marketing
Sell Your Designs and Crafts! Turning Hobby into Money
If you enjoy creating and you constantly hear people telling you that you should sell your creations, it may be time to voyage into the world of selling your crafts for money. Like all things, entering the world of selling crafts should be carefully planned out. There are many websites and venues where you can sell your crafts both online and off.
Online venues are a great way to reach customers all over the world. Popular websites like Etsy, Artfire and eBay are great tools that help to reach your targeted customers. Before making the plunge into selling your crafts, be sure to take the time and do some research beforehand. Keep the following questions in mind as you consider the prospect of selling your creations:
* Do I have a design or product that people would want to buy? This is the most important question you have to ask yourself. If there is no target market for your products, you will have a hard time selling your creations and not because your items are not nice, but they may not be in demand.
* Who is my potential target market? This is a continuation of the question above because you need to know who to advertise to and how to successfully draw your target market to your items. It would be a waste of time trying to sell baby clothes, for example, to those who do not have children.
* What will I charge for my creations? Pricing is an important strategy. All too often, people undercharge for their creations forgetting to take into consideration the time and materials that go into a product. Make sure you account for both the cost of the materials as well as the time and effort you put forth to create your goods. Also be sure not to overcharge. You may find that your items do not sell because they are over priced.
* Where will I sell my design or crafting items? Online websites are plentiful when it comes to selling handmade goods. There are websites such as Etsy and Artfire who only allow the sales of handmade goods, along with supplies. EBay is also another popular venue to sell handmade goods. Be aware though, that you will be competing with the other goods that are not handmade and may be cheaper. A good description of the item and its benefits is always a good idea.
If you choose to sell locally, try finding a store that will sell your items on consignment or sign up to exhibit at a local craft show. Both will be good for exposure. If you choose to go the consignment route, be sure to get all terms in writing. Otherwise you run the risk of having your items kept and not paid for.
It is very possible in today’s day and age to make some spending money selling your crafts. Be sure to do your research and follow through your plan by keeping the above questions in mind. Once you have your plan in mind, go ahead and take the plunge. But remember, like anything else, you will get in return what you put forth so make it worth your while.
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Niche Link Exchange with Karlyn
I offer link exchange options here at Karlyns.com, in the niche categories of:
- Links for Webmasters, websites
- Links for Design/Graphic Designers
- Links for Advertisers
- Links for Online Business and Affiliate Marketing
I invite you you to initiate a reciprocal exchange on the link exchange page that most closely suit your niche site(s).
For webmasters:
http://www.karlyns.com/links-to-webmasters/
For Advertisers:
http://www.karlyns.com/links-to-advertising/
For Design Sites and Graphic Designers:
http://www.karlyns.com/links-to-designers/
For General Business and/or Affiliate Marketing:
http://www.karlyns.com/links-to-affiliates/
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Driving Traffic To Your Site With YouTube
YouTube has had a dramatic effect on the Internet marketing landscape, making huge changes in how marketers promote their products and services. For years, Internet marketing was confined to text-based websites with a photo or graphic and beautiful headers.
The new software that makes creating videos easy has generated millions of video sales pages and other graphic presentations that can go viral quickly. It seems like the browsing public, regardless of their choice of subjects cannot get enough of videos.
Successful marketers always know they have to stay current with the latest and greatest marketing processes if they want to continue to attract buyers. The hottest marketing tool right now is YouTube.
To take advantage of marketing with YouTube, you first need to register for a YouTube account. If your video grabs attention and is well-done, it has a chance of going viral, which means that it will move around the Internet as people upload it and send it to their lists or it gets mentioned in forums, membership sites, newsletters and blogs.
When posting your videos on YouTube, do not upload long videos. Three to four minutes is a good length for marketing videos. Your intention is to create enough curiosity to make your viewers click on your site link at the bottom of your video. Traffic generated from your link can mean steady income for you.
