Advertising Your Blog with Entrecard - The Experiment

If you follow this blog, you know that I like to experiment before I have an opinion of a source. You can check out IndieCEO's experiment with ProjectWonderful advertising to see what I mean. I have been eyeing Entrecard and thought I would give it a good try.

Entrecard is touted as "The Ultimate Networking Tool for Bloggers." It is a way to advertise your blog to gain readers and boost traffic by adding an Entrecard box to your own blog. You can see IndieCEO's Entrecard box to the right of this post. That is where people will "drop" their cards or have their requested/approved advertising show.

Entrecard is like its own little country because it has its own economy system! No cash payments are needed.

You simply earn credits by dropping your card on other blogs. By purchasing advertising with those credits, you can select the blogs where you want your ad to show. There are other opportunities to gain credits listed on the site that you might explore. I was able to earn enough credits when I first signed up to actually advertise on others' blogs right then and there.

There is a system to receive advertising on your own blog. You can either approve each one or choose to have an automatic approval. I prefer to approve each one because the content and look of ads on my blogs are very important to my brand.

Here are the Pros and Cons of Entrecard that I have found:

Pro

• Free advertising that costs no money - just time and thought.
• Fun - there are a variety of categories for artists and crafters to surf through - I have found such interesting blogs
  
• Networking - I have begun to see favorites and tend to comment there and receive comments back
• A way to gain readers
• A way to boost traffic
• A way to gain followers to your blog
• A way to have your blog promos seen, like your shop minis, twitter link, those kinds of things
  

Con

• Most traffic is just that - traffic - and not specifically readers
• Many will "hit and run" by going to your blog, dropping a card to get credits, and zoom out of the blog
• It takes time - whether little or a lot is up to you
• You must participate consistently to gain benefit by spending a little time each day to drop your card
  

Here is my summary of Entrecard:
I do like it, given my expectations. I don't expect tons of readers and commenters. I don't mind the ones who "hit and run" because it boosts traffic numbers. I also have ProjectWonderful ads on my blogs and the increased traffic boosts the bids on the ad boxes.

Those that linger to read and comment are the jewels of the process. You can gain a great networking group long term if you stick with Entrecard and participate. It may take a while but that is what I am going for while I am building traffic. I have also added to my blog "followers" through this method.

If you want to try it, click here for Entrecard!

Are You Rolling The Dice with Your Advertising?

No one wants to waste money, the least of which is business money for a very small business owner. Are you rolling the dice with your advertising dollars? Hit or miss? Whether you advertise online, offline, or both, it is important to plan your markets.

To small online sellers, that means we need to know who our customer is and where they can be found. When that is determined, we must go through the exercise of researching advertising opportunities within that demographic.

Artists and crafters especially can be unaware of this important step. I read in forums all the time about sellers sharing their advertising success and missteps, regardless of product, customer demographic, or price category. If you sell little girls' hair bows and have great success with advertising on several blogs, it is likely that my jewelry is not targeted to that audience. Although sellers have a kind heart and want to share what they know, it is important for you to step back and ask "is this where the customers for my products are?"

Basic marketing is truly not rocket science but requires that we think through our decisions. Here are a couple of out-of-the-box conceptual ideas of where to find customers online or offline for a variety of handmade products to jump-start your thinking for your own products:

• Handmade hats, crochet, knitted, felted-cold climates, cold weather sports gatherings, colleges/universities,
  

• Little girl hair bows-dance schools, pageants, first communion outfits, children's photographers
  

• Home decor pillows-independent interior designers and decorators, model home stagers, home staging consultants
  

• Photography-tourist shops, independent interior designers, home stagers, model home designers
  

• Journals and Diaries-college students, poetry reading groups, English teachers/assistants
  

I hope you get the picture. Brainstorm about who would love and use your product. Then, think out-of-the-box about where they are!

Product Videos are Easy for Your Marketing!

There are all kinds of video sharing and photo slide show utilities online for small businesses to use for their marketing.

One interesting online video utility I recently found is Animoto.

