Announcing CentralFloridaOnline Where IndieCEO Contributes Articles

You can find IndieCEO and GalleriaLinda now on CentralFloridaOnline as an author!

Authoring articles about you, your businesses' services, or products is a great way to become known. Articles that will offer up informative topics that can be used by others is a goodwill gesture that will not be forgotten. Share your knowledge and people will appreciate you. And, every time you are posted online is an SEO target for people to find you!

I write for several blogs, as well as my own and have recently written blog posts for placement on CentralFloridaOnline. If you are from Florida, this is a great website to get Florida news, human interest stories, and happenings in Central Florida!

Charity Giving for Business

One of the things I love about online networking is meeting others who are street-smart marketers. One such friend is FairyCardmaker on iCraft.ca. I discovered a great two-part blog series that she wrote on charity giving for business. It is right on point.

Charity giving can be planned strategically as a part of your business plan. When working it into your objectives for the business year, you will not only be in control of how much inventory and investment you hand out, but also will have the ability to select charities that may benefit to your business.

As FairyCardmaker shows us, we can be specific in our planning for charity giving that may give us the opportunity for exposure to our products, advertising to a target group, or even develop other opportunities for our products. Charity giving is easy, welcomed, and helpful. It also can give your business a boost! I recommend this reading.

From the FairyCardmaker Blog:  Business or Pleasure?
Why not BOTH?  Just because you are running a business to earn a living doesn't mean that giving to charity has to be a one-way trip out of your pocket.  There are many ways that you can work charitable donations or time in to your business model.  It's a win-win scenario!

The key to selecting a charity to support is knowing your target market.  You can create a symbiotic relationship with a charity where the host is a shared target market.  This topic will be covered in two parts:

• Part I: Selecting a Charity
• Part II: Selecting a Manner of Support

Online Sellers: How Important Is It To You?

...to have one page that you promote that will show all your shops, social media connections, and other widgets? It is pretty important to me. As online sellers, we can get pretty scattered across the Internet with multiple social media networks and multiple shops.

Zibbet has made this possible. It astounds me (in a good way!) that the Zibbet philosophy is to give artists, crafters, artisans, vintage sellers, and craft supply sellers a place to gather all of their Internet presence and paste it onto one page to promote. They encourage that!

No more worrying about how/if you can link to your web site that sells the same items. No more worrying about promoting your bead shop from your jewelry shop. There is nothing to hide here. And, I love the openness and helpfulness of Zibbet admin when it comes to online selling and it is a welcomed breath of fresh air.

I have had GalleriaLindaLoft's Vintage Jewelry shop on Zibbet for a little over three months now and have opened another GalleriaLinda Bead Shop on Zibbet that will soon go "premium." The "Loft" shop is a premium shop and I am delighted in what I can do to help promote my tiny business.

I cannot fully express how much I love the look - very white, very clean, and very uncluttered, as an artisan community should be. And I can manage how large my product photos are, and the color of the Zibbet logo, and categories, and, and, and..... There are just too many features to describe right now and new features come on board weekly. Oh, and I just used the sale/discount/free shipping feature. Oh my goodness...no more editing EACH listing. One click and I am done!! There is a gift certificate feature too. Well, go check it out or I will talk your ear off. Zibbet is fairly new on the scene and traffic is building quickly and there is a certain excitement within the community.

You can check out my post on the GalleriaLindaShowcase handmade jewelry blog here. It has screen shots to give you a taste of how you can promote your other shops (with photo widgets), your Facebook, your Twitter accounts, and anything else with widgets!

Right now, until July 20 - you can get a FREE month when you become a premium member! After that you pay only $9 a month until the 119 (at this writing) shops are gone (then the price goes up). Click here to get started on Zibbet. Hope to see you there!

A Bead Giveaway Like No Other - 7-1/2 lbs of BEADS!

In my blog surfing, I found a great blog by Denise Yezbak Moore (http://deniseyezbakmoore.blogspot.com) and she is doing a HUGE giveaway of BEADS, beads, beads! Unbelievable styles and colors are in this giveaway.

How can you not enter for this? So, stop what you are doing and get over to her blog - run like the wind to enter! 


DEADLINE is this FRIDAY JULY 2 to enter! Good Luck!

Diary Project 2011 - Fabulous Free Advertising for Artists

 There are opportunities for FREE advertising and promotion all around us. Just keep up with a few artists' forums and you will always see calls for product and seller features. Keep your eyes open!

One such project that GalleriaLinda has participated in for three years is the Diary Project, organized and implemented by Fantazya, a long-time Etsy seller of handmade. The Diary 2011 Project is starting and dates are being offered now.

The diary is a calendar book, spiral bound, that has all dated pages created and designed by artists! The artists work their shop information into the designs and get year-round exposure for FREE. What a great concept this is!

And, it has been successful for years. Once all of the artwork is sent in, Fantazya coordinates the printing and cover options. These make GREAT gifts too.

When you participate, you are NOT obligated to purchase the Diary, but you are simply a featured artist. Each page is a window of original art for each day of the year. See the Diary 2010 Project Flickr postings.

I highly recommend this, so go lock in a date today and you will receive an email with all the information and due dates. You will have year-round exposure of your web site or shop URL to people all over the world.

This year, the layout will be a little different.

Read all about the Diary Project 2011 HERE!

Local Artisan Market is Today! A Great Networking Opportunity

Supporting your own local artisan community through your blogs, forums, and your attendance to fairs and markets gives you a great networking opportunity! You can meet like-minded people, either online or in person, and form friendships that will last a lifetime, as well as support for your art or craft.