Keywords are still valuable and should be included in your video title. Do not forget the basic marketing practice of using your keywords in your first paragraph and intermittently in the rest of your presentation. What you want to do is make your videos interesting enough to have others send an email or the link to their friends and subscribers, which makes your video a viral marketing tool. The more people who click the link to your video, the better your ranking, the more Google will love you, and the more chance you have to make sales.
What should you do videos about? Remember you’re a marketer – the only difference is the delivery media, in this case, YouTube videos. Instructional videos, PowerPoint presentations, your personal story about finding the solution to a problem, or your sales copy for your product are good examples.
Check out your YouTube competitors to not only see what they are doing, but to find possible opportunities to add your video as a response to what they are posting. People will find your video and follow your links if they are interested in what you are saying or offering. Targeted traffic is pure gold.
YouTube has a couple of interesting and useful tools for you to use. One is the “Statistics and Data” section, which lists the numbers of visitors sent by other websites. You are free to copy the tags popular sites use to keep their videos and websites popular. Use them in your videos to improve your listings.
Keep in mind these facts about YouTube’s popularity and don’t dismiss the site’s power as a marketing tool without giving it a try yourself. YouTube has monthly visitors that number way over several million each month. Almost 100,000 new videos are uploaded each day and your possible customers generate hundreds of million clicks on a daily basis. Those numbers alone should get you to start your video marketing immediately.
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Four SEO Tools and what to do with them
Search engines are integral. You really do need them to send traffic to your websites, blogs and advertising. Utilize them well and they could send very targeted traffic to your website. Targeted traffic turns into clients, prospects and repeat visitors. This means it’s not only where you’re placed on the search engine rankings, but the keywords you use as well. You want to make sure you’re attracting the type of traffic you want.. the targeted traffic, to your online hub.
The vast cosmos of SEO – search engine optimization – and keyword promotion can feel daunting at times. It seems there’s plethora of information out there to learn and put to use. However, when you’ve had time to research and dig deep, you might see that it doesn’t have to be quite so overwhelming. In fact, I dare say, it could be quite simple. You want to optimize your website for a few primary, or central (“key”) keywords. These are the words that will help visitors traveling the wide-world-web visitors to find their way to what you have to offer.
Then the next realistic step is to optimize your pages for those keywords. Optimize is a fancy way of saying you need to use these words within the content (text) of your website, blog or what-have-you. Choosing some secondary keywords (think of them as helper-words) to support your primary ones is beneficial also. These words still help because they are additional ways people will find you on the Internet. All of these key words, primary, secondary, placed within your posts, articles, title tags, image tags, description designs, etc.. will help search engine spiders index your site in the most advantages way. You are providing the search engine with information to link to and for visitors to find you. This is a very important part of the SEO process.
There are seriously thousands of helpful tools and applications you can find to help you manage and perform your SEO tasks. Many of these various websites and gadgets can assist you in checking the keyword density on your website, blog or business page. They perform this tasks by making sure that your keywords are represented enough to help but not so much that your content reads inadequately. Among these tools are also link check programs, keyword research apps, and more. Here is a selection of four tools, along with a description of their use for SEO that I hope you find useful:
1st Tool ~ Keyword suggestion – This is stop #1. Numero Uno, because as described above, keywords are a very important part of the whole SEO structure. Keyword suggestion tools help you gain the knowledge you need when forming your primary and secondary keywords. One of the more popular keyword tools used is the Google AdWords tool. It’s free and has shown itself to be very useful. Of course, there are some keyword tools that you can pay for, but.. This is a good way to start.
2nd Tool ~ Ranking checkers – Rank checkers help to decide where your website, blog or design business ranks in an assortment of keywords and search engines. This is a useful tool for setting goals and tracking your advancement. For example, say you set a goal to move forward a couple of pages in the rankings using article marketing. This ranking checker will help to test and track your improvements. It’s also a way to see how the competition might be doing too.