With photos, you can produce a 30-second video for free! When you become proficient at your video productions, you may want to make a full, unlimited video for only $3 each or get an annual pass for $30 per year.

I uploaded basic jewelry product photos just to see what the free plan would do. After doing this test video, I am now ready to figure out how to make it engaging. Some thoughts are to make it a "story," starting maybe with a photo or two of your location and photos of you working on your craft that are intermixed with the product photos. Title pages are good too.

There are easy ways to share your free video with MySpace, Facebook, and twitter, as well as upload to YouTube.

You can check out the GalleriaLinda.com Handcrafted Jewelery 30-second test video here. Remember, it has music that will start up and it is just a quick try. I see good potential and a great start to making this a useful marketing tool! Online video utilities make expanding your marketing toolbox to video easy.

If you have had success with other video production online utilities, please post here to share your experiences!

Why Your Business Needs Social Media

Why social media for your business? This may have the answer! I came across this slide show with a great message about businesses and social media.

Unfortunately, you will need to step over a few "F" bleeps but you will find inspiring content that I really felt important to share. (This is a good example of how you conduct yourself for business on social media. Be professional at all times. In this case, the message is more important than the "F" bleeps but how much more valuable this piece would be without them).

In the middle of the slide show, there are excellent stats on the major social media sites that will amaze you. It is my opinion that social media is growing into huge monster that is chaos. We as a community are now trying to bring chaos to order through learning how social media can be effective, both for personal and business use.

The business use of social media holds so much potential for YOU.

If you are a business owner that says "Why do I care about what people eat for breakfast?" - you are missing the point by light years that can effect your business plan for years. Social media is no longer for teenagers. It is for businesses, huge and small, to make their mark in the world and connect with customers.

It is a conversation, not an ad. Just remember that!

As one commenter (TechCrafter) below offered - it is especially well-suited for "reputation management." How true. How critical.

A good place to start to see what has been said about you or your business is http://www.socialmention.com.

And, to set up a Google Alert at http://www.google.com/alerts with your business name and key words.

Find IndieCEO and GalleriaLinda on social media:
IndieCEO on Twitter
GalleriaLinda on Twitter
Linda Harrell on Twitter
GalleriaLinda on Facebook
GalleriaLinda on Blogger
Plus many other networking site!

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

Plugging Your Art or Craft into Technology

As online sellers, by default, we must have basic knowledge about technology. This includes not only how to upload our product photos and create an online listing, but also how to utilize online social media, promotion, and optimizing our online presence for SEO.

I often get emails from readers about a variety of things. This week I received a great email from Bren, who introduced me to a fabulous technology resource blog for artists and crafters.

Take a look at Tech Crafter.

From the author:

"The underlying Tech Crafter theme is to provide knowledge to those who are interested, in a format that is as easily understood as possible. I've been focusing on SEO as it's been a hot issue for many artists, crafters and sellers over the last few months, but that's not the only topic we'll be exploring.Starting next week, I'll begin to expand topics to include articles on the application of technology in arts and crafts. These will include tutorials, reviews and focused articles on creating and developing your own web site.

I am also developing tools to assist sellers, ranging from simple promotion tools to full-blow reputation management systems. As these require a lot of development work and testing before being deployed, they won't be happening as frequently, but when they come, be assured that they will be of the highest quality!"

This is a resource to visit over and over. Be sure to RSS the Tech Crafter feed into your reader for easily-understood direction on the technology issues facing online artist and crafters. You will find it in the IndieCEO resource blogroll.

Silkfair's New Shop Setup - Web Branding Your Online Business!

Important News for Online Sellers and a special deal for Indie CEO readers!!

SilkFair has a new shop setup that will blow your socks off. Shop costs are important to all of us and as we surf around trying various venues, many of us really want our own web presence and ecommerce setup.

Perk up your ears, because Silkfair has launched Silkfair Custom Shop(TM), a new e-commerce platform that gives online sellers easy set-up, speed, and customization.

• You can create your own online branded web presence that is personalized in every aspect.