Here in Lakeland, FL, we have an artisan market for local artisans that is held by Yia Yia's Bead Shop. The quality of artisans is great and the variety of handmade items is fabulous. These one-day markets are perfect for communities and artisans alike. This artisan market is held quarterly.

And, today is the day that the Artisan Market is open! The Florida weather is fabulous - cool, sunny, slight breeze, and no humidity - a perfect day to go. Local artists are displaying original art, pottery, paintings, jewelry, glass art, and more. If you go, meet Yia Yia's new neighbor, Red Door Wine Market and enjoy a glass of wine, beer or coffee! Photos are representative of work you will find there.

It is refreshing to see such creativity all in one place. I guarantee that you will find something you love. Owning something handmade is special because it is meaningful. Each piece is made with great care and an abundance of artisan creativity.

All of you can support Yia Yia's efforts in supporting our local artisan community too by becoming a Facebook fan and following on Twitter!

Yia Yia's Facebook - become a fan! Follow Yia Yia's on Twitter too.

Animated Ads For Etsy Sellers

This is an awesome utility for Etsy Sellers. You can create ads from your Etsy shops that can be shared, embedded, or posted. You have a choice of several different sizes, so get your ads created and post them all over the Internet!  See GalleriaLindaLoft's Vintage Shop ad above.

Find out all about esellerads on the Etsy Storque Blog. Very classy!

http://esellerads.com/

HandmadeNews.org Feature on IndieCEO

IndieCEO was featured on HandmadeNews.org! Part 1 has been published and part 2 is to come, so stay tuned! We talked about my GalleriaLinda Contemporary Handmade Beaded and Silver Wire Jewelry online business, the shops I have for GalleriaLindaLoft's vintage, supplies, and other things, as well as my marketing communications background and why I put it all together to start IndieCEO.

Written by Wendy T. Gibson, the Crafty Canadian, who makes crafts, writes about crafts and coordinates crafty events, I was honored to be sought out for this feature. We actually did the interview via Google Chat, which was second best to talking in person. We talked about all kinds of things outside of the feature focus and chatted about crafting, backgrounds, and other things for over an hour.

Wendy is a columnist for HandmadeNews.org and is a former award-winning Event Coordinator for Michaels, the Arts & Crafts store. She has taught beading classes designed and sponsored by BeadStyle Magazine and has managed a bead store, a ceramic studio, a scrapbooking store and a second-hand bookstore. She also started and manages the Peterborough Downtown Craft Market in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, and Wendy sells handmade online too.

Best in Class: Third iCraft's Sellers' Bootcamp Starts November 1

Just in time for this most important holiday selling season, the third iCraft Sellers' Bootcamp will kick off on November 1, 2009 with a bang! The www.iCraft.ca site is an international selling venue exclusive to handmade items.

Designed this time specifically for the holiday selling season, this FREE online sellers' marketing class goes for 28 days (weekends off) and has daily marketing and advertising assignments (free and low-cost methods) to promote your shop that will take only 30 minutes a day.

What I like about the class is that it makes me accountable to prioritize what will give me the biggest bang for my efforts. This will be the third iCraft Sellers' Bootcamp I have taken and I have to tell you that I come away each time with new strategies. It is well worth my time for a third one!

The program leader is Christine Skaley (PillowThrowDecor) who comes from a 26-year career in sales, sales training, strategic planning, and instructional teaching. She is a fabulous motivator and leader and will lead us all to organized time management, marketing and advertising best suited for our shops, and other business tactics. (She is a master with fabric and sewing too!)

If you are excited to participate and are not yet an iCraft seller, you can become an iCraft seller now as your main shop or as a second shop in order to particpate. You will need to have at least 5 items listed. That is just as easy as pie!

In fact, if you sign up for an iCraft shop with a seller code (1c28439c38), you will get 6 months free for your shop! ($25 one-time registration fee does apply).

Who knows? You may be one of the iCraft Sellers' Bootcamp participants earning a free shop makeover (banners and avatars), an SEO makeover too! More free things will be offered by sponsors.

IndieCEO will be providing to all bootcampers an ebook on computer maintenance for PCs for small and home businesses - a street-smart must have! 

Join us! You will definitely learn some new things and the iCraft Sellers' Bootcamp goal is for all of us to come away with new customers and sales. You will love the atmosphere at iCraft as an all-handmade selling venue. See you in the iCraft forums on Nov. 1!

Speechless Advertising

We are so bombarded by visual and audio stimulation that it can become overwhelming clutter. Advertisers are quickly invading every nook and cranny of your lives to get their message to you. Sometimes, their tactics are self defeating.

We cannot even watch TV without a bottom scroll, animated images popping up in the corner, and reminder text of shows to come. It is frustrating.

As I thought about this, I was working on a design for new postcards for GalleriaLinda. I tried putting multiple jewelry designs on the card, then thumbnails on one side of a bigger photo, and it all just looked junky. There was no clear message other than “here, see EVERYTHING I have ever created!”

I came up with “speechless advertising.” This is not a new concept, although I put my own name to it. Speechless advertising for my postcard utilized one strong photo and my web address. That is all. The idea is to peak interest and curiosity. If a visual is strong, simple, and uncluttered, curious people will go to the web site.

When I look at these postcards, I breathe a sigh of relief. Relief felt from animation, pop-ups, voices, and all the other things that try to get our attention.

Less is more. Strip your message to its essentials. Try a minimalist approach to your advertising!