Strategic Trends for Online Selling and Handmade Communities for 2011

Everyone is talking "trends" these days. The new year always brings about predictions and opinions on what our world will look like and how our business will fare in the coming year.

Here are some specific strategic trends that relate to online sellers and the handmade community as "solopreneurs." You can read the enhanced article with details on FoxBusiness.com.

Wishing you a profitable 2011!

1. Organic, green initiatives and renewable energy will continue to be among the hottest investments and trends.
2. Financing will continue to be difficult into 2011; most small business will turn to non-bank asset-based lending and pay more on the amount borrowed. Lenders will screen out businesses that don't have a solid business model. 
3. Unemployment will continue to rise. Small businesses will continue to lead innovation in the marketplace.
4. More Fortune 500 companies will market to women specifically. 
5. The distinctions between online and offline will become irrelevant. 
6. Brands will have to play well with others, as companies have less and less control over how, when, where and with what other products their brands are experienced.
7. We will need to move from thinking about individual products to thinking about cohesive experiences and must continue the evolution of integrating online and offline brand experiences.
8. We have to get into the mind of our customers so that we are delivering brand experiences where, when and how they want them. 
9. Increase in apps usage as more and consumers use smartphones in their business as well as their personal life. 
10. Cloud computing can be a phenomenal innovation for working collaborations to enable solopreneurs and small firms to work in real time to leverage resources with great efficiency. 
11. People will talk less and text and e-mail more.
12. Solopreneurs who took jobs to survive in 2008 and 2009 will relaunch their practices or other new entrepreneurial endeavors. 
13. The number of networking groups you can join will continue to increase, forcing those groups to be more strategic about their message and the value they provide.
14. Allowing information seekers to replay webinars and live events at their convenience will continue.
15. More peer-to-peer business planning. Because of the need for prompt business idea validation and feedback, startups may emerge as key components of business planning for next-generation entrepreneurs. 
16. Business plans will start to appear in a more compact and digital form., making them more accessible to potential funders, mentors and potential customers.

New Look - Revamping for 2011 - And New Graphic Resources for You

I have been in an updating mode - a rework of "the plan" for 2011 for all things online: shops, blogs, profiles, etc... Here is IndieCEO's new banner look! I am rethinking shop banners and avatars too. It will take some organization to get all of them changed on all the networking profiles.

Large corporations will update their logos and look every 5-10 years. Even if they keep the same images, they will freshen them up a bit for a current look.

With the IndieCEO banner, I wanted to achieve an artistic look, but a current look and a bit edgy. The image of the hands reminds me of potter's hands. The grunge text adds to the edge and the great mix of deep colors contrasting with selected lighting adds drama.

Here are some free graphic resources I use for all my work and hope you will find some uses for these too!

There are many free fonts to be had online but I seem to keep going back to fontsquirrel.com as they always have what I need - quick and easy.

For free textured backgrounds - especially the grunge backgrounds, I just love LostAndTaken.com and use them frequently.

For your holiday shopping pleasure, there are new, awesome, "off-the-wall" earring designs in GalleriaLinda's loft shop on Zibbet. And, a 10% off - free US shipping promo too! These are great inexpensive "Secret Santa" gifts gatherings at work, clubs, groups, or church!

Wishing you a great holiday selling season!

'Tis the Season to Know Your Customer

 

We are into the heart of the holiday selling season! Although I am prepared as I can be for my tiny business, it always sneaks up on me. Preparations in July for year-end holidays just seem unnatural, but necessary!

The concept of "knowing your customer" has been introduced many times in this blog, as this is the heart of your business. 

To make more sales, you must bring your product to your target customer - to where they work, play, and live. Through advertising and exposure direct to those who are interested, you eliminate the waste of effort and money.

IndieCEO recently wrote a guest post for the Zibbet blog about this very thing. Read more to find out methods you can use to figure out the customer profile for your product. 

Fun Software Training Even I can Afford

Oh my. Does software training sound dry and boring to you? Expensive even? Homework-esque? Drudgery?

Well, I have a resource for you that I have used since the late 90s and just love it. www.Lynda.com has been offering online video training for a long time and is well established. I have watched them grow over the years and am amazed at their current 910 courses.

Starting out with the basic business and graphic software, they now have a tremendous line-up of expanded titles that touch Selling on eBay, Making Money with Podcasts, and OpenSource.org. There is a treasure-trove of good, fun, video training to be had at Lynda's!

There are several payment plans but when I get a hankerin' for software training (and...I do), I will pay the $25 monthly fee (no contract) and have fun for a month then stop the subscription. Then, maybe I will pick it up for a month the next year. For that one fee, all 910 training titles are available to YOU!

If you do it this way, to get the most benefit, you will need to be organized for that one month. I actually schedule "appointments" on my calendar to carve out time to do this. Each course has a course outline that you can view along with free video peeks into certain chapters.

As small businesses, micro-business, and especially us "kitchen-table businesses," it gives us an economical way to keep up-to-date with software and skills that will help us manage our own businesses. It will also make us more marketable in the workplace. 