• You can use your own domain name.


• And, (get this) you can have built-in interactive marketing tools for blogging, customer forums, product videos, search engine optimization (SEO) and more. This is too awesome. Think of a forum for your customers to get them interacting with you in the design process
  

The Custom Shop platform is powered by Silkfair technology, allowing online sellers a standalone e-commerce site with all the sophisticated functionality and absolutely NO listing fees. You pay a low monthly fee for this custom shop.

How about two months FREE to try it out!???

I have been given the privilege of offering to my readers a SilkFair two months FREE trial offer.

Details of plan: First 2 months free, thereafter at regular price $24.99 per month. There is a 3% final sale fee on any items sold. You cannot beat that!

Here is the coupon that you'll need when you sign up:

* IndieCEO special silkfair coupon code : launch09pub*
*Expires : on 8/16/2009*

When you sign up for the custom shop, you'll see two plans presented and you will see a coupon code field with a "Show Hot Deals" button.

Key in the coupon code and then click Submit and that will show you the 2 months free plan to be selected. For your convenience, here's a step by step process of opening a store:

1.User selects "Start Up" button from Silkfair homepage Custom Shop banner.
2.Register on Non-non Member if no account yet on Silkfair
3.Click "OK" on the pop-up window notification reminding user to click on email verification in their InBox
4.Click "Yes" to 'Create your shop. Do you have anything to sell?"
5.Enter credit card information on the 'Seller Identification Verification' pop-up window, and save
6.Click "Yes" to 'Do you want Custom Shop?'
7.Select a template
8.Enter a coupon code. Authorization and subscription goes through
9.Congratulations! Your custom shop is now ready

GalleriaLinda is going to open a free trial shop and I will blog about the experience. Let me know your experiences too in the comment section.

Gosh, a blog IN my shop and a FORUM? I have to try this! Free is always a good thing for small businesses!

Online Sellers: Make Your Shop Components Work FOR You!

What better place to start our marketing thinking than to discuss all the components that create our shop?

Each component uniquely works together to draw a potential customer into your shop. Did you realize that for a lot of potential customers, our shops become our only visible brand, or even more often, our product page becomes our only visible brand and is all the visitor sees?

Someone will click a link directly to a product through a Twitter link, search engine, or forum link and NEVER see your whole shop with your announcement.

The importance of ambiance and “look” of your product and shop page is critical for that first impression. Will it draw them in or drive them away?

Here are some shop components that are important to that first impression. I have comments by each to get you thinking

Shop Name – hopefully your shop name is something easy to remember and easy to spell to make it easy for someone to find you online – someone who didn’t quite remember your shop name!

Avatar and Banner Design – the design of your avatar and banner really sets the theme for your product backdrop. Is it casual, formal, professional, cute, cartoon, or whimsical? Any of those are great and can compliment your product designs.

Profile – filling in you’re your profile to the fullest helps to present you, the artist/crafter, as serious about your business. It is just good business practice. Be sure to keep SEO in mind for each of your specific selling venues.

Shop Announcement – this is a great place for you to shine and to show us your personality. Tell us about your product, your materials, your skills, or your policies. Keep it concise and keep SEO in mind here too for each of your specific selling venues.

Photos – there is always buzz about the ability to take quality photos. This is critical. A good photo will draw someone into your shop that otherwise would not visit. Keep practicing with the camera and photo editing software!

Secondary Photos – please have more than one photo of your items. Even I get frustrated when there is only one! Minimally, you should have a front and back photo. Sexy side angles are always artsy and you can have fun staging your product.

How You Order Your Product Photos in Your Shop – Huh? Is this a component? Yup. Put matching and complimentary colors together as sort of a cross-promoting effort. Put matching designs together. You get the picture!

Product Titles – there is the opportunity for Search Engine Optimization here. Let your titles tell us what the product is. No fancy “Dawn at Midnight” romantic names in the titles. They are useless there.

