Mr Sun Studios » Misc

Tutorial: Buying Adobe CS4 Suite and Saving Hundreds of Dollars

MrSun — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 12:00:47 +0000

Hey guys. In this tutorial, to celebrate the announcement of Adobe’s CS4 suite, I’ll show you guys how to buy programs from Adobe’s new CS4 Suite much cheaper than what you’d get from Adobe itself (and legally too). You can also buy many other programs for much less than you would get if you’re eligible. The site is Academic Superstore.

Academic Superstore is a great place to find any kind of program for an amazingly cheap price (up to 80% off). It’s the place where I bought my Creative Suite 3 Design Premium for about $1000 less than it would have been from the Adobe site. That is quite a deal, isn’t it? But, there is one catch. You need to be eligible for the savings. Don’t worry, it’s very easy to be eligible.

Here is the site’s page about eligibility for savings. In order to be eligible, all you have to be is either a student, the parent of a student, or a teacher. The eligibility requirements are different for different products. I’m a student, so that’s how I got my savings.

So, why don’t you go now and pre-order Adobe CS4 now?

5 Reasons NOT to Create a Flash Arcade Site

MrSun — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:00:51 +0000

A few online flash arcade sites have become very popular around the web. There is no wonder why hundreds of webmasters have decided to create a portal of their own in hopes of earning a modest sum of revenue. Almost all of them fail. Here are the reasons why you shouldn’t be one of these people.

1. Huge Competition

As I stated before, there are hundreds, if not thousands of online flash arcades out there. If you are the sole administrator of your arcade, it will be hard to beat them. You won’t be able to offer content that everybody else doesn’t have.

2. Returning Visitors are Rare

If your arcade is run by an arcade script that you bought, visitors are not likely to return to your arcade. They most likely only came across it through a Google search for a game. They probably needed to get past a firewall on their network and your site happened to be unknown enough that it wasn’t part of the database of arcade sites. Trust me, those are the only visitors you can expect.

3. A LOT of Storage and Bandwidth is Needed

Most websites, like this one, usually take up under 100 megabytes of space, and usually under 2 gigabytes of bandwidth. If your creating an arcade site with thousands of games, the space needed to hold of those games can really add up. Some games take up more than 10 megabytes of disc space. You could be using quite a few gigabytes of storage space. If your site gets even the minimum amount of traffic, bandwidth usage could get pretty high.

4. Ad Earnings are Minimal

Even with a reasonable amount of traffic to your site, your arcade wouldn’t be earning as much as a blog with the same amount of traffic. Why? Because most visitors to your arcade are numb to all ads. Pay-per-click ads wouldn’t work at all with this kind of traffic. CPM ads are probably the only option, but you would never earn too much from them anyway.

5. It Takes a Lot of Time and Money

Yes, it’s true. Administrating an online flash game arcade can be time consuming. You might be thinking, “Well everything good in life takes time and money to make. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know!”. First of all, Rome turned out to be a great success (until it fell). Your arcade site most likely will not. Secondly, the time you spend on your arcade won’t be the kind of time you’d spent administrating a blog. No, you would be doing some very tedious tasks, like adding games, getting rid of spam, editing page layout, and so on. Trust me, that truly is everything you do.

Why You Should Keep All of Your Works

MrSun — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:00:17 +0000

If you create anything, from works of art, to flash games or books, you should know that your work will accumulate over time. These works should all be precious to you, no matter the age or quality. You would never throw out a diamond, just as you should never throw away your work.

Pretty cheesy introduction, ain’t it? But, I wrote it because it’s true. You should always keep everything that you make, even if it isn’t your best work. You’ll never know when you’ll find inspiration from looking at them. I know I have.

I’ve written about this experience in a previous post, but I’ll tell you about it again. When I was a newbie at programming flash games, I decided to develop a pretty complicated game. I know that I’d have trouble making the game, so I took great measures to make sure I could do it right. I made a huge list of the features that the game would have, and a great storyline to go along with it. Then, I actually began developing the game. It was a nightmarish experience and I eventually gave up after a month of development. It didn’t get very far.

A few weeks ago, I rediscovered my brainstorming and resolved to develop my game again. This time, however, I actually knew what I was doing, and the development process is so far going very nicely. You might have had to go through something like this as well. If you still have that old project, I suggest that you dig back into it. Maybe you can turn it into something useful. You might even be able to make money from it.

One way I’ve seen this happen is with Go Media’s vector sets.

Their projects turned out not to be worthless at all. They simply took their old vector images that they had laying around, polished them up a bit, maybe created a bit more, and sold them in packs. I’ve actually used some of their vector sets in some of my web designs and they’ve been very useful. If they can do it, so can you.

If you’re an artist or a photographer, you can do the same thing. Even if you don’t think your work is of enough quality to sell, you can still give them away for free under a creative commons license. Maybe you can try tacking them onto your wall for inspiration. Just don’t throw them away.