3rd Tool ~ Link checkers – Link checkers are designed to help check the effectiveness of your site’s back links. You can find out who is linking to your site and how popular their own links are. And once again, you can check to see who is linked to your competition. There are many generic and free tools that provide this basic information. Or you can hire always a service to examine your back links for you.
4th Tool ~ Keyword density – The keyword density tools evaluate a page or pages from your URL for keyword density. “Density” refers to the amount of usage within the content. You won’t have any trouble finding keyword density tools on the internet with a simple search and some are free. However, if it turns out you might refer to pay for this type of tool or service, make sure it/they inspect keyword phrases as well as individual keywords.
Interesting and information SEO tools are popping up online all the time. It’s useful and worthwhile for you to keep an eye out and utilize these tools to your advantage and to help you strategically position your website, blog or designs in the most beneficial way. Let’s face it. The Internet is huge and the any way you can use these tools to help make it easier for folks to find you means more potential prospects, clients and subscribers for you. Using these tools can really help your individual online success!
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PLR and Ghostwritten Articles: Are they Ethical?
Recently, in an interview, I was asked “Is it ethical to use private label rights and ghostwritten articles?”
Let me step back a moment and explain… Private label rights (or PLR) articles and ghostwritten articles are used by web owners as a method of outsourcing some of their content.
* PLR articles are packages of articles that are pre-written and sold to more than one person.
* Ghostwritten articles are articles that are written by someone else just for you that you can put your name on and are not sold to anyone else.
In both cases, you are allowed to edit the content as much or as little as you’d like and use the articles on your website, blog, or in your newsletter.
So, back to the question. Is it ethical? My answer was, “usually, yes”.
If you’re using the articles and saying “written by me” without changing anything at all, it may bite you in the butt later, when someone else does the same thing. Does that make it unethical? Not really. It’s just not smart. Can you use the article as it is or edited slightly, without saying it was written by you? Of course!
Most PLR packs are written by ghostwriters. Ghostwriters are professional researchers and writers. If you purchase well-written, informative PLR or ghostwritten articles and share them with your readers, don’t you all benefit? Your readers benefit by getting great information. You benefit by saving time. Is it any different than hiring a graphic designer or webmaster? Not in my opinion. Heck, most politicians don’t write their own speeches. They leave that to people who are professional speech writers.
Of course, you’d want to only use top-notch articles and not “sell-out” just to pump out blog posts or web pages quicker. We recommend you research thoroughly before choosing any ghostwriter or PLR service.
Here’s what to look for in a PLR service so you don’t waste your money:
1. Make sure the articles are written well.
2. Make sure that you know what topics you’ll receive (instead of some grab-bag of articles).
3. Be sure that the people running the program have some experience in article writing themselves, so they know what they’re doing.
There’s no point in doing everything on your own, especially if you dislike writing. All successful business people outsource the tasks they are not good at or dislike. Check it out. It might take some pressure off you and allow you to spend more time with your kids. And, that’s definitely ethical.
Article written by:
Nicole Dean is the owner of www.EasyPLR.com – where you’ll find high-quality PLR articles sold in very limited quantities. The PLR articles at EasyPLR are professionally written and professionally edited — top quality at an affordable price.
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Holiday Advertising from Karlyn
Do you have a product or business you are interested in promoting for some extra online traffic and potential sales this holiday season? If the answer to that question is yes, I hope you stop by my ad area and check out my low, low marketing options with a variety of ad stay lengths, from 2 weeks all the way to 6 months. If you want a year, I’m happy to discuss that with you as well. I have always catered to the work at home mom and dad, so my prices are low. You can select from a variety of websites and ads. Or, feel free to contact me, if you would like to discuss bartering or alternative ad options. I’m happy to work with you and look forward to your contact. Take a look at the array of websites that are available for you to advertise your wares on and choose your length of stay. Our ad prices begin at just $10! Of course, contact me if you want to discuss special pkg deals and I will put one together just for you. Special holiday advertising pricing is available to you now! Don’t delay!
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