs (i.e. 50 copies at a time).

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Two Presentations Amid a Busy December

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Even with the holidays and travel I was able to give two presentations in December. The first was at a design lecture given each month in Brooklyn, NY, called Creative Mornings. I have attended this lecture series many times but this was my first time as a presenter. I was able to show to an audience of designers and developers the income-inequality graphics I presented at the Big Picture conference in October. The feedback was both positive and curious about what the data means. As I put the collection together it is clear that biggest hurdle in front of me is linking the graphics together to help people see the connections between them. 

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Winning a SXSW Scholarship, Getting Traction on my Illustrated Income Guide

Thursday, December 01, 2011

When I was an undergraduate in Economics I didn't received a lot (if any) introduction to historical data covering stock returns, interest rates, inflation much less the income, industry and occupation data that I am researching for my "Illustrated Guide to Income." I suspect that hasn't changed for today's students.

While journalists will write articles about unemployment based on a press release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unless the reader is very familiar with the statistics and what they measure, these numbers are out of context and not very meaningful. News organizations like the New York Times experiment with data graphics, but there is data at government web sites and in academic papers that is not tied to current events so doesn't get covered by the news. And the need for more and better data visualizations exists with lots of room for experimentation.

I consider my web site Visualizing Economics and “An Illustrated Guide to Income in the United States” to be my experiments in trying to bring clarity to economic data. I wanted to see if data graphics on their own can be used to explain a subject like income, instead of used just as supporting materials within a traditional storytelling format like a magazine article or embedded in a video.

I am not sure myself if the format I have chosen is going to work. But I know that the individual data graphics will be of interest to people, especially with the news coverage of Occupy Wall Street and the discussion it has created around income inequality in America.

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From New York to Austin, Marketing Visualizing Economics

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

As I get closer to finishing my Illustrated Guide to Income, I am focusing more on the marketing and publicizing side of the business. This includes giving a presentation a few weeks ago to the financial community here in New York at The Big Picture conference. I was first on the schedule which meant I could relax during the rest of the conference. Also I had a chance to show my work and get feedback at the breaks from people who had not see it before.

In addition, I applied for and received a SxSW 2012 Scholarship which was created "to recognize individuals from all sectors and from anywhere in the world who are using new media to push the boundaries of tackling community problems." With a ticket to SxSW conference in Austin, TX next March, I hope to meet other people in the startup community tackling issues in the areas of journalism and data visualization.

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Building Out the Income Guide

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Work on my Illustrated Guide to Income is continuing. As of today I have more than 35 pages completed. Though it sometimes feels like I am just running in place, it helps to take a look at my progress each week to remind myself how much I have accomplished.

Also, I am experimenting with Google Docs as a way to publish my underlining data set online inspired by the work of DataBlog at the Guardian (@datastore) and the Texas Tribune (@TribData). These are two news organizations who have done some great work in the area of data journalism.

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