Cosplay Entrepreneur
The career I’m striving towards is a career that combines a lot of small
businesses into one, by combining a lot of creative fields into one I would be
creating a job specially tailored for me. This is something that some people do
with small combinations of all the things that I will list, but to define them all for
me the closest title I could come up with is cosplay entrepreneur. I want to be a
full time, self employed, independent person, who works through several media
outlets doing different things and creating different things with and for people that
share the same interests and passions that I do.
The first part of my complicated combination is to simply be a cosplay
model. With the convention boom there have been more and more of these
popping up and the names of select few are becoming common household
names for geeks of all nature. Yaya Han and Jessica Nigri two examples of this,
Yaya being a great influence for me she started by knowing literally nothing
about garment construction and went on a journey to teach herself anything and
everything she could and was the first cosplayer to be invited as a guest to a
convention, paving the way for cosplayers and convention goers today. Yaya
creates beautiful pieces based off of strong female characters with sex appeal
which is helping her to rapidly grow her fan base, because lets face it- sex sells. I
want to emulate her cosplay choice by choosing strong female characters and
incorporate different themes to bring the characters to live in new and unique
ways while staying away from the style that is Jessica Nigri who focuses all of
her costumes strictly on sex appeal, she takes characters and literally strips
everything away just to sell the sex appeal of that. That is not who I want to be. I
want to do this to create, to inspire, I want the ability to design my own creations
and characters and have them come to life. I want to have fun with it and help
other cosplayers learn and grow with me.
To help other cosplyers learn and grow I want to do more with social
media to help teach cosplayers and aspiring cosplayers how to do all sorts of
things with the restrictions that cosplay holds, lack of experience, budget
problems etc. I want to use a blog (probably through tumbler being they are the
most popular blogging website with teens at the moment), Youtube, and
Facebook to make videos, step-by-step photo tutorials and more to help with all
the different problems cosplayers face, as well as showing how I am trying out
new products and techniques so that I can pass on as much new and useful
information as possible. I want to keep up to date on all things and be the most
helpful and useful that I can be and teach as much as possible. And while there
are a few that are doing this, I have yet to find anyone that is doing it to a great
extent or that has not only good quality tutorials and information, but also knows
a variety of things. The biggest section of tutorials right now is makeup and
everyday makeup videos are plentiful and because of that there are people that
are growing into the world of costumes, doing both costume inspired makeup
looks and some people dabbling in the world of body paint and special effect
makeup which is fantastic, but having a background working in cosmetics for
years I want to teach how stuff can be done well, and cheaply using stuff from
the drugstore and around their home- which goes well with the DIY boom that
there is right now.
Aside from teaching and creating my own things, I would like to run a
small business that sells costume stuff of all nature, from costumes and
accessories to nerdy and geeky things for around the home and everyday
wearable’s. I would like to run my business through Etsy but I hope to one day
partner with other, bigger named companies to help them design for their
wearable lines as well as the nerdy fashion shows that are becoming more
popular at conventions nowadays. I would love to work with and for the names
that inspired me at the beginning like; Castle Corsetry, Her Universe, We Love
Fine, Think Geek, SuperheroStuff and Hottopic. All of which have amazing nerdy
wearable lines at the moment that I am obsessed with, I would love the chance to
bring my nerdyness and passion to their companies to create stuff that I think
people would love to wear as much as I would.
With the hopes of partnering with such big names in the nerdy fashion
scene I am hoping to get my name out there and exposed so that I can get my
hands in other projects, I have many different nerdy and geeky passions and
would love the chance to work on any project that people want to throw my way.
With the recent comic boom comic movies and television shows have never been
more popular and it would be a life long dream to work an anything associated
with them. Whether that be acting, doing makeup, or the costuming for them. I
love being creative and busy and would love to jump into any project that could
come my way. With the comic boom there has also been a convention boom and
I would love to get into the convention circuit not only to sell my stuff as a vendor,
but to be a guest and use panels to teach, answer question, or help people build
on their look and costumes. Cosplay panels have never been more popular and
there’s is a range of specific panels to suit any cosplayers needs that I would
love to expand upon, which in turn will also tie back into the online tutorials and
allowing more expansion for those since meeting people in person helps to
address their needs and what they want and need to learn. Having been a guest
at a convention already-Youmacon last year- it was amazing being able to talk
to nerdy people and cosplayers of all types, interviewing them on their passions
and getting to know them and the hard work they put in and what they have to do
to get certain looks. Many are actually not happy with what they have produced
because they had the lack of knowledge to do so and I would love to help, and I
would love to work a convention again.
So know that I’ve talked a lot about what I would want to do the question
now becomes, is this at all possible? Well the simple answer is yes and no.
Working for yourself full time is hard, especially when your doing something that
requires a lot of time, energy, skill and money. There is not a lot of information
out there on what professional cosplayers make or how they do it because it is a
fairly new career but from what I can gather from the people who do make a
living off of it and discuss it, they can work days as long as 15 to 20 hours
working on their next projects and staying in touch with their fans and keeping up
with emails and questions. Then there’s the matter of being paid, Cosplayers that
sell stuff on the side, their prints, pieces etc. tend to do a little better than most,
though just selling prints isn’t the way to go according to most, while popular at
conventions online purchases of them are not as profitable and therefore most
cosplayers still need some sort of day job to keep a steady income to they can
keep creating. Then there is conventions, conventions are either hit or miss with
professional cosplayers depending on size and what they are willing to
contribute. Some of them wont pay for all the required expenses it will take to get
there, flight, hotel, gas, food etc. so Professional cosplayers have to pay out of
pocket for that- even as a guest. Depending on the popularity of the cosplayer
some will require some sort of fee which can range anywhere from $75 to $300
while the more popular ones will require a weekend fee which ranges typically
anywhere from $500-$2,500. And for the bigger conventions and cosplayers they
can request a sales guarantee which basically means that they name a price, in
the case of one popular cosplayer it was $5,000 and if they didn’t make that
amount in the weekend by selling their merchandise, the convention would cover
the difference. So as you can see, it takes a lot of hard work and money to do
something like this, take Yaya Han for example, by her numbers she does
(roughly) 26 conventions per year which means that she could be earning up to
$130,000 from the convention circuit along, plus all of her online sales through
her shops and websites and any special appearances or meet and greets she
might do.
