I have been meaning to make this post since a month now and I never did. It’s been sitting around in a drafts folder, with me making changes every few days but never large additions. Now I am committing myself to finishing it.

Cocoia has become my full time occupation. Although we know vacation months in the Netherlands, I can assure you I have none. Earning my living through the design that I do has been satisfying, exciting, dangerous, and fun, and it is truly bringing me to the place of my ambitions. What has been extremely satisfying is the response on the work I have done, ranging from gratitude because you’re feeling like a website is turning into a daycare when I crash the party with aircraft carriers, tanks and jet fighters or kind, encouraging, thoughtful and input-rich emails, blog posts, messages and comments. I celebrated my 150st blog post with the outpouring of my memories on the Flow icon design process, which Google crawled in minutes (!).

However, life as an independent (internet) design studio has its monetary uncertainties, and as my demands grow, my hardware grows insufficient, incapable of handling the tasks I throw at it. I work on a Core 1 Duo Macbook Pro, which isn’t very swift for the hard-core work. So let me be honest and cut to the chase; Cocoia, and thus, I, needs money.

No, I am not going to beg you for donations, I won’t throw you adsense stuff – this blog should remain full of free, quality, nag-free stuff. However, creative ideas that benefit you and me are good to explore. One of them is my new stock icon set; it’s comparatively priced very low (especially considering the high-resolution counterparts inside) and all future add-on packs are free for license holders.

But I have more ideas. Here is a rundown of what I am considering in the last summer months.

Iconizements are little advertisments on freeware icons. This may sound like a bizarre idea, but most icons I produce need a bit of stock layout or other visual material which I then make up myself. You could imagine the brand of the ‘Designer Icons’ TV icon being yours. Or something similar; an icon I could make in the future of a document can feature your content. It’s a total package that shows you on the download page as a sponsor of the icon set, and an oppurtunity for people feeling generous or just feeling like their public image can use a small boost. It’s not as far overboard as commissioning me for a whole icon set, but also not as cheap as donating a dollar. You can contact me for information about placing an iconizement in the future.

My applications are still being developed. Not being able to release them to make a living means I have to (not to worry, it is my great passion and craft) do design work on a freelance basis and give priority time to that. I do plan to release one of my applications around Leopard’s release – which one, I’d rather keep in the dark. Being overly optimistic about release dates is the least I can afford in my current situation.

Actual product advertisements are a thing I am considering as well, in the style of the Deck. If you look at the MacThemes frontpage, you can see what I mean by that. I might even offer complimentary ad design, so if there is interest for this let me know – These are all options I am considering, but there should be a reasonable degree of demand.

Naturally, I think all options are only interesting if they benefit you and me; a good living for me means the freedom to spend some time on freeware icons for you and other quality content. Let me know what you think, unabashedly, of my future plans in the comments or over email.