Product Descriptions – ah…you knew we would get to this. Maybe it is a challenge or maybe you just throw a couple of facts in the description and go with it. This is as much an art as your craft. Entice your customer with your words.

Number of Products in Your Shop – it is true! The more products, the more interest in your shop. More products in the shop make you look busy, professional, and like an artist or crafter who really cares about her/his craft.

Pricing – yep, another component you would not expect. First impressions make eyes go to price. If the overall price impression is not good, people move on.

OK, pick one to ponder until we meet again and tell me others that I may have missed. Watch for more posts on each of these in detail!

Free Advertising for Online Shops that Sell Handmade - Diary 2010 Project

There are opportunities for FREE advertising and promotion all around us. Just keep up with a few 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 2010 Project is gaining steam, as we get to the final deadline for artwork.

The diary is a calendar book, spiral bound, that has all dated pages created and designed by handmade 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. Pictured above is my 2009 diary with GalleriaLinda pages. I ordered a plain cover so I could embellish it myself. These make GREAT gifts too.

When you participate, you are NOT obligated to purchase the Diary, but you are simply a featured artist.

Diaries are offered to participants at a discounted rate, should you care to purchase. Each page is a window of original art for each day of the year. See the Diary 2010 Project Flickr group to see what has been created so far.

Back to YOUR opportunity for advertising...go lock in a date today, send in your designed page with your shop information, and you have year-round exposure of your web site or shop URL to people all over the world.

This year, for the first time, the diary will be available in three languages: English, French, and Spanish. How global can you get?

Go right now to get YOUR

Diary 2010 Project date.
Artwork deadline is JULY 15.

Social Networking: Time Waster or Business Builder?

It all depends! It is my opinion that anywhere you post online is a good thing for your shop and business name for SEO and name recognition. Get out there and be seen and recognized!

However, it is SO easy to twiddle your time away online chatting on various sites, so what is the balance and how do you manage it? I have a couple of thoughts for you to ponder:

1) Anywhere you post online, if used correctly by using links to your shop and your shop name, will add to your SEO factor and make your business easier to be found.

2) There is strength found in networking with people who are your target customer market.

3) Networking can create a great support group for you and your business.

There are a couple of types of networking - social and business. Then, they breakdown into handmade, corporate business, and a zillion other categories.

I suggest that the handmade online sellers participate in both handmade networks AND regular business networks to find potential customers everywhere.

Realize that the handmade networks are made up of a lot of sellers like you. However, sellers of handmade are also buyers of handmade for products other than what they make.

Business networks are made up of businesses of all kinds, big and small, and may need to be educated on why buying handmade creates value. You can be the voice for the handmade community.

I am a member of about 15-20 social and professional networking sites. It could make my head swim if I fretted about nurturing all of those! Here is a plan:

**Keep your profiles on ALL networking sites up-to-date and visit them frequently. Even a teeny edit will bump your profile up for the search engines to find again. If you don't do this, it will just lay there gasping its last breath.

**Make a list of all of your online networks. Decide which ones you want to participate in. Decide on your weekly time allowance split between all you selected, and stick to it.

**You can visit your profiles and edit one a day if you have a lot of them. That takes 3 minutes each and just keep the rotation going. You can do that to boost your SEO.

**For the networks where you want to be heavily involved, be sure to keep your links and business name before the other participants per the Terms of Use for the sites. Upload photos if allowed and use all tools available to you (photos, blogs, etc...) And above all, be SOCIAL, be friendly, and be yourself!

Here are some networking sites to look into:

HANDMADE Networking Sites
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=handmade - LIST of many
http://yourhandmade.ning.com/
http://www.byhand.me/
http://www.starvingjewelryartists.com/
http://www.votehandmade/
http://www.craftjuice/
http://www.indiepublic.com/
http://www.webjam.com/
http://www.plumdrop.com/
http://chainmaillebymboi.com/forum/index.php

BUSINESS Networking Sites:
http://www.linkedin.com/ http://wozone.ning.com/ (Website Owners' Zone)
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=women+business - list of sites for business women
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=business - list of networking for businesses
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=small+business - list of networking for small businesses
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=home+business - list of networking for home businesses

And, don't forget your local online business networking sites. I belong to

http://www.wqmagonline.com/ and http://www.local-shops-1.com/LocalShops1/social-network.html that cover Regional Florida and I have made some great contacts!