Despite all the struggles that come with this job I am willing to do it, and I
have already started working on steps in the right direction, I have built a cosplay
page that I am building content on and soon I will be building up blogging and
you tube content so that I can release them all at one so that there will be a good
amount of information already out there for anyone interested so that it is not a
wait for information and people don’t get bored or forget, I want to have a lot up
and ready from the beginning and build from a solid foundation instead of
building from the ground up. I have the first mockups of projects that I want to
begin working on at the start of the year so that I can get an Etsy page up and
start selling products and groups of products. I have designed nerdy and geeky
things for around the home that are beauty related so that I can sell them as gift
packages so that everything fits together nicely, but also makes it really helpful
for others to gift cool things for the nerdy people in their lives. Also the person I
choose to interview, my friend Rebecca Schweitzer is a popular fashion blogger
that will help me with blogging stuff along the way, as much as I want to teach
others I want people to know that I am also learning and obviously wont know
anything but I’m willing to go out there and try, experiment and find what works
and relay the most useful information to them.
The person that I choose to interview is my friend, Rebecca Eve Schweitzer who
owns and runs her own blog, Fashion Me Fabulous as well as being the social
media supervisor for Better World Books. The interview went as such:
How/why did you start?
I started building websites and writing little posts and updates on them when I
was in junior high (in 1998). This was long before I knew what a blog was. I
started a personal blog after high school. In a college writing course we were
challenged to write a topical blominimalhe semester. I didn't choose fashion for
that blog, but that's when the real blogging bug bit me. I was getting comments
and followers. I loved it. As college went on I started reading more blogs. Fashion
had always been a passion of mine. I wanted to work for a fashion magazine
after school, so I read a lot of fashion blogs (which were free, unlike magazines).
After college, I decided to start my own blog.
Did you intend for it to be a profitable venture, or just for fun?
Profit wasn't my goal, but I wanted it to be a professional endeavor. I couldn't find
job writing or at a magazine, and I needed to keep my writing portfolio fresh. As
time progressed, I added advertising and sponsored content to make some
money to supplement my freelance writing income.
Was there a specific thing that really started getting followers?
Two things happened early on. One, a very popular fashion blog listed us in their
blogroll. And two, we joined an upstart social network for fashion and styling
called Polyvore where we quickly earned a pretty major presence.
Do you cater content to your followers, or post only what you think you should?
A little of both. We love to try new things so we post all sorts of experimental
posts. We are never sure how they will be received, but we like putting out
content that interests us. We believe that is more interesting than featuring the
top five retro swimsuits every year even if there aren't any good ones just
because we know it's a popular post.
We also love post suggestions and questions from our readers. A lot of our best
content has come from readers asking us to help them solve problems or dress
for occasions.
Is blogging profitable?
Yes and no. The way we have always worked it made a little money but never a
living. Right now, we are on a sabbatical from blogging because of burnout so
our ad dollars are minimal. There were times when it made us enough money
annually to cover our own clothing budgets.
If so, how long did it take?
Years. We had to build enough of a following to gain the traffic needed to attract
an advertising network. It's very time consuming to negotiate ad rates and sell
ads without a dedicated salesperson or an ad network.
If not, what would it take to become profitable?
To become truly profitable, we would have needed to take on more sponsored
content. We weren't willing to compromise our content or readership in order to
post every bit of sponsored content that came along. Also, we never really got
into the right ad network for our blog. Our network started out with a fashion
focus, but quickly shifted to mommy bloggers and didn't give us enough earning
opportunities.
Now we would also need more social media and more frequent content (as well
as a more up to date site) to be more profitable.
Also, having a brand would help. A lot of bloggers have started collections, Etsy
shops, styling services, books etc...
How much time do you invest weekly?
As I mentioned we are on a sabbatical so very little at the moment. Most recently,
we invested about 5 to 10 hours each. At its peak we worked 20 to 30 hours
each weekly.
How important is it to be part of the larger blogger community?
So important. As I mentioned, a link from a very popular blogger helped us out.
We tried to do the same for blogs we liked. We also developed relationships with
several Etsy shop owners who liked to work with us. Relationships make or break
blogging. It's much better to regard fellow bloggers as collaborators rather than
competitors.
I think that she was very helpful and the interview was a success, I thought that it
was really important that she stressed that not really having a brand didn’t help
them to grow, which is going to be a strong base for what I do. I think that she
stressed on the relationships in the blogging community because I think building
a communicating, helpful community around anything you do is important
because it really helps you achieve your goals, but helps out others as well. But
also tying into other companies is extremely helpful as well, like Polyvore and
Etsy and since I want to have a shop there and collaborate with other sellers I
think this will really help my business succeed. She also talked about how hard it
is to make money without over advertising which is something I will have to take
a strong look at because I don’t want my viewers to be swarmed by
advertisements either. Another point that stood out to me was that she got a lot
of her best posts from viewer suggestions or questions which drives the point
home about being involved with the community around you and paying attention
to your viewers and fans, because a lot of the big coplsyers out there don’t do
this and it really upsets the fans and drives them away. But obviously to do all
this it requires a lot of time, money and management so I am very glad that I’m
choosing to build this now so I can take my time and make it strong and also do it
right.