Ginny of www.thepennyfriends.com sent in a question recently and here’s my answer:

Question Mark

“I am thinking of starting to sell items on the internet- kind of like a mini, mini esty and was wondering if you had any tips you could give me to get started.
Thanks and Blessings,
Ginny”

Ginny,

I’m so glad you’ve asked and thank you for sending in your question. Without knowing exactly what you’re selling here’s my advice:

I think to give yourself a head start with selling your items online it would be a great idea to test your products and make sure there is a market/audience for what you are selling. To ensure your success there is nothing like hungry consumers for whatever product you are selling.

Some questions to ask yourself:

Are my friends and family that I’ve made this for asking for more without being prompted? Are they offering to pay me to make it for their friends as gifts?

Are people already looking for products like these? If yes, is your design better? If they’re not then, why not?

What is the typical price point of these products? Is it really worth your time?

You mentioned Etsy so I wonder if you’re doing something more artistic that will appeal to a specific client. Think about who that would be and where they hang out. If you’re doing something that is not main stream then be where your client would be. Hotrod guys read hotrod magazines. Knitters are on knitting forums. Photographers have conventions they attend. You get the idea.

You may even consider doing some keyword research. What you are calling the items your making may have another name. Soda Pop, on the eastern coast of the United States folks have a tendency to call it pop meanwhile the west coast refers to a fizzy drink as soda. (and my momma would tell you in the southern states it’s all Coke)

Make a couple, take photos and then do a pre-launch or simply selling in advance. Many school fundraising programs pre-sell from a catalog. The kids collect the orders from a brochure they’re sent home with and then turn them into the school. The school turns it over to the company and then they deliver the goods. It’s a great way for you to get started too. You should also have a way for consumers to sign up to get more info even before you have released any product. People love being the VIPs and the first to find out about interesting things. It would make sense to put a coming soon image and a way to sign up for notification of when you officially release your products. (A side note: Any time you can make it an event, you should! People love parties! – Have a website unveiling party and a launch the product party and any other party you can think of!)

Suggestions on ways to test would be to put an ad in the your local classified ads (both online and paper) and see what kind of response you get. Many local businesses have bulletin boards you can post a flyer on too. You can always put people on a waiting list if you get more than the amount of actual product you already have. Which of course is fantastic, it’s your own list of hungry customers! You can also gauge for pricing with a test on eBay, Amazon, Etsy or even at local craft fairs and events. On Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution he was recently shown hitting the streets with a food cart and asking people to pay what they thought his burger was worth. If that’s something that would work for you, I’d highly suggest asking strangers what they would expect to pay for your item.

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Gauging the Price of the Burgers.

Be serious about tracking your time and the cost of materials, because the purpose of a business is to make money. If you’re doing it for the love of doing it, and you’re not making any money. It’s a hobby. There is nothing wrong with having a hobby. It’s even a bonus when your hobby can pay for itself! Keeping clear about the distinction and being honest with yourself about what you’re doing is always a good thing and will keep you out of trouble with the local tax man and you’ll know when you should obtain a business license.

Ginny keep us updated and let us know how you’re new project is coming along!

Much Success!
Lyndi

You have lots of options for buying and selling images for your projects.  Keep in mind you can also donate and sell images you’ve created too!  Every stock photography company has it’s own rules of course, so you’ll want to check with whomever you decide to sell or donate your images through.  Now on to finding your perfect image.

Did you know that travel offices of countries, and regions often times have a stock photo section that you may use with limited copyright information?  These tourism office have made images available to make it easier for reporters to say good things about them and promote their area for tourism.

Clonard Monastery via gotobelfast/flickr

Find the country or company of interest and check their media or press section.   You may be surprised at what you find they’ve provided.  Even some celebrities have images available for public use.

There are a couple of other things to keep in mind too, such as public domain.  These are images that have been donated for the public good, a government agency has created the image or the copyright has expired because of it’s age.  For instance over at Yahoo’s Flickr the US library of Congress has a photo stream.  They’ve scanned in images that are available for the public, they are the caretakers of those images and they’re making them available for the people.  Wikipedia also has a collection of public domain images available along with a list of where to find more public domain images.

Resources for public domain images:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources

http://www.flickr.com/commons/

G.G.B. in Stutz via The Library of Congress/flickr

There is also Creative Commons licensing where the creator of the work allows some uses but not others and usually just wants credit.  They have licensing such as:

*Attribution
*Attribution-ShareAlike
*Attribution-NoDerivs
*Attribution-NonCommercial
*Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
*Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

For detailed information about the Creative Commons Licensing check out http://www.creativecommons.org .

A great place to find creative commons images available are on www.flickr.com.  You need to use the advanced search to find them though.  http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/? near the bottom of the page you can choose creative commons for commercial and find something that may work for you.

You can also use Google’s advance image search: http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search?hl=en

MSN appears to have some graphics available too, I’m not sure the copyright requirements, but currently you can download images at no cost.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/images/

And of course you can purchase stock photography.

www.istockphoto.com  <—have used them, love them…but apparently so does everyone else, cause I see images I choose on other blogs too.

www.zymmetrical.com

www.crestock.com

www.bigstockphoto.com

www.photrade.com

www.fotolia.com

www.veer.com  <—used them too, so far so good!