If you have a great networking source for online sellers, post here and I will add to the list!

Online Sellers Can Have Economical Computer Resources!

For those of you who may have missed a previous list of good computer utilities and software offered on the Internet for FREE...here is a refined list for you!

These can be useful for any small business, but are especially useful for online sellers who do not have the resources to purchase hundreds of dollars of computer programs in order to manage their listing process.

I have not tried all of them but have been gathering them from recommendations from personal contacts at large corporations, forum users, and technical experts. Some are online, others are downloads.

These are all available for Windows. A very few may be available for MACs. If you have any to add that you know are "clean," post here and I will add them! They are FREE!!

I use a variety of these for my Contemporary Beaded and Silver Wire Jewelry shop - GalleriaLinda, and find them to be excellent choices!

Knowledge, Computer Tips, Q&A - User Friendly

• http://www.komando.com/

Computer & Online Education

• http://www.lynda.com ($25/month, no contract, unlimited access to ALL learning - a GREAT resource - sample training videos here: http://www.lynda.com/home/freeTraining.aspx - highly recommended - I purchase one month about once a year and learn!)

Computer Maintenance and Protection - install and use all (Good, robust, free programs recommended by my computer tech)

• http://www.superantispyware.com/

• http://www.malwarebytes.org/

• http://free.avg.com/ (good, free antivirus - USE IT!)

• http://www.ccleaner.com/ - deletes temp files, frees up space

• http://www.komando.com/downloads/categories.aspx?cat=Security - more excellent choices

Free Email Addresses

• http://gmail.google.com/

Business Suite (word processing, spreadsheet, etc...)

• http://www.openoffice.org/

PDF Generators

• http://www.cutepdf.com/

• http://www.primopdf.com/

Graphics Editors

• http://picasa.google.com/

• http://www.gimp.org/downloads (robust alternative to Photoshop)

• http://www.photoshop.com/express

• http://www.splashup.com/

• http://www.picnik.com/

• http://www.fotoflexer.com/

• http://www.rsizr.com/

• http://webresizer.com/

Animated GIFS (usable for online ads)

• http://www.gifmake.com/

Advanced Graphic Layout

• http://www.inkscape.org/ -save as .eps, not open .eps files. Can edit Illustrator files

Business Charts

• http://ganttproject.biz/ Gantt Charts (timelines)

• http://www.lovelycharts.com/

Convert a PDF to a Word Document

• http://www.somepdf.com/

File Extension Viewer

• http://www.irfanview.com/

Share/Sync Files from Another Computer

• http://www.foldershare.com

Send Large Files via Link

• http://www.dropio.com/

• http://www.yousendit.com/

• http://www.megaupload.com/

Covert File to Another Format

• http://www.zamzar.com/

Make Full Screen Shots of Web Pages

• http://www.thumbalizr.com/

Stock Photos (free or cheap)

• http://www.bluevertigo.com.ar/bluevertigo.htm

• http://www.sxc.hu/

• http://www.istockphoto.com/

• http://www.canstockphoto.com/

• http://www.dreamstime.com/

Free Web Pages

• http://www.webs.com/

• http://www.tripod.lycos.com/

• http://www.wix.com/

Conversions

• http://www.onlineconversion.com/ Convert Anything to Anything Else

• http://www.psinvention.com/zoetic/convert.htm Metric & English Conversions

• http://www.convertworld.com/en/ Convert Anything to Everything

Glue Advice! Glue "This" to "That"

• http://www.thistothat.com/

ZIP Utility (zip up multiple files into one file)

• http://www.tucows.com/preview/194312 (QuickZip)

Find "Spyware-Free" Software and Utilities Here:

• http://download.cnet.com/

• http://www.tucows.com/

• http://www.komando.com/