Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?

This past weekend I had the good fortune of being able to borrow a button maker because my friend Mark, whom upon hearing of my button needs, asked his wife Jen to ask her boss the eye doctor if I could borrow the doctor's machine. I spent a good portion of the weekend subsequently making buttons to give away during my upcoming convention trip. I am quite happy with the way they turned out and they should hopefully serve as nice little promos.

The idea of buttons came from last year’s GenCon where Paizo gave away a new button every morning of the convention to the first couple hundred people that visited their booth. I love the two Paizo buttons I was able to acquire. As is shown in the picture below I created four different buttons so that I have a little variety.


As for distributing them at a convention: I have been listening to various podcasts and reading blogs on the subject of free-giveaways at conventions, especially at artists' tables. Some say having a free-giveaway is a good form of promotion, while others contend that by giving away a free art object you fulfill people’s desires to have a piece of your work so you will sell less. I have had only one artist's table thus far, which was last year at the Mid-Ohio Con. There I gave away free postcards featuring my illustration work plus contact info. (They can be seen here.) I know there it did seem like most people opted to take a free postcard rather than buy a print. So, I am still up in the air as to how exactly I will give them out. At the moment I am leaning towards giving away a button to each person that buys something rather than to one and all, plus I do not have hundreds to giveaway and would like them to last the whole convention vs. being swallowed up in the first day (unless of course that means I sell out of prints on the first day, http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwhich would be simply fantastic). And since I still have a stack of postcards I may keep those to serve as the free-giveaway. What do you all think?

The button machine I borrowed from a friend came from umakebuttons.com. I highly recommend them. The machine was well constructed using metal (vs. cheap plastic), easy to use, and worked beautifully. The buttons came out very professional looking. As soon as I have some extra money I will be ordering a button-press for myself. At first, before I learned I could borrow a machine from my friend, I was looking into ordering buttons from various online printing companies. At the average rates I was quoted online for the price of three button orders (100-150 buttons for each order) I could instead by my own machine.

I would like to throw out a special thanks to my best friend Jenna for being patient and helping me cut-out all 190 buttons and also to Mark, Jen, & the eye doctor for hooking me up with the button press and materials. It made the task go so much quicker and smoother.