The website is finally up!

We finally put the website for the experiment up. You can check it out at 8bitflorist.com. Feel free to like it on Facebook and tweet about it 😀

Here on the right side of this post, you can see how the final version of the rose looks. I think the image is good but in real life is looks and feels absolutely fantastic. If you’re a fan of Minecraft you owe it to yourself to get one. I know I’m biased, but I mean it. Every time I look at it on our living room table I smile.

OK, some notes on the website.

Other than a purchase option (powered by Gumroad), I also wanted to provide a free download of the images we use to print the flower and the pot in case anyone wanted to do it on their own and just was on a very tight deadline and none of our shipping methods was enough. It’s at the bottom of the page, above the “Buy now” call to action. At first I thought about having an email-only form hooked up to Mailchimp to collect emails of those who downloaded the images, but then I thought: why not create a different product on Gumroad and set the price to 0+ (meaning people can set the price to zero and get it for free, or donate whatever they want)? Gumroad is awesome and they also let you send e-mails to all customers who bought (or in this case, downloaded for free) a product of yours, so I’m using them to run my little mailing list instead of Mailchimp. That way I have everything under the same service: sales and mailing list.

I’m using Google Analytics too so I’ll be sharing traffic stats at some point as well.

Finally, I settled on a final price: $19.95 shipping included. It’s not as cheap as I would like but without knowing how much we’ll sell, I can’t take the risk of ordering 10,000 copies and being able to price the product at $14.95 or so. Besides, I don’t think there are that many people who’d buy at $15 but not at $20. I think both numbers can be considered impulse purchase friendly. And after all, this is meant for gifts, and spending $20 on a gift is not considered a lot by any means.

Foldable.me‘s, which we love and kind of drew inspiration from for this experiment, are priced at $11.95 shipping included, which is awesome. However, I’m sure they move massive volume, since they have an amazing product. Actually, I know of quite some people that have bought a few after seeing ours. Also, their product fits in one sheet of paper printed on one side, while we ship four sheets of paper, two of them printed on both sides. On the plus side for us, though, all our prints are the same, while each of theirs has a unique design so they can’t print 10,000 of the same paper doll. Still, until (if ever!) we get to thousands of units sold, there’s no way we can get anywhere near $11.95 shipping included.

Tomorrow I’ll start contacting Minecraft and videogame blogs and websites and see if we can get some coverage and feedback. Exciting times! Will keep you guys posted.