Happy hunting for your perfect image!

Lyndi

I once heard a joke, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were at a conference, and listening to a speaker talk about their humble roots, Bill Gates turned to Steve Jobs and said, “Remember when we were poor?” They both said, “No” and burst into laughter.

Regardless of their roots, they are men who did something they loved and followed their inspirations. Steve Jobs talks at Stanford about his journey and following that inspiration, even when it didn’t make sense. As Ali Brown would say, “God, qualifies you by your Yeses.”

What are your thoughts on staying hungry and staying foolish?

Here’s our friend Matt Cutts explaining how Google searches work. How/What kinds of questions Google’s software uses to retrieve your search. So when you go to www.google.com and put in whatever you’re looking for they can find it and return reliable information. We all like reliable information. Plus it only takes about 1/2 a second!

The illustration reminds me of the medical library basement up at the University of Utah, it was the first time I’d seen moving bookcases.

I like that he explains they do their best to be impartial and that they don’t accept payment for adding a site, updating it more often or improve the ranking of a site.

On an SEO angle, He mentions: How many times does this website or page mention the keywords you’re looking for? Do the words appear in the title? URL? directly adjacent and does it contain synonyms for those keywords? What is the quality of the website? What is the page rank? (How many other outside websites are pointing links to the site? How important are those links? i.e. Government sites are more reliable than Crazy Joe’s website.) This is the idea that if a website is quality then it will have many links from other individuals on the internet pointing and sharing to this usable/reliable site.

Lyndi

Do you have a website?  If you do then you need to know a little about SEO, and who better to learn it from than the experts with Google.    Matt Cutts talks us through the Dos and the, “They did what?s”  er I mean Don’ts of Search Engine Optimization on real sites. (also its very cool that they have an interactive transcript you can try out as well as Closed Caption turned on with the video)

Give it a try and beef up your own SEO!

Lyndi

Image courtesy of flickr/CharlotteSpeaks?{Charlotte.Morrall}

Mashable has declared June 30th for the first time Social Media Day! Hurray, media is in full force and shareable! It’s social! Here are two of my most used social media sites:

www.facebook.com – its fun to learn more, become more acquainted and keep up with friends, family and associates who post pictures and info. While you can comment on what they’ve mentioned you should still call them on occasion, because not everyone puts there private info and happenings online. It helps keep you connected. You can put photos, videos, posts and its a hub of social activity!

www.twitter.com – you can talk to anyone who also has the service in real time. They can also get your message later, they may not respond… but you can say it directly to them. You only get 144 characters to make your point, so it helps you get clear on what you want to say and prioritize. Twitter is also like an chat room that’s open for the world read. Plus Google likes it!

What are you favorite social media sites and why?

Every business owner needs to know who their audience is.  Your business needs to speak the language of the community and feel their pain and help solve their problems.   To more effectively do that its great to know a few interesting facts about the kinds of folks who are listening to your message.  That’s where demographics come in.  Who is your ideal customer?  Age, family, religion, education level?  Any number of factors can help you figure out who your clients are.  Where they’re hanging out and what they’re concerned about.  If you don’t know who they are here is a great tool to check out and if you’ve been online a while you’ll have enough history to glean a few fun facts about your community.

I’ve never used this service, I’m not an affiliate for them, but I did find the information they’ll share very interesting and they’ll do a complimentary search for you and you can search your competition over at www.quantcast.com you can also see who your audience is and what other sites they may likely have an affinity for.

Here is the report for www.franklincovey.com. Some interesting facts about the community Franklin Covey attracts as suggested by QuantCast are that their customers are more likely to be women without children under 17 years old with an annual income of $60k-$100k+ that they’ve graduated college and are probably Caucasian and are 35 years of age or older.

Don’t think that those women are the only people who purchase from Franklin Covey, they’ll sell almost anyone their products and services.  However by knowing who is likely to purchase from them they can streamline their advertising dollars and focus on where to spend their time looking for their clients.

Quantcast also suggests that the individuals who visit FranklinCovey.com would also like stores like Office Depot, shoplocal.com Staples, then under hobbies they have listed Joann Craft Stores and Micheal’s Craft Stores.

Now that you’ve figured out who your community is, figure out where they’re hanging out.  Now go hang out there, too!

Lyndi

Tony Robbins has some great points in this video about how little things do make a difference and how affirmations helped him make greater impact.

The important thing about affirmations is that you must FEEL it, the emotions that go with it make all the difference.  It tells your body that your serious, just like when you write your goals down it, that signals to your mind and subconscious that your serious about those goals.

Here are Tony’s incantations:

Here is the replay to the Earthquake Teleclass!  I hope you find some useful information for you and your family.  The handouts are also attached as well as a Bonus!  Some special info for the children in your life.

Right Click and Save As the File, zipped it up with a .exe extension, so it should just open itself when you double click or you’ll just need to unzip it.

Earthquake Teleclass March 2010

Blessings!

Lyndi