Selling Through Your Own Website Versus Store

So I’ve been wondering a lot lately about the best ways to promote products online. I’ve come to realize that when you have a store on Zazzle and there are literally thousands of others that have stores on Zazzle, your store can get completely buried and is then like finding a needle in a haystack! Through sharing and speaking with others I know that many people are frustrated with not being able to get their products viewed they way they would like to.

It has also come to my attention that Zazzle is pushing store owner’s to find their own way to market their individual products. I realized this even more as I began doing specific searches for certain products in the Zazzle marketplace. Take for instance, I want to find a nautical birthday card, I type that in the search box and it pulls up cards, postage, labels and all kinds of items with this theme. I only wanted to look for a birthday card not sort through a bazillion other related items. This can be very frustrating for customers and I think store owners lose a lot of business this way.  

I’ve come to realize that the best way to market your store items is to create your own websites that promote and link to your products, or the one’s that you wish to refer. A big advantage to sending people to your own website versus your store is that there will likely be a much higher potential for referrals.  Creating your own website allows you to design it with a professional look, choose your own themes, page style, fonts and set up!  I recently designed two websites, you can view them and let me know what you think! The first is Birthday Party Invitations and the second is Baby Shower Themes!  Thanks for bookmarking them too, you never know when they might come in handy!

Once you’ve created your website you’ll then want to look for places to promote it. There are lots of places to promote your sites, twitter, pinterest, forums, LinkedIn, FB, Google+, etc.  I’m learning and searching for new sites and ideas of how to market daily! Feel free to share your thoughts with me here!

Orange Cake and Cupcakes Birthday Invitation	Dazzling Daisies Birthday Invitation
Nautical Sailboat Baby Shower Invitation	Giraffe Fur Print Gift Wrapping Paper

Technorati Tags: selling products,your own website,marketing,promoting,birthday party invitations

The Design Process

Hard to believe today is the first day of April. I sure don’t know how those last few months went by so fast, but they did! I hope you’re enjoying the beginning of Spring where you live! Spring time is one of my favourite seasons right up there with Fall. We have hung the bird feeders in our backyard and the little birds are beginning to return to it once again. The last couple of mornings I’ve been waking to the sounds of their chirping. There are lots of buds opening up on the plants and shrubs and some little flowers beginning to bloom! Such a beautiful time of year!  

Zazzle has been putting out new products, several over the past few months. It is a challenge as well as exciting to be able to create designs and ideas for these new items. They include items for the home, office, apparel and gift products. When you’re designing item by item it takes quite some time to keep the new products coming out quickly. Challenging to get to them all!  One day at a time, one step at a time!

Some of you may be wondering exactly what is involved in designing a new product so I thought I’d share the steps I go through here.

1. Design process begins with choosing one of the products to design. Say I choose to work on a ‘wedding favor box’, first I choose the style of box as there are several choices for this. Then I begin playing with drawing designs or patterns and choosing colors on my tablet until I am happy with one of them.

2. Next I upload the design to the ‘wedding favor box’ and proceed to post for sale. At this point I will add a descriptive title and then describe the product so that customers can find it.

3. I then choose one or two market categories that the product is suited for, like ‘special occasions’ and ‘weddings’. Finally I choose one of my store categories that is is best suited for. I have a ‘wedding’ category!

4. Next comes the important task of tagging the product, this is choosing the keywords that allow the product to be found in searches.  You want to choose words that people would think of related directly to the product that you’ve designed so that it will be found on the internet. This can be tricky sometimes!

5. When I am satisfied with my keywords I am ready to set my royalty rate on the product and go ahead and post it! This means it will soon show up in the Zazzle market place and in my store.  This process is done for each product, one at a time! That’s pretty much it! 

Here are some of my recent designs! Thanks for visiting Designs by Shell! There are always new items to browse!

Black Ribbon Pink Flower Wedding Favor Box	Green Tiger Fur Pattern Party Favor Box	Aqua Diamond Pattern and Purple Floral Night Light
Black Handbag with Coral Flowers Purse Hanger Hook	Zebra Pattern with Flower Birthday Invitation	Diamonds and Bright Flowers T-shirt

Technorati Tags: design process,designing,gift items,new products,desings by shell