At Lynda's you can:
– Stay current and keep skills sharp
– Learn innovative and productive techniques
– Access over 910 online courses, 24/7
– Learn from experienced instructors
– Gain confidence and marketability
– Learn at your own pace: Stop, rewind, replay

Have fun!

Art Photography and Editorial Photography

(All photos in this blog post are ©2010 Copyright John Evans, All Rights Reserved)

There are many uses for interesting photos and just as many perspectives on how photography should be presented.

I wanted to share some great photos from a friend of mine, John Evans, who is a real estate agent, specializing in Florida land.

John amazes me with his "eye" for photography that allows him to capture the the real feel and flavor of the land he is presenting. You can read more about John's photography on the GalleriaLindaShowcase blog and view additional photos of John Evans' in this post.

Purists in the art photography community will say that these photos (or any photo) should be able to stand alone on their own with little or no Photoshop editing. I agree that is absolutely the goal for art photography. Art photography presents that highly creative and technically skilled photographer, who has the critcal creative eye for composition and knows how to capture rich colors, lighting, and focus of the subject. Art photography sometimes makes my jaw drop with appreciation of those skills.

Photos that come across my desk are used in my designs for glossy magazine property brochures, such as the one for John's Lake Disston, Florida parcel of over 3,600 acres. They are editorial in content and use. Some photos I receive from the agents are even "artistic" in the layman's definition, but require editing for print purposes. Many are questionable for use at all!

The photos you see here are indeed heavily edited in Photoshop for output on a variety of commercial printing equipment. The original photos would have had much less impact without the editing.

The photos we use have to look good to a layman's eye; satisfy the client, the agent, the marketing team, and the broker.  The photos in these brochures are the conduit that sparks the reader to want to see more.
 
I work with dozens of land real estate agents who take their own photos of property listings. Most photos are "ok" but must have Photoshop editing in order to be used at all.

John is one in a million when it comes to property photos. He is not a professional photographer, but is an emerging amateur photographer who can take his photography to the next level!

Run Your Business with Open Source: Illustration Software

If you are an illustrator with no funds for Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator to further your passion for drawing, here is a GREAT open source vector drawing program.

There are so many free sources online at this time that one could literally run a graphics business on freeware and open source software for business apps and graphics apps.

Scalable vector graphics are those that you can draw in a software program that can be resized without losing quality. Professional illustrators will use the likes of Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator to draw their images, then save as .jpg (or other) to be used online or in print media. However, the native file in the software retains the ability to resize up or down to create sharp, quality graphics.

I have not used inkscape because I have the other two, however, reviews say that it truly rivals the Corel and Adobe Illustrator programs.

Give it a try and have fun! http://www.inkscape.org/

TWITTER: Know Your Social Media Limitations

I had an interesting question sent to me on Twitter recently. This person could no longer follow anyone and thought Twitter was having issues!

For those of you new to Twitter, there are "following" limits. Did you know that? Not many people new to Twitter do and it would help if they did.

Twitter Help offers this:

"If you've reached a follow limit, you can help yourself by reducing your following number until it resembles your followers number. Since the follow limit is based on followers/following ratio rather than time, you'll have to un-follow people before you're able to follow again."

Reducing your following numbers is easy with third party utilities - there are dozens. I like to use Dossy's Twitter Karma as I find it easier than the others. You can find more by searching on Google "Twitter Unfollow Tool."

You can follow IndieCEO/GalleriaLinda here and I would love to have you as a twitter and Facebook buddy!

IndieCEO Blog - http://www.twitter.com/IndieCEO
GalleriaLinda Handcrafted Jewelry & Beads - http://www.twitter.com/Gallerialinda
GalleriaLindaLoft Vintage Jewelry - http://www.twitter.com/GalleriaLoft

GalleriaLinda's Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/gallerialinda

Edit, Edit, Edit....Make it Work!

If you watch Project Runway on TV, you will know these words well!

Project Runway is a show of fashion designer contestants that participate in design challenges in hopes of becoming the big winner. Tim Gunn, the designer-contestant-overseer, reviews all work in progress and frequently says "Edit, edit, edit...." and always ends with "Make it work!"

And so it is that this is good advice for everything we do. As online sellers especially, we need to "Edit, Edit, Edit....Make it Work!" in all areas of our business.

I took this thought to heart the other day and made a plan to edit my shops and inventory. It is time! On iCraft.ca/GalleriaLinda where I sell my handcrafted contemporary beaded jewelry, I have some jewelry designs that have not sold and are a year old or more that really do not represent my evolving design point-of-view (another Project Runway buzz word).

Pictured above is my evolving design perspective today and in the days to come, I will be selecting older items to either deconstruct and reuse materials, donate, giveaway, or place on another venue as clearance.

We must keep our shops fresh and current to where we are today and this is a journey, not a destination. I see that every six months an inventory audit is needed and GalleriaLinda's handcrafted jewelry, vintage jewelry, and bead shops will be doing